Child care counts honor roll for Vermont Employers: Ben & Jerry's ... Meeting the work-family challenges of today

Vermont Business Magazine, Feb 01, 1999

Commencing in 1999, a percentage of the revenues from our successful Tour operation at the Waterbury Manufacturing site will be donated to the Child Care Fund to aid in this work

Harking back to our own programs, we measure their effectiveness by collecting statistics, conducting utilization reviews and administering company-wide, work-life surveys. At the end of the day, however, it is the personal stories from people like you and me that make the difference. Mine goes like this:

One sunny morning last April, I awoke with the realization that school summer vacation was a mere two months away. What would I do with my 10-year-old while I worked? My immediate thought was that she could sit at the table in my office and draw as she often did on snow days when school was unexpectedly cancelled -- but for 2 months? That's a lot of pictures.

Instead, I called LifeWorks* and was connected with a counselor in Burlington. I told her that I was looking for local programs that ran eight hours a day, five days a week that would be safe and fun for a 10-year-old. Horror stories from friends at other companies who had tried to find similar programs colored my optimism. Nevertheless, within days, the LifeWorks* counselor had provided me with a quality and quantity of information that it would have taken me days of research and phone time to locate. The upshot is that we were able to quickly arrange a great summer for my daughter and I was able to concentrate on my work knowing that she was safe and having fun. Who wins in this kind of scenario? We all do -- my daughter, myself and Ben & Jerry's.

As a company, we are proud of the progress we have made in the area of work friendliness, but we are not complacent. Ben & Jerry's continues to search for ways to improve the quality of our employees' lives and searches for the means to influence and affect change in our greater society with the help of other companies and organizations such as the Child Care Fund.