Top 25 Companies For Work-life Balance

Top 25 Companies For Work-life Balance, Benefits at some of the best firms include on-site child care, free meals, and every second Friday off. Top Companies for Work-Life Balance, On-site childcare and gym, free breakfast and lunch, every second Friday off, work from anywhere, opportunity to take a sabbatical. To those of us who are always on the clock with eyes glued to our BlackBerrys, that sounds like the perfect balance between work and personal life, right?

And if you work at Orbitz, SAS or Agilent Technologies, that set-up is probably old hand.

Those are a few of the companies that take work-life balance seriously, according to a new survey. Jobs site Glassdoor.com ranked companies based on their work-life balance culture to come up with its second annual list of 25 firms. (The report is based on the reviews of employees who elected to participate in an online company review survey.)

Other firms that made the top 25 include: Mitre, a systems engineering nonprofit company (4.5 out of 5.0 rating); LinkedIn (4.3); Discover (4.2); and consulting firm Bain (4.1).

Work-life balance has become a hot topic this summer as prominent economists advocate mandatory vacation for all workers as a way out of our economic rut.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich this week called for a mandatory three weeks off for every worker — resulting, he said, in more productive workers, more output per worker, and companies hiring additional workers to cover everyone else’s three weeks vacation, which would, in turn, lower the unemployment rate. (The U.S. is the only advanced country with no policy guaranteeing paid vacation time.)

Similarly, last month economist Dean Baker argued in the Guardian for shortened workweeks and increased paid vacation time, pointing to countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, where the average worker “puts in 20% fewer hours in a year than the average worker” in the U.S., adding that Germany’s unemployment rate has dropped because it “encourages firms to reduce work hours rather than lay off workers.”