Work-Life Balance

Helping Staff Successfully Coordinate Personal and Career Priorities

What makes a job great? Engaging work, generous benefits, dedicated colleagues, and recognition for one’s achievements. But Booz Allen Hamilton knows that great jobs also include something more: An understanding of work-life integration.

For most people, work-related responsibilities can compete for attention with personal commitments. But maintaining an equal balance between obligations at home and at the office can be difficult: Demands are constantly changing and individuals must shift their attention from home to work and back again, to address new priorities as they arise.

At Booz Allen, our philosophy of work-life integration provides employees with the flexibility to focus on what’s most important to meet their goals at home and at work. The firm offers options for staff to manage responsibilities, network, learn, and build camaraderie, while they provide exceptional service to their clients and support their team.

For example, our flexible work arrangements allow one employee to start his workday a little later so he can walk his son to the school bus, and another to work a compressed week so she can volunteer at a hospice on Fridays. Our comprehensive set of paid leave programs provides salary continuation to help staff address work, personal, and community responsibilities and interests that are essential to their well being. To help employees meet their health and fitness goals, the firm offers a variety of programs.

And many organizations believe Booz Allen is getting it right: The firm is consistently recognized as a “Best Company to Work For” by Working Mother, Fortune, Washingtonian, and Business Week; has been ranked by Conceive Magazine as one of the “10 Best Companies” for fertility and adoption benefits; and received the Alfred P. Sloan Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility Award from the Washington, D.C. Chamber of Commerce.

Booz Allen provides many ways to help employees coordinate their competing priorities, including:

• Flex-work Opportunities: The firm endorses flexible work arrangements such as teleworking, job-sharing, compressed work weeks, flexible work hours, or part-time work, when these options are mutually beneficial to our employees, clients, and the firm.
• Career Mobility Program: Booz Allen facilitates internal transfers and provides job-matching support for employees who are ready for a change.
• LifeWorks and Employee Assistance Program (EAP): LifeWorks is a free, confidential resource and referral service that assists staff and their eligible dependents with the large and small challenges of everyday life—from finding a local gym to managing elder care responsibilities. EAP provides in-person clinical counseling and telephone crisis intervention services to help staff and their families successfully cope with critical concerns.
• Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account: This service makes it easy for staff to set aside pre-tax funds to pay for care of children or other dependents while they work.
• Dependent Care: Back-up child care services provide an alternative when a primary child care provider is unavailable. Employees are eligible for discounts of up to 10% off monthly tuition at national and select child care centers, and the firm houses a child care center in our headquarters office. We also offer elder care programs such as face-to-face elder care assessments, conducted by a geriatric care manager, and assistance in selecting elder care facilities.
• Paid Parental Leave: The firm encourages new mothers and fathers to take advantage of its paid parental leave.
• Adoption Benefits: Up to $5,000 of financial assistance per child is available to cover costs of certain expenses associated with adoption.
• Advanced Infertility Treatment: Our point-of-service medical plan provides for up to four in vitro fertilization attempts.
• Benefits for Domestic Partners: Our health benefits extend to employees’ eligible domestic partners.
• Health and Wellness Programs: From health fairs and fitness center discounts to voluntary onsite health screenings, firm-supplemented Weight Watchers at Work sessions, a free fitness center at the headquarters campus, and free health coaching, Booz Allen provides staff with many options to stay healthy and fit.
• Discount Programs: Online employee discounts to nationwide theme parks, movie theaters, restaurants, retailers, and service providers are available.

Whether our staff chooses to continue their education, develop expertise in their fields, transfer to another area of the firm, get in shape, take active roles in their communities, or spend more time with their families or friends, Booz Allen supports them with the work-life integration tools they need.