Adapt or die. That was Lorraine Mewett?s advice for businesses struggling with employees increasingly seeking a work life balance.

Speaking at the monthly lunch meeting of the Organisation of Women in International Trade (OWIT) Mewett spoke about why companies need to create a flexible working environment for employees.

Mewett, a Chartered Accountant and partner in the Bermuda office of Ernst & Young (E&Y) came to Bermuda with the company 20 years ago, and has been a partner since 1995.

She was the first female partner in Bermuda and heads up the audit practice, specialising in captive insurance.

Now married with one son, Mewett said she was the only female partner in an accounting firm in Bermuda for a number of years. She said: ?I am sorry to admit that when I was made partner in 1995, I was your stereotypical career woman. I was single, no kids and working 80 plus hours a week.?

However, Mewett said in 1998, she found out she was pregnant and said: ?I now had different priorities and needs, and I needed to have some flexibility to cope with all the demands that were being put on me.?

She said the ideal would have been to reduce her working hours, but this wasn?t an option for the partnership. So she said: ?I changed the way I worked.?

Mewett said she started working reduced hours from 8.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. which was ?not a normal day?. She would pick up her son from school spend three hours with him until he went to sleep, then get back to her work commitments. ?This works for me, but it soon became apparent that more was needed to allow others in the organisation to have flexibility in the way they work. So began my mission to find out more and try and bring it to Bermuda,? she said.

Mewett said the US office of E&Y had formed a Gender Equity task force in 1994 to address the issue of turnover among experienced professionals, especially women, which in turn led to the formation of the Office of Retention in 1996.

This office developed the Flexible Work Arrangement Programme (FWA) which can accommodate an individual?s needs through a variety of arrangements including reduced schedules, compressed work-weeks, tele-work, flexi-time, job sharing and short-term seasonal work (especially relevant in the areas of tax).

Mewett said it was important to realise that a FWA was a mutual responsibility, not a right, but a privilege that should be available when it makes sense to the individual and a business.

While the initiative has focused on women, Mewett said the flexible options are available to all genders at all levels.

?People have taken time out of their careers to look after children, parents, to give more time to their church or community, or pursue dreams or hobbies to satisfy their own needs.?

To qualify for FWA, an employee has to have been employed by E&Y for three months full time, and the request is granted at the discretion of the business unit leader. It commences with a three-month probationary period and is continuously re-evaluated.

So why do companies need flexible work arrangements? Mewett said research shows flexibility actually creates a more productive and effective work environment and absenteeism is reduced.

Mewett also said: ?In our present climate there is a tremendous war for qualified staff. In the Americas alone in the next year they (E&Y) will be recruiting approximately 10,000 new employees, and in Bermuda we recruit 40-50 people every year. We invest a lot of time and money in recruitment and training so if we can retain even a small percentage of staff for longer or encourage people to join us because of the flexibility then this makes good business sense.?

Mewett said that having a flexible work arrangement can slow promotion prospects as hours may be reduced, but added: ?While working part time schedules, 30 people have become partners and of the 2,400 people in America and Canada currently taking advantage of a FWA, a third of them were promoted to their current position while on a FWA.?

In her concluding words of wisdom, Mewett said: ?Flexibility is not one size fits all ? we must make choices and compromises as to where to spend our time. Being flexible will enable us to be more successful at meeting and hopefully exceeding our personal and professional goals ? we can have it all, just not all at once.?