SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA CAREERS / PART-TIME CAREERS : Stepping Off the Full-Time Track : Flexible Work Schedules Allow Workers to Balance Their Lives While Thriving at Work : Ellie Kehmeier: Deloitte & Touche

After announcing at a company party that she was pregnant, accountant Ellie Kehmeier smiled nervously as her colleagues joked that she had just killed her chances of becoming a partner at the firm.

“Right away a friend said: ‘Yikes! Ellie, couldn’t you have waited a year, until you make partner?’ I laughed, but it made me wonder for a second,” said Kehmeier, 35.

It turns out she was able to prove her colleagues wrong, demonstrating that it is possible to preserve both an ambitious career track and a family life. In addition to being the mother of 17-month-old Emily, Kehmeier is a partner in the San Jose office of Deloitte & Touche, the nation’s third-largest accounting firm.

What distinguishes Kehmeier from most of the other 1,400 Deloitte partners is that she’s one of only five who work part time, and she’s the only one in the company who achieved partnership during her part-time status.

Kehmeier gives the credit to Deloitte. Last year the firm launched a comprehensive program designed to retain and promote women, who had a higher turnover rate than men. The result has been an array of flexible work arrangements--and a strong commitment to them at the highest levels of the company.

“They have completely legitimized working part time without sacrificing your career,” Kehmeier said. “In order to do it, you have to feel that your company supports you, that they are not going to say, ‘Oh, she’s not committed anymore.’ ”

Jim Wall, Deloitte’s director of human resources, said it makes good business sense to incorporate flexible schedules and part-time arrangements. After only six months, the firm has cut in half the gender gap that dogged its turnover rate, and at the senior management level--from which partners are drawn--fewer women are now leaving than men, a dramatic turnaround, he said.

But a company must do more than offer alternative work arrangements, Wall said. It needs to back up the offer by demonstrating that a reduced schedule doesn’t connote a reduced commitment. That message is getting through not just to women, Wall said. Of the five partners now working part time, two are men.

For Kehmeier, the idea of reducing her work hours crystallized when she became pregnant. The UC Berkeley graduate describes herself as someone who has always valued her time outside work. She battled guilt trying to ignore the 70- and 80-hour workweeks of colleagues while restricting her own to 50 or 60. She tried to make up for it by maintaining an intense focus at work.

“I was so tired on weekends, I had no energy to do anything but go out to dinner,” Kehmeier said. “I just think there’s so much to life other than work. I didn’t want to work all the time.”

But Kehmeier waited until she had “a really good reason” to request a part-time arrangement. Having a child was it. She tried to preserve her chances for partnership by working full time through her pregnancy. But when her two-month maternity leave ended in the fall of 1993, she decided it was time to make her move.

“I knew it might mean I would never become a partner,” Kehmeier said. “But it meant too much to me to spend more time with Emily. I was willing to give up the partnership if that’s what it took.”

She was relieved to find that the partner in charge of her department at the time, Terry McCarthy, welcomed the idea of a part-time schedule. They penciled out a schedule that gave her Mondays off. The following spring she was made partner, and she maintains the same schedule.

As an accountant in the tax department, Kehmeier tends to her individual and corporate clients’ tax questions, prepares their returns and recruits new clients. As a supervisor, she oversees the career development of younger accountants. And as a partner, she participates in all the firm’s decision making.

Working part time hasn’t been without stress. When she tells new clients that she doesn’t work Mondays, some tease her, suggesting she has a “sweet deal,” Kehmeier said. But in time, they see by her actions that she is committed to them, she said, and when she is not at work, she makes sure other managers and partners are available to help her clients.

Kehmeier said she always feels she has too much to do in a four-day workweek--but she felt that way even when she worked full time. She occasionally works on a Monday, but tries hard not to.

Then there’s that old guilt.

“I continually have this internal battle of, ‘Am I doing enough?’ I want to be seen as someone who is doing her proportional share,” Kehmeier said. “It’s only by knowing there is support on the top levels of the company that I feel good about myself and my job.”

Kehmeier earns about 20% less than she did as a full-timer. She receives pro-rated benefits and vacation time. She said she and her husband, who works for a San Jose software company, feel the difference financially. They’ve scaled back on the new house they hope to buy. And unlike some of her fellow partners, Kehmeier won’t be driving an expensive new car any time soon.

But the benefits of her arrangement far outweigh the difficulties, Kehmeier said. Her husband has compressed his full-time week into four days, with Fridays off. Between his schedule and his wife’s, their daughter needs a baby-sitter only three days a week. The extra time she gets to spend with her daughter is the best benefit of all, Kehmeier said.