Customized Delight

'At 3 a.m. Antoinette Leatherberry hauled herself out of bed to get ready for a flight to Arkansas. The 47-year-old Deloitte principal trekked from Philadelphia to Bentonville almost every week to consult with Wal-Mart ( WMT - news - people ). It was a grueling schedule, but Leatherberry loved the work.



This week was different. She stepped into the bathroom and found her husband, Stephen, sprawled on the floor, dead from a heart attack. Describing that morning now, a year afterward, she still sounds shaken.


The shock of loss was compounded by worries about work: How would she handle 60-hour weeks, care for her 9- and 10-year-old daughters and manage her own grief?


Fortunately for Leatherberry, Deloitte had a number of programs in place designed to help its 38,000 U.S. employees manage crises and balance work with lives out of synch with the old-fashioned American ideal of a working husband and a homemaker wife. (Only 17% of U.S. households fit this description, according to Labor Department data.)


Because Deloitte dwells in the world of business consulting, most of the programs have jargon-heavy names and corny acronyms like win, for Women's Initiative, the firmwide effort it began 17 years ago to support and promote women. But beneath the consultant-speak, say advocates for women in the workplace, is meaningful action that has transformed Deloitte from a sexist boys' club to an inclusive company where managers bend over backward to nurture women's careers.......


In Leatherberry's case, a five-year-old program called Mass Career Customization proved a lifesaver. All Deloitte employees, including senior managers, can choose to "dial up" or "dial down" their careers, depending on life circumstances. Twice a year (or as needed) employees meet with a counselor and decide how they want to work in four categories--pace of career, workload, location and schedule (including travel and telecommuting), and role. Employees can elect to scale up or cut back on any or all of the four. Cut back productivity by 40% or more and compensation is reduced.


For Leatherberry, who had been traveling from Monday until Friday every week, location and schedule were the crucial pieces. She dialed her travel schedule back to one or two nights a week. She didn't trim her hours, however, so her compensation stayed the same. At the end of the summer, after hiring live-in help, she dialed her travel schedule back up.


In 1993, before Deloitte introduced its Women's Initiative, only 7% of its partners, principals and directors were female. Though the firm had been hiring equal numbers of male and female employees, the annual attrition rate for women was seven percentage points higher........


By The Numbers: Accounting for Gender


Deloitte started its Women's Initiative in 1993. Here's how its gender breakdown in mid- and senior-level U.S. staff has changed since then.


30% Percentage of women managers in 1993.


37% Percentage of women managers today.


7% Percentage of women partners, principals and directors in 1994.


23% Percentage of women partners, principals and directors today (total: 1,053).'

(Excerpts from the article - Making A Female-Friendly Workplace by Susan Adams, Forbes Magazine, April 26, 2010)