In 1995, Tess Coody got a call from a former coworker with
exciting  news. He was starting a marketing and communications
firm and wanted  Tess to be his first hire. Then working at a PR
agency, Tess was thrilled  and set up a time to meet him a few
weeks later. But in between that  phone call and the subsequent
meeting, Tess received more breathtaking  news: She was pregnant
with her first child.

Suddenly, becoming Employee No. 1 at her colleague's start-up 
seemed doubtful. Getting the business off the ground would mean
long  stretches of nonstop work. And in nine months' time,
she'd  have to take maternity leave. Would her former coworker
really want to  bring a pregnant woman on board? When Tess spilled
the beans to her potential  new boss, Frank Guerra, she recalls,
"I gave him every opportunity  to say 'Good  luck. When you
get past that, call us.' "

But Frank, a father  of four, had an altogether different
reaction. Sitting on a milk crate  in what was to become his
office, he peppered Tess with questions about her pregnancy: How was
she feeling? When was she due? Did she want a  boy or a girl? And
then the question that floored Tess: When could she  start?

A decade later, Guerra DeBerry Coody, based in San Antonio, TX, 
is a profitable small business with 52 full-time employees who've 
orchestrated public relations and advertising projects for such
clients  as Procter & Gamble and Citigroup. Along the way, the
agency hasn't lost its family-friendly  edge. More than 70 percent
of its workers today are parents, many with  young children.
Meetings are scheduled around breastfeeding times, and  the
standing office joke is that, instead of an employee manual,
managers  give out copies of the book What to Expect When You're Expecting.

Working moms have their eye on small businesses like Guerra DeBerry
Coody. In recent years, you've sent us a steady stream of letters
about  working at small companies, from pitching your supervisor
as the most  family-friendly boss to asking us about benefits you
can reasonably expect  when your workplace has a staff of 50, not
50,000. There's good  reason to want to know. Roughly 23 million
small businesses with fewer  than 500 employees dot the United
States, and 50 percent of working moms  are in companies with
fewer than 250 staffers. Women-owned businesses are booming. You may
start a small company of your own one day.

Granted, small businesses face their share of hurdles when trying
to  be family-friendly. They often lack the budgets, critical mass
and HR  manpower to pursue some of the big-ticket perks offered by
corporate  America. But as you'll read here, a little creativity
can go a  long way in making a company a better place for women
and mothers. We've  picked some of your most frequently asked
questions about small companies  and answered them, using
real-life employers as examples for others to  emulate. If you
work for a corporation, the lessons here are also valuable.  After
all, if a small firm can do wonders for its working mothers,
certainly  a large business should be able to follow suit!

Many moms want to do meaningful work and get some family-friendly
perks,  like paid maternity leave. Can a small company deliver on
both?

Fortunately, it is possible to have the best of both worlds. In
recent  years, small companies such as apparel maker Patagonia,
health-care staffing  firm Cross Country TravCorps and the
insurance provider Noel Group have  earned a spot on Working
Mother's 100 Best list—in part because  they offer some form of
paid maternity leave.

Companies that can't  afford paid leave and other pricey benefits
find innovative ways to get  around their financial limitations.
New Age Transportation, a logistics  provider in Lake Zurich, IL,
can't  swing paid maternity leave for its 48 employees, but CEO
Carolyn Gable  proposed an appealing alternative: Bring your baby
to work. Newborns  up to 12 weeks old are welcome; on any given
day, you might see one sleeping  in a bassinet next to his
mother's desk. Because of the policy,  Gable says, most moms
return to work after four weeks, content that they  can continue
to nurse and care for their children. Another big plus:  Moms can
phase back to work on a part-time schedule.

Low-cost solutions  aren't limited to maternity leave. Campbell
& Co.,  a marketing agency in Dearborn, MI, has 130 employees,
about 70 percent  of whom are parents. It strives to help its
staff manage work and family  issues, but, admits David Bruce,
vice president of human resources, "we  don't have a limitless
budget." In other words, forget three-month  paid sabbaticals and
an on-site gourmet cafeteria. But with a little  brainstorming,
the agency came up with an inexpensive but valuable perk  for
employees: monthly lunch-and-learn seminars with experts on
various  work/life topics. An investment advisor from the firm
that manages Campbell's  retirement plan gave a talk on saving for
college, and a doctor from  a local hospital led a discussion on
stress management. Campbell picked  up the tab for the catered
lunches. The speakers came for free.

My friends who work for small social-service and health-care
agencies  complain that their bosses are very resistant to
flexible scheduling.  What's your take?

Ask a small-business owner if he allows "flexible  work
arrangements" and  he might look puzzled. But ask the same person
if he lets parents work  from home when their child is sick and he
may well say, "Of course!" While  corporate America promotes
formal flex policies like compressed workweeks  and job-shares,
small companies typically keep things more informal.  Recently,
the Families and Work Institute held a series of forums with 
business owners regarding flexibility in their workplaces. One by
one,  the owners shared their experiences, such as letting a
secretary telecommute  so she could care for her autistic child.
Rarely did they mention the  words "family-friendly" or
"flextime." "They  were just figuring out how to make work work,"
says Ellen Galinsky, president of the institute.

Anne Summers, executive director of the Brico  Fund, a nonprofit
foundation in Milwaukee with six employees, knows the  value of
informal flexibility firsthand. Last fall, she received an urgent 
call at work from the principal of her daughter's elementary
school.  Anne's 9-year-old daughter  was hysterical because
she had been disqualified from a jump-roping contest.  Her
daughter needed immediate attention, the principal told Anne—and 
only a big hug from Mom would make things better. Anne explained
the  playground drama to her boss and asked to leave work early.
No problem,  her manager replied. "The fact that I said it was
important was  enough for my boss," Anne says. "To me, that
flexibility  makes you a more loyal employee—you just give back in
spades."

When it comes to child care, I figure there's no chance of
getting  help from my small company. They could never afford it,
could they?

Child-care  assistance can come in many forms—and not all of
them  entail a huge cash outlay. Dependent-care flexible spending
accounts,  for instance, let staffers save for child-care expenses
with pretax dollars  and don't require a financial commitment from
an employer. Roughly  63 percent of businesses with fewer than 100
employees and 75 percent  of companies with less than 500 workers
already offer the benefit, according  to the Society of Human
Resource Management (SHRM).

On-site child care,  of course, tops the wish list of many working
moms, and some small companies  have figured out how to make it a
reality. The secret: Get employees  to pitch in. In 1999, Guerra
DeBerry Coody sectioned off a 600-square-foot  room at its office
and hired a nanny to take care of three babies. Employees  did
their part and raided their closets at home to outfit the room
with  toys and other baby gear. The firm's  initial
investment: $10,000. As its staff grew—and demand for child  care
along with it—the agency hired a full-time child-care director, 
enlarged the center to 2,400 square feet and added an outside play
area.  Parents again chipped in, buying a swing set and donating
other equipment  for the backyard. Today, the child-care center
looks after 12 kids. Employees  pay about $20 a day per child—as
much as 50 percent less than they would spend at a comparable facility
in the area, says Tess.

Guerra DeBerry Coody shells out $150,000 a year to maintain the
center—an operating expense that comes right off the company's bottom
line.  But in the war for talent, notes Tess, stellar benefits
like this can  make a big impact. One of the agency's star
performers decided  to join the firm over its competitors in large
part because of the child-care  center, she says. And once
employees are hired, they tend to stick around:  Annual turnover
at the agency is barely 1 percent. "It's  wonderful to work at a
place where you can open the freezer in the kitchen  and right
next to the Lean Cuisine you'll see plastic bags labeled 'Mommy's 
milk,' " Tess says.

Other small-business employers come to  the rescue when the
delicate balancing act of kids and work goes haywire.  According
to SHRM, 41 percent of employers with fewer than 100 workers  let
their staff bring their kids to work in an emergency, compared to 
16 percent of those with 500 or more workers. Bowman Performance
Consulting,  an educational consulting firm with five employees in
Shawano, WI, instituted  such a policy out of business necessity.
Having an employee miss work  because of an unexpected child-care
conflict can cause the firm to miss  a client's deadline, says
founder Nicole  Bowman. Instead, she tells her staff to bring
their kids to the office  (otherwise known as her basement).
There, the kids can do their homework,  play educational computer
games or earn a few bucks stuffing envelopes,  fetching the mail
or cleaning the office. "It's like a monitored  study hall," she
says.

I'm a woman of color, so a company's commitment to diversity is
important to me. I want an environment where I can thrive. Can I find
this at a small firm?

Unlike in corporate America, you're probably not going to find  a
chief diversity officer roaming the halls of a small business.
What  you will discover is a close-knit culture that often makes
it easier  to recognize and celebrate the diverse backgrounds of
the staff. At Brogan & Partners,  a 55-employee advertising
and marketing firm in Detroit, roughly 20 percent  of the staff
are minorities and 66 percent are women. Last year, the  firm
launched a series of lunchtime seminars to stimulate frank
discussions  about employee differences. At one session, staffers
submitted questions  anonymously on things they wanted to know
about a different race, culture  or lifestyle. At another, they
watched and commented on TV footage of  local business leaders
discussing race and diversity. "I'd  like to take it from everyone
being nice and politically correct to asking  some tough questions
of each other," says Deidre Bounds, an African-American  partner
at Brogan who helps organize the seminars. "That's  how we'll get
to being really comfortable in our own skin." Indeed,  that's the
desire of every woman and mother working today, in companies  of
all shapes—and sizes.