Reports NYT’s Steven Greenhouse:
At Ernst & Young, as at the nation’s other major accounting firms, workplace flexibility has been built into the culture — even during crunch time.
Every Monday morning, the 15 people on Mr. Leeds’s team meet and lay out the personal commitments that might interfere with work–basketball games, teacher conferences, Pilates classes, weddings. They arrange to cover for each other, helping make the busy season tolerable for everyone. Despite the auditing team’s six-day weeks, one Auburn University graduate, for example, is taking next Monday and Tuesday off to see the school’s football team play in the national championship bowl in Arizona. And Mr. Leeds plans to escape to New Orleans for three days to see his daughter run a marathon.
It gets even better: At some accounting firms, some employees get to to take off the entire summer; others get three- to six-month sabbaticals at 40 percent pay, allowing them to “chase life dreams like climbing mountains or building schoolhouses in Africa.” And, says the NYT, “since these are bean counters we’re talking about, they’ve done the math: flexibility enhances the bottom line.”
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