Working away from home

Accenture is flexible when it comes to ways to help employees working away from home, the opportunity to maintain a good work/life balance.

Fly-backs

Work/life balance is also an issue where significant professional travel is involved, which is often the case for many of our consulting people. We therefore offer our people fly-backs to their home location, the option to fly someone to their project site, and the option to fly to an alternate location in lieu of a trip home.

Client-site Flexible Work Arrangements

Balancing work and personal life may be even more challenging for our consulting people, who spend much of their time working at client sites away from their home location. We offer these people a range of flexible working options to help meet their needs, while still meeting the needs of our clients. These arrangements may include:

"Full Weekend at Home"

An employee arrives at the project at midday on Monday and stops client work early Friday afternoon, thereby providing for a full weekend at home. With the “Full Weekends at Home” flexible work arrangement, the employee works the same number of hours as a full work week, but compresses their completion into a shorter time frame.

Extended Weekends at "Home" Location

An individual works a five-day work week: four days at the project site and the fifth day in the home office or approved alternate location, with either three or four nights at the out-of-town location. In this arrangement, the fifth day is spent performing project work or on other business-related responsibilities (for example, professional development, career counseling, recruiting, community activities). This arrangement works best when the individual's commute to the project location is of short duration. In another variation, the individual works one day at the home office or approved alternate location every other week.

Extended Client / "Home" Location

An individual works for an extended period of time at a client site followed by an extended number of days at the home office or approved alternate location. This arrangement does not alter the standard work-week requirement, but may change the timing of when the hours are worked and may involve weekend work at the client site. (Of course, this arrangement is optional and can be modified, based on personal and/or business need). Time spent in the home office or alternate location may be focused on client work or other business responsibilities, or it may be time off.

These arrangements include several options, such as working nine consecutive days at the client site, followed by five consecutive days in the home or approved alternative location. Of these five days, one is spent on business activities and the other four are time-off. Another variation is the “eight week/one week” practice in which an individual works eight consecutive weeks at the client site followed by one week in the home office or alternative location. This practice is best suited for an international assignment requiring medium-or long-range travel.