The non-profit Illinois Fatherhood Association (IFA), an organization dedicated to addressing the problem of fatherhood absence, has named Deloitte & Touche's Chicago office Illinois's Father Friendly Company of the Year.

The first annual award honors the company that has made the greatest progress in developing programs aimed at helping working fathers balance their job with the needs of their families. Deloitte & Touche has "clearly become an innovator in father-friendly workplace programming," said Brandon Taylor, director of the IFA. Mr. Taylor commended Deloitte for providing focus groups, parental leave policies, father-specific communication, and innovative programming.

"We are dedicated to helping fathers meet the needs of their families," said Jeff Rohr, managing partner of Deloitte's Midwest cluster.

IFA pointed to many of Deloitte's programs that contributed to the company being selected for the award, including paid parental leave, which is used almost as often as maternity leave, an adoption reimbursement program, gender-neutral and fatherhood themed internal communications, the creation of an in-house fatherhood task force, flexible scheduling, and other innovative approaches regarding this workplace issue.

"Our goal is to maintain not only formal flexible work arrangements, but a culture of flexibility and choice in which our people have the day-to-day flexibility and control over when, where, and how they work in order to meet both personal and professional commitments," said Bob Sobiech, Deloitte's human resource director for the Chicago office.