Jobs for Life

Mikucki also took responsibility for checking in on the 40 team members who were working in Paris and Madrid. He discovered that several consultants were quietly working themselves to exhaustion. One young woman had been alone in Paris for five months. She had made just two quick trips home to Indianapolis during that time. Mikucki immediately sent her home for a break; gave her a new, less-stressful assignment abroad; and restructured her old job so that her replacement wouldn't have to work alone for months at a time.

E&Y also hired a full-time human-resources officer for the team in Indianapolis -- the first time it had done so for any client site. "When you're in the heat of working long hours, you don't feel comfortable saying to your supervisor, who is working as hard as you are, 'Hey, I don't want to do this,' " says Robert Sydow, 43, a lead partner on the project. "It helps to have a dedicated resource." The firm has since deployed hr officers to 16 other consulting projects.

The most widely used and applauded innovation within the consulting organization, however, is the "3-4-5" travel schedule. Under that schedule, first tested in Detroit, consultants spend three nights away from home, four days at a client's site, and a fifth day "adding value" by working either at home or at their home office.

In practice, that often means flying out early Monday morning, working four long days at a client's site, and then returning home bleary-eyed late on Thursday night. Most teams stagger schedules -- some members work Monday through Thursday, and others work Tuesday through Friday -- so that consultants are on-site every day.

Still, by mortal standards, that's an enormous amount of travel. But that schedule is a vast improvement on the norm. "The new schedule absolutely made my time away tolerable," says Martin Schyns, 42, a manager at E&Y and a father of two who lives in Lake Forest, Illinois. He worked a 3-4-5 schedule on the Indianapolis project for about a year. Instead of spending Fridays commuting and Saturdays recovering, he got to spend his entire weekends with his wife and young children. "My kids get to see me more often," he says, "and they recognize me when I come home now. If I had to be away five days a week, I don't know whether I'd stay in consulting."

The 3-4-5 schedule is so popular that consulting partners now promote the schedule to clients as part of the up-front negotiations. And clients, typically struggling with the life-balance conundrum themselves, are increasingly receptive. Rich Johnson, 40, CIO of Norton HealthCare, a hospital chain based in Louisville, Kentucky, immediately agreed to try the 3-4-5 schedule when an E&Y partner proposed it. Johnson himself had been a consultant but had changed careers a few years ago because he hated being separated from his wife and children. Now he feels that clients have to change their mind-set. "E&Y's turnover is our problem too," he says. "A shift has to occur on the consumer side of this relationship."

Other clients, impressed by E&Y's pitch for balance, have drawn similar conclusions. Worried about the long hours that their employees were working, senior E&Y partners and the Indianapolis client decided jointly last year to give most of those involved with the project the week of Thanksgiving off. They also offered consultants living in Madrid and their client's staffers health-club memberships and concert tickets. Some clients have even asked E&Y to consult on life-balance issues -- an idea that Holmes's office is considering.

Leaders of the Detroit and Indianapolis projects say that their life- balance initiatives have improved employee retention by 10 or more percentage points without hurting client service. But a number of consultants report that their 3-4-5 schedule caused some resentment among counterparts at their clients' firms. "You'd hear a few jokes before you were leaving to go home," one consultant says.

Ironically, some E&Y consultants who live near a client's site also have objected. Working five days a week and commuting from the suburbs, they have less time to spend with their family than do out-of-state commuters who are working on the 3-4-5 schedule. Schyns now works five days a week in E&Y's Chicago office, about an hour's drive from his home. He's looking forward, though, to hitting the road again. "I don't see my kids enough," he says. "I really miss my Fridays."

E&Y may not have worked through all of its life-balance problems, but it is committed to keep trying. Last summer, less than three years after joining the firm, Holmes was made partner, a sure vote of confidence from the firm's leaders. This year, she vows to expand the initiatives by promoting OFR's Life Balance Matrix, an online database that describes the best life-balance practices across the firm.

Meanwhile, Laskawy, who is planning to retire next year, says that he wants to be sure that the firm chooses a successor who will keep pushing the life-balance initiatives. "It's the right thing to do, and it makes business sense," he explains. "Few choices in life are that clear."

Pamela Kruger (pkruger@fastcompany.com), a Fast Company contributing editor, lives in Millburn, New Jersey. Contact Deborah Holmes by email (deborah.holmes@ey.com).