THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET: LOOKING...
The job scene in Southern California today is like a river in a storm--the surface is troubled, but below, the current continues on course, cutting new grooves and pathways in the earth. With the region in recession and the security of most jobs brutally uncertain, it may come as a surprise that Southern California remains home to some of the best places to work in America.
These are companies that offer good benefits, especially child care, and a challenging environment--and do not look upon their benefits as frills. For the most part, the companies named in the book “The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America” or Working Mother magazine’s list of the 100 best firms for women with children have not cut back on benefits during the recession.
“A manufacturing firm wouldn’t cut investment and maintenance on its machinery during hard times, so we can’t cut investment in our people,” said Wanda Lee, vice president of human resources of Pacificare Health Systems, a Cypress-based health maintenance organization.
Pacificare--which already pays a child care subsidy to most of its 2,000-plus employees--is building a center with places for 120 children. Mattel Inc., the El Segundo-based toy maker, is building a child care center with 84 places.
Both companies say that making on-site child care available boosts productivity because it relieves employees of anxiety.
“We found that child-related absences accounted for the loss of 500 workdays,” said Donna Gibbs, a spokeswoman for Mattel, which has 1,200 employees.
In addition, the toy company--which has a working mother, Jill E. Barad, as its president and chief operating officer--now allows vacation time to be taken in one-hour increments so parents can attend school activities. It makes provision for sick-child days, flexible scheduling and job sharing--when two part-time workers divide one full week of work.
Such innovations are common-sense at a time when 71% of U.S. women with children under 6 years old are working. And they are also part of a trend toward companies providing for individual needs, of being flexible to accommodate employees’ personal lives.
“Flexibility was not approved of in the old industrial age, but it’s just what is needed now, especially in service and high-technology industries,” labor economist Audrey Freedman said.
It may seem odd to talk of companies catering to employee needs when downsizing has come into the language and cutbacks and layoffs seem the order of the day. But cutbacks and layoffs are the hallmarks of companies brought up short by change and trying to lose weight to survive.
There is another reality of mostly smallish firms that cope with changing markets, and they depend on their employees being secure enough to shift gears when circumstances change--never an easy thing for human beings.
Odetics Inc. of Anaheim is such a firm. Employees are called associates. Informal gabfests are encouraged and parties are frequent--but working hours are long and tasks are demanding. The company, now 22 years old, has managed to evolve from a supplier of tape recorders for the space program to a $70-million sales company making automated tape libraries for the television and computer industries. Odetics also makes closed-circuit video recording equipment for security and surveillance systems--the kind used in all-night convenience stores and at bank teller machines.
Odetics, which currently is making a secondary offering of stock on the market, is not wildly profitable. It was hurt last year, along with virtually everybody else in Southern California, by the decline in defense spending.
But it keeps up its investments in research and development and wouldn’t think of cutting its employee benefits, which include a gym and trainer as well as a swimming pool, basketball and volleyball courts at its Anaheim headquarters. The payoff from such investments is clear: Odetics has made transitions from government work to the commercial marketplace and then developed another business, so that it now serves three distinct and growing markets. To do that demands a high degree of employee involvement and dedication.
Innovative employee policies work even for a onetime savings and loan, First Federal Bank of California, which employs 560 people at its Santa Monica headquarters and 28 branches around the Southland. Benefits include company-owned condominiums (with pool and tennis courts) in Indian Wells and Palm Springs that employees can use for a week or a weekend.
“The idea is that many employees couldn’t otherwise afford to take a first-class vacation with their families,” explained bank spokeswoman Jacqueline Kittaka. The bank also has extensive training programs and a no-layoff policy. It is credited with good policies on minority hiring by authors Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz in their book about the 100 best employers.
The Los Angeles Dodgers also get high marks for minority hiring policies in the same book. The team was the only sports franchise to make the list. The Dodgers organization is judged on the quality of work life for its behind-the-scenes staff here and in the farm club cities. Those employees don’t make the salaries of famous ballplayers, but they do have profit sharing and good benefits.
The Dodgers organization feels recessions just like other businesses--attendance fell in 1992, has recovered in ‘93--but it makes few off-field changes on such short-term shifts. Other companies and organizations, even though they remain excellent places to work, must trim their sails in hard times. Patagonia, a Ventura apparel maker that ranks consistently on “100 best” lists, had to lay off employees in 1991.
Little Company of Mary Hospital in Torrance fell off Working Mother’s list this year because the hospital’s office staff no longer has the spare time to go through the lengthy process of applying to be named to it.
To cope with changes in medical economics, Little Company, like all hospitals, is “stretching office and housekeeping staff to keep expenses down,” explained Blair Contratto of the business development office.There can be no cuts in nursing and physician care, so office employees now take a day off without pay every two weeks and share the work that needs to be done. The policy avoids layoffs and focuses activity on essentials.
Such spreading of available work is also a trend. With computers and related technologies doing more jobs in office and factory, working hours needed for most activities are being reduced everywhere, noted Christopher Freeman, a 72-year-old British professor who has spent decades studying technology and employment. The pressing need of the immediate future, Freeman wrote, “is flexibility in work organization, in technology, where people really learn to use the new techniques and teamwork efficiently.”
Thus the wave of the future--”teamwork,” “flexibility”--is the current of the present among the best firms in Southern California, which remains a good place to work.
Best Places to Work in the Southland
Here are some firms that were dubbed the best by the book “The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America” and Working Mother magazine’s annual list of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers.
* First Federal Bank of California (Santa Monica): among the best for women and minorities; high level of camaraderie; company-owned vacation spots for employees.*
* Great Western Bank (Chatsworth): among the best for women; on-site child care, adoption aid, flex time, sick-child days; discounts on homeowners insurance.**
* G.T. Water Products (Moorpark): among the best for women; adoption aid, sick-child days, free on-site Montessori school; job sharing and flex time; profit sharing.** ***
* Little Company of Mary Hospital (Torrance): among the best for women; near-site child care, on-site sick-child care; job sharing; compressed workweeks.**
* Los Angeles Dodgers (Los Angeles): among the best for minorities; beautiful corporate headquarters; profit sharing; four free tickets to every game.*
* Mattel Toys (El Segundo): among the best for women; building on-site child care center; sick-child days; job sharing and flex time; profit sharing; toy discounts.***
* Odetics (Anaheim): high level of camaraderie; Fun Committee; liberal vacation policy; paid sabbaticals; company-owned swimming pool.*
* Pacificare Health Systems (Cypress)--among the best for women; subsidized child care, sick-child days and lactation room; flex time and telecommuting; profit sharing.**
* Patagonia (Ventura): among the best for women; relaxed dress code, on-site child care, sick-child days, paternity and adoption leave; flex time; sand volleyball court.* ** ***
* “The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America” (Doubleday, New York)
** Working Mother magazine, 1992’s “100 Best Companies for Working Mothers” list
*** Working Mother magazine, 1993’s “100 Best Companies for Working Mothers” list
THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET: LOOKING FOR LIGHT
EDITOR: NANCY RIVERA BROOKS
NEWS EDITOR: BOB LYNCH
ART DIRECTOR/ILLUSTRATOR: PATRICIA MITCHELL
RESEARCHER: BRENT WYETH
