ACN Accenture Plc

By Rachel Emma Silverman 

Consultants who are new parents may be able to spend less time on the road.

Accenture, the large professional-services firm, is announcing today that it is allowing mothers and primary caregivers to work locally during the year after they return from parental leave, instead of traveling for out-of-town engagements.

The benefit is only available for Accenture's North American staffers, who number more than 51,000 employees; last fiscal year, about 750 North American employees took parental leave as primary caregivers.

Ellyn Shook, Accenture's chief human-resources officer, said the move was suggested by employees in a parenting group. Ms. Shook said some new-parent employees opted to leave their jobs altogether because they were anxious that their professional-services jobs might entail too much time on the road. Other employees worked out one-off deals with their managers to reduce travel, but there was no companywide policy, she said.

"We hope to get out of it that our people understand how much we care about them as human beings," said Ms. Shook. "Do I think there will be tangible benefits of lowering attrition and raising productivity? Absolutely."

Ms. Shook said she's not aware of other professional-services firms publicly announcing similar reduced-travel policies for new parents. Likewise, Anne Weisberg, senior vice president at the Families and Work Institute, which researches workplace policies, said she hasn't heard of other firms with similar programs.

Accenture's move comes as many firms have introduced enhanced benefits for new parents, in part to attract and retain women, who are still most often primary caregivers during a baby's first year. International Business Machines Corp. will pay for employees to ship home breast milk pumped during business travel in temperature-controlled packages. Private-equity firm KKR & Co. recently said it would pay for employees to bring new babies and their nannies on business travel during a baby's first year. Other firms, including Adobe Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Netflix Inc., have recently announced significant extensions to their parental leave programs.

In March, Accenture also doubled its parental leave benefits to 16 weeks for birth mothers, and extended its parental leave programs for other primary and secondary caregivers. The company also is planning to allow new mothers to ship breast milk home for free if they choose to travel for business, among other benefits for new parents.

Write to Rachel Emma Silverman at rachel.silverman@wsj.com

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 26, 2015 00:15 ET (04:15 GMT)

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