Cashing in on family values.

• Position: BankAmerica Corp, - Cover Story

Some companies have been slow to jump on the family-friendly bandwagon. Not Charlotte-based BankAmerica Corp. It has been on board more than a decade, designing programs that give working parents extensive maternity and paternity leave, flexible schedules when they return and help with child care while they're at work.

In its former incarnations as NationsBank and NCNB, the company caught on quickly that showing concern for family needs helps shape a loyal work force. "Take care of employees, they take care of customers, and that takes care of our bottom line," Work-Life Vice President Nancy Poe says. There's evidence it works. BankAmerica tellers who take the company's child-care subsidy, up to $35 a week, have half the turnover of those who don't.

But the company that's been a perennial pick on Working Mother's best-company list now finds itself in a bit of a pickle. It doesn't want to be pigeonholed as a company that only cares about married people with kids. The merger of NationsBank and San Francisco-based BankAmerica in September created a work force of about 200,000, roughly the population of Greensboro. The nation's largest bank now wants to have a "broader appeal," Poe says, so it's backpedaling some, refashioning itself as a company with "work-life" rather than "work-family" programs. "For someone who's 25 and single, those programs don't mean anything," Poe says.

Truth is, it's mostly jargon tweaking. The average employee age, 35, hasn't changed much, and employees, which the bank likes to refer to as "associates," can expect few concrete changes. But more people will be able to work from home and to design their own schedules. "The emphasis will be on getting the work done, not when or where," Poe says. Another change: The company will pick up the San Francisco bank's policy of extending health benefits to employees' same-sex partners.

The reimaging doesn't diminish the grab bag of options for working parents, arguably the best among North Carolina companies. Other Tar Heel employers allow job-sharing or flexible hours, but BankAmerica's programs, designed 10 years ago to reduce turnover among new moms, are the most thorough and concrete. After childbirth, women can take up to six months off with the assurance they'll return to the job they had or a comparable one. They can then ease back in, working fewer hours the first few months, or permanently cut back. New dads aren't left out: They get two weeks of paid paternity leave.

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