In bad times, workers share time off

Cian Crowley had far too little time on this earth. But before the good-natured 7-month-old died of a rare cancer last month, he received an immeasurable gift from his mother's co-workers: more time with his parents.

Jennifer Crowley's colleagues at MedAptus, a small Boston medical technology firm, donated 33 days of their paid time off for her to use after chief executive Dennis Mitchell sent an e-mail to the staff of 50 notifying them of the creation of a donation bank.

The extra time enabled Crowley to keep her job, hence her family's health coverage, yet remain by her son's side. The stable second income meant that Cian's dad, John Crowley , could feel less pressured when taking time away from his construction business.

"It gave us some breathing room," says Jennifer Crowley, marketing director for MedAptus, which provides medical software to doctors and hospitals. "We're a small company and we're growing. If I'm not here, it's tough. There's no one backing me up. Dennis didn't even question it, none of that mattered. It was pretty amazing."

Flexibility often breeds flexibility. A boss who lets a worker telecommute often finds that more work gets done at home. Leave work early, and you make up the time and then some. Now, the recent tidal shift over to paid time-off programs is inspiring a surge in a new kind of giving: donating time to colleagues in need.

About 60 to 70 percent of companies allow workers to draw from one lump tally of vacation, holiday, and sick time, compared with traditional programs that keep separate accounts of time off. And a quarter of paid-time-off, or PTO, programs include donation banks, versus 10 to 15 percent of traditional programs, estimates Steven Cyboran , a vice president at human resource consultants Segal/Sibson.

Companies favor PTO programs because they allow flexibility and rein in employee abuse of sick time. Yet not all employees like them. Old systems typically gave people 10 or more sick days, while paid time off plans factor in five days for illness -- a bit more than the annual three to five sick days that people on average take. Employees' biggest fear is that they will use their PTO time when sick, forfeiting vacation leave, but this happens rarely, says Cyboran. New programs also often allow fewer days to be carried over from year to year.

Still, the shift to a simpler system is inspiring more donation programs, which usually take two forms. In one type, co-workers donate days or hours to an anonymous time bank that employees in need apply to draw from. Alternatively, a company openly asks a department or workforce to donate to a named colleague.

Jenn Lauer, a senior audit manager with KPMG, took a month off in April to take her 2-year-old daughter Alexis to Alabama for intensive therapy to mitigate the effects of a prenatal stroke. The extra weeks she needed were given by many of her 250 colleagues in the Stamford, Conn., office after she applied for "shared leave."

Last year, 39 KPMG employees nationwide received up to 12 weeks each for family medical emergencies. One woman cared for her husband after surgery, another for her parents after a car accident.

"People were e-mailing me saying, 'I can donate this much time,' and 'this much time,' " says Lauer, who also has a 4-month-old son. "I didn't have to worry about the financial burden of taking off that time."

In a work-squeezed, vacation-starved country, such gifts of time are especially precious, says Daniel Hamermesh , an economics professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies Americans' use of time. "Time is increasingly relatively scarce compared to money," says Hamermesh, who recently gave 100 hours to his university's donation bank."

The shared sacrifice at MedAptus had an unexpected collective benefit, says Mitchell, who was inspired to create the time bank after project manager Andrea Berte Bellemare asked to donate three days to Crowley. The effort brought employees together because they suddenly felt they could make a difference.

"We felt so helpless," says Mitchell. "We were all kind of, to be honest, frustrated" after learning of Cian's diagnosis with neuroblastoma, a pediatric cancer of the nervous system. "It's really pulled the company closer together to be able to donate time."

The quiet rise of donated paid-time-off programs is a fitting story as we prepare to sit down to a Thanksgiving meal . As we hurry through the holidays, worrying about what to buy for whom, let's not forget the value of a gift of time -- or the importance of presence. Cian Crowley had both from his mom and dad.

Balancing Acts appears every other week. Maggie Jackson can be reached at maggie.jackson@att.net.