Working Mother Magazine Names Top 100 Companies

Working Mother magazine is celebrating 30 years of great information for working moms and reaches 2 million readers. It is the only national magazine for career-committed mothers and its workingmother.com website brings to the Web a broad range of insight and solutions served to working mothers every day. Working Mother's 24-year signature research initiative, Working Mother 100 Best Companies, is the most important benchmark for work-life practices in corporate America.

Who topped the list this year? Here are the top ten companies for working mothers, according to Working Mother magazine:

*Abbott Laboratories of Abbott Park, Illinois
*Bon Secours Richmond Health System in Virginia
*Deloitte LLP in New York
*Discovery Communications of Silver Spring, Maryland
*Ernst & Young of New York
*General Mills of Minneapolis
*Chicago-based Grant Thornton accounting firm
*IBM Corp of Armonk, New York
*The McGraw-Hill Cos publishers in New York
*PricewaterhouseCoopers auditors of New York.

The companies were selected on the basis of applications with more than 500 questions on programs and policies. The companies had to have at least 500 employees and government agencies weren't eligible.This year's list is Working Mother magazine's 24th in the history of the magazine.

Abbott Labs is one of the top 10 companies on the list published in Working Mother magazine. This is the fifth time that Abbott has been named one of the "Top 10" companies, and the ninth consecutive year that Abbott has been on to the broader 100 Best list.

"We are pleased to be recognized again by Working Mother magazine for creating a workplace that inspires and empowers working parents to succeed in their careers and at home," said Stephen Fussell, senior vice president, Human Resources, Abbott. "Abbott continues to invest in training and development, extensive benefits, workplace flexibility and health and wellness programs, which allow our colleagues to build extraordinary careers. We strive to put people and potential together better than other organizations."

Abbott is a global, broad-based health care company devoted to the discovery, development, manufacturing and marketing of pharmaceuticals and medical products, including nutritionals, devices and diagnostics.

The top companies offer such programs as on-site or back-up child care, career guidance, pipelines for women's advancement, parental leave and job sharing.

Also listed in the top ten is PricewaterhouseCoopers, which has a mentoring program that pairs new mothers with more experienced mothers. Another company that made the prestigious list is Grant Thornton which offers $10,000 in adoption benefits to employees.

According to Carol Evans, president of Working Mother Media, Working Mother magazine gave special weight to policies of leave, flexibility and benefits. The entire list of Working Mother magazine's 100 Best Companies is listed at www.workingmother.com/bestcompanies. The current issue of Working Mother Magazine with the top 100 list is available at news stands today.

Written by Cheryl Phillips
Providence, RI
Exclusive to HULIQ.com