So how balanced is your life?

Juggling work and home life seems a particularly difficult skill. How can employers and employees do better, asks Anne Dempsey.

While we don't know what babies think about bosses, we can probably assume that bosses are in favour of babies in general. Babies in particular are a different matter. The fact that many workers are also parents with a life outside the workplace is ignored by many employers.

"Bosses who have young children themselves tend to understand the situation more. But I have come across senior management who've never been through the situation of bringing the child to the crèche in the morning and needing to leave in the evening in time to pick up," says Neil Brown, who will chair an employers' conference next Tuesday entitled Babies and Bosses - Reconciling Work and Family Life.

The half-day is organised by the Childcare Committees of DúLaoghaire-Rathdown, Dublin City and South Dublin, of which Neil Brown is Dún Laoghaire chairman. It's one of 33 committees countrywide appointed under the Government's 2000 National Development Plan to increase the quality and quantity of childcare places at local level. The conference is billed as a first initiative offering information and options to employers about how best to acknowledge that many workers are parents too.

Appropriately running the day after Irish Work Life Balance Day which takes a new look at work, the conference will report on a recent OECD study which shows that while the number of women in the Irish workforce aged 25-44 has increased from one in five in 1981 to one in two in 2001, employers have not changed their policies to accommodate such change.

The effect is that many parents lose out. "The big issues in childcare are affordability, access and quality. According to the National Children's Nursery Association, parents pay an average of €150 per week for one child in Dublin, usually double that for two, and €130 outside Dublin. Some 33 per cent of family after-tax income is now going on childcare, equivalent to a mortgage. That's scary," says Brown, whose day job is general manager of Bright Horizons, a child-care provider.

In terms of access, demand can still exceed supply, particularly with infant and toddler places, as their higher adult-child ratios are less financially viable for crèches.

"Only three people knew I was expecting Sophie: myself, my husband and the owner of our crèche," says Yvonne, a mother of two living in north Dublin. "We told her when I was four months pregnant even before we told my parents, because we were desperate to secure a place and wanted to give her as much notice as possible. These are the times we live in now!"

"When it comes to childcare quality, parents tend to think of the care, which is quite right, but less about the child and the educational opportunities offered by a good crèche," says Brown.

"What goes on in these places is very important. A child can be in a crèche for eight to 10 hours a day and good childcare can be valuable in the interaction, sociability and stimulation it gives."

The work-based crèche can go a long way to fulfilling his three criteria, but we still have very few of them.

Trinity College Dublin opened the country's first such crèche in 1969 and demand among its 2,000 employees remains high, says the college's personnel officer, Louise Power.

UCD, RTÉ, Aer Rianta, ESB, Eircom, Dublin and Fingal local authorities all offer a crèche, as do IBM and the Bank of Ireland.

However, expecting an employer to move into the nursery business may be unrealistic, depending on facilities, profit margins and staff profile.

"Employers put up barriers to the idea of a crèche, such as cost, equality - benefiting only one employee section - insurance, liability. However, supporting work-life initiatives doesn't automatically mean childcare. It includes giving employees more options. The [Bosses and Babies] conference will hear from companies who have adopted such policies," says Brown.

One such company, Intel Ireland, employs 3,200 full-time staff in Leixlip, Co Kildare, and has a part-time and job share policy, as well as telecommuting facilities allowing some employees with a long commute to work from home two days a week in a home office provided by Intel. Employees also avail of flexible work starts. More creatively, Intel organises a four-week summer camp for employees' children, holds regular seminars on parenting and other issues, and offers an information service on quality childcare in its area. The firm has a gym and sports hall, and offers fitness assessment, massage therapy, dance classes and social clubs, as well as sponsoring barbecues, quizzes and parties.

"We want employees to know we value their contribution and we do all we can to create a happy and healthy workforce even if it means going that extra mile," says Karina Howley, Intel communications manager. The company represents a new breed of employer which realises good welfare policies are good for business too. "Many of these policies began with IBEC as a recruitment and retention issue rather than being too concerned with the reality of children's lives," says Brown. "Companies in the US and UK where there have been dramatic changes in childcare policies are doing it for sound business reasons. If you want to keep the brightest and the best, you need to understand what their lives are about.

"The market has now softened, but over the next five to seven years it will change again. A US Fortune 500 list survey found that in the downturn those companies with good work-life policies held on to staff, took things more in their stride. The Simmons Graduate School in Boston did a pre- and post-study on life balance and found improved productivity, high morale, and happier workforce where such policies were introduced. Irish employers just don't appreciate their value."

Anne Coughlan senior research executive with IBEC is the author of Family-Friendly/Work-Life Balance Policies, an early definitive look at the Irish work-life situation. She believes things have moved on a lot since then. "Now I see it as a societal issue. It's about men and women, how they decide to take care of their children and how society helps or hinders them in that process," she says.

So it is significant that last year's "family friendly day" is this year's Work-Life Balance Day, aimed not just at parents but all employees.

Eventually, the debate about work-life balance must take place outside, as well as inside, the workplace. Transport, stress, time poverty, later marriages and parenting, high housing costs and the need for two-income families are all part of this balance. In this context, decentralisation of the public service, siting companies in out-of-town centres, and the creation of new, viable, work-life communities is very relevant.

Bringing these issues back home,Brown, who lives in Blackrock, Co Dublin and works in Blanchardstown is married to Lisa Mitchell and he is Dad to Kelly (six), Ben (three) and one-year-old twins Lindsey and Sarah. "I arrive at work at 8 a.m. and leave to be home at 6.30 p.m., in time for dinner, to join in all the talking and the screaming! I do it because I choose to and because my employer facilitates it."