10th Anniversary

The American Business Collaboration (ABC) Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary As the Largest Private Sector Investment of Its Kind to Support Employees

Since 1992, The ABC Has Invested More Than $125 Million in America's Workforce

BOSTON, MA - (March, 2002) - In celebration of its 10th year, The American Business Collaboration (ABC) announces its continued commitment to provide dependent care benefits and services to support employees in the workplace. To mark its 10th year, the ABC will announce highly anticipated research results concerning tele/remote workers, and host a series of web teleconferences to highlight dependent care issues affecting employees, including: tele/remote work, elder care, school age programs and back up care.

The ABC will launch these initiatives under an expanded model of collaboration that includes the sharing of expertise, information, leadership and financial resources among ABC Champion members in an effort to find new ways to support their employees in the evolving workforce. "The ABC was built on the theme of 'Doing together what none of us can afford to do alone'," said Ted Childs, IBM Vice President, Workplace Diversity. "After 10 years, ABC's collaboration of nine leading US companies is stronger than ever as we come together to pool ideas, expertise, data and resources. We are committed to meeting the increasing demands of work/life balance that face employees. Our goal is to create new choices that will allow our US workforce to excel in today's challenging and dynamic work environment."

ABC's 10th Anniversary year will bring work/life and dependent care issues to the forefront of the American business agenda. The tele/remote worker research study is the only study of its kind, taking a multi-directional, multi-variant view of the tele/remote worker for the purpose of identifying the root causes of tele/remote worker success or failure, and offering options for creation of solutions to ensure tele/remote worker success. The web teleconference series will feature expert speakers and target a business audience of corporations interested in improving their dependent care programs in order to impact their bottom line through attraction and retention of highly qualified employees. The teleconferences will encourage discussion of "best practices" between participating companies. The full schedule of the ABC's 10th anniversary events will be announced in May and will also be available on their website at www.abcdependentcare.com.

"These turbulent economic times call for a greater sense of collaboration among our business leaders in order to retain skilled employees and meet the needs of a changing workforce," said Deb Phillips, Director of ABC. "This is a remarkable step for American business: to share information, data, ideas, as well as resources, between competing companies in order to make a difference for their employees."

Between 1992 and 2001, the ABC invested over $125 million in funding for child, school age, and elder care programs to fulfill its mission to create and fund programs and resources that merge the goals of corporations with the needs and responsibilities of employees as caregivers of children, teens and elders. During these first nine years, innovative programs for backup care, elder care services, intergenerational programs and school age programs were developed to alleviate gaps between the needs of working families and available services and programs in identified communities across the country. In this time, more than 1,500 childcare and eldercare projects were funded through collaboration by companies participating in ABC's efforts. These projects impacted more than 135,000 children and elders in more than 65 communities. However, the ABC recognizes that there is more work to be done. It is committed to continuing to provide services including school-age care, infant care, back-up care and elder care to meet the needs of employees.

To achieve these goals, today, eight U.S. national and international corporations (Champions) form the core of the ABC collaboration. They include: Abbott Laboratories, Deloitte & Touche, Exxon Mobil Corporation, General Electric, IBM Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Texas Instruments. To learn more about the ABC, call 800-767-9863 or e-mail ABCinfo@WFD.com.

The American Business Collaboration is administered by WFD Consulting, 55 Chapel Street, Newton, MA 02458, 800-447-0543.