From declaring meeting-free Fridays to allowing surf breaks so employees can hit the waves and unwind, more companies are encouraging workers to unplug and recharge. The payoff? Loyal, healthy employees who don't burn out.

One day last spring, Lorie Baker walked into her home office just outside Annapolis, MD, and logged on to her computer to catch up on a bit of work. As the mother of twin daughters and a director in the advisory practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers ("I'm a type A person, and I work in a type A company"), she struggles to fit in everything she feels she needs to get done. So she'd often log in to the work system on her days off, stealing whatever moments she could.

On this occasion, as she stared at her computer screen, something unexpected happened. An official-looking pop-up appeared, beginning with this simple declaration: "It's the weekend."
What happened next was nothing short of an aha experience."I actually asked myself, 'What am I doing on my PC? Can't this wait until Monday?'" Lorie recalls. She turned the computer off, gathered her girls—Allison and Amanda, 7—and headed straight for the swing set at the park. "It really was a stark wake-up call that the weekends are so valuable," she says.

An anti-overwork movement is underfoot that feels almost quaintly counter-culture against today's backdrop of our constantly connected lives, where BlackBerrys have become the latest appendage, one out of every five Americans surveyed brought a laptop on vacation, and the demands of a global economy have amped up both responsibilities and expectations. At times, we may feel that success is measured by who can log the most hours and who can be available 24/7. But some enlightened companies—including PricewaterhouseCoopers, the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, S.C. Johnson & Son, Principal Financial Group, Scripps Health, Boston Consulting Group, Patagonia, Ernst & Young and more—are stepping in to help their employees slow down, unplug and unwind.

From pushing for Fridays free from meetings to lining up bicycles outside company headquarters so employees can take a break during the workday to pedal, think and recharge, some of the Working Mother 100 Best Companies have developed innovative ways to buffer their employees from burnout and overwork. They're creating cultures in which having a life and pursuing interests outside of the office are valued and encouraged—even protected. Think of it as a campaign to save the spirit of the weekend and the spirit of valuable employees. The twist: It's the companies that are doing the saving, not the employees. And while such an approach might seem counterintuitive at first glance (here comes that little voice inside all of us that whispers, "If we aren't constantly busy, busy, busy, we will surely fall behind"), these 100 Best Companies are finding that the opposite is true.

"It's a paradox. You think the more people work, the more they'll do, but it's not true. It's how you work," says Edward Hallowell, MD, a psychiatrist who worked as an instructor at Harvard Medical School for more than 20 years and is the author of CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked and About to Snap! "If by work you mean sustained concentration on a task, that's wonderful. If by work you mean sitting at your desk and every thirty seconds dealing with email or IMs or people popping their head in your door, then your productivity will decline."

He cites a study by Basex, a business research firm, that found that 28 percent of workers' time was spent dealing with these kinds of interruptions and then recovering from them, costing the American economy nearly $650 billion a year. "Management is wising up to the fact that working smarter is a whole lot better than working longer," he says.

EMAIL REDUX
We used to believe technology would set us free. And in many ways it has, allowing us to bend the rules of space and time, to communicate instantly from anywhere in the world. We can work wherever, whenever. But with this promise came new, unexpected con-sequences. The deluged in-box. The irrepressible urge to check messages, even while at the beach. The unmistakable sound of tapping late into the night.
 
"At school, one of my daughters made a little book, 'What does my mommy do?' for Mother's Day," says Lorie. "One of the pages was titled, 'What does your mommy do when you go to bed?' She wrote, 'My mommy likes to work on her laptop.'"

Now, some companies are finding ways to help their employees take control of this brave new world, rather than have it take control of them. In Madison, WI, the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics has taken a stand against email overload by creating a policy that encourages employees to first consider whether having a conversation with someone might be better than just hitting the Send button.

"I found people were constantly checking email, when it was actually less time-consuming to pick up the phone or have a face-to-face conversation," says Julie Riddler, director of the Academy, the hospital's corporate university, and main crafter of the email guidelines that were introduced last year.

Right away, people had to unlearn years of unconscious email habits: Knock off the run-on replies. Don't send message after message to people who are out of the office, because that just makes them feel compelled to check in while they're away so they won't be buried when they come back.
On the surface, it might not seem like an earthshaking campaign—a few minutes saved here and there. But over time, it adds up to something quite big, says Julie, mom of two boys, Griffin, 11, and Sasha, 8. "Saving five minutes here, ten minutes there, that's how you end up getting that time back for yourself." And then she offers this example: "My husband and I went away to New Orleans recently for our anniversary on a Thursday afternoon. I think I had only thirty emails when I got back on Tuesday." There is awe in her voice.

A number of 100 Best Companies, from S.C. Johnson & Son to Principal Financial Group and Scripps Health, have pretty much nixed the tradition of Friday meetings for similar reasons. "It used to be Fridays were almost like any other day, packed with meetings," says Victor Buzachero, senior vice president of human resources for Scripps Health in San Diego, CA. "At the end of the day, you're taking home a briefcase full of work. That really kind of says we expect you to work weekends."

Give employees an uninterrupted day to catch up and plan for the coming week and they can head into the weekend without being haunted by all they didn't do. People show up on Monday "refreshed," he says. (The free on-site chair massages Scripps gives its employees each year don't hurt, either.)

SURF'S UP!
It's one thing to put formal policies in place to try to keep employees from being consumed by work. It's another to create a culture that both gives employees enough space to excel at their jobs and encourages them to step away when they need to.

Boston Consulting Group keeps an eye on its employees' workloads by monitoring their hours. In some of the firm's offices, consultants who average more than 55 hours a week over five consecutive weeks land in the "Red Zone," a report distributed to officers, managers and project leaders. The company regularly surveys employees on how their work/life balance is holding up, as well as their job satisfaction. It takes a multipronged approach, says Grant Freeland, head of Boston Consulting Group's Boston office. "You can't just pick this one tool and hope that it will change everything."

Maybe it's easier to be mellow when the Pacific Ocean beckons just blocks away. At the Ventura, CA, headquarters of outdoor clothing, equipment and accessories company Patagonia, a whiteboard above the reception desk notes the day's surf report, and it's not unusual for announcements of particularly good swells to go out over the company loudspeaker. Here the "boardroom" is literally a room for storing surfboards. "The notion of people taking time away from their day to rejuvenate themselves is culturally accepted here," says Shannon Ellis, vice president of human resources, who has a 5-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son.

Not that people don't work hard at Patagonia. "They have a lot of work," says Shannon, who admits to logging on to her Treo some nights after her children have gone to bed. But the company is also conscious of "the tipping point of becoming unproductive," as Shannon puts it, when workload stress threatens to overwhelm good thinking. Employees are "trusted by the organization to get the hospital's corporate university, and main crafter of the email guidelines their jobs done in the manner they need to get done," she says. "If they want to take off two hours to go surfing, why should that be frowned upon? That outlet, that opportunity for the person to go out and recharge, is really important."

Employees aren't just encouraged to clear their heads by surfing. When they walk outside, they're greeted by rows of  cruiser bikes—an open invitation from Patagonia to take a ride and unwind. There are yoga classes on-site, volleyball courts, even jogger strollers so working parents with children enrolled in the on-site day care can go for a run during the day and spend some time with their kids. When the day is done, Patagonia sends a clear message to its employees: Go home. "That's specifically why we shut our day care at five p.m.," says Shannon. "We want to communicate 'You have another life outside of work.'"

GOOD BUSINESS
It helps when the message comes from the top. At tax and accounting firm Ernst & Young, employees receive an annual voicemail message from global chairman and CEO James Turley, stressing how important it is to take vacation and outlining how he plans to spend his  time with his family over the summer. "We feel very strongly that it's important for our employees to know we expect them to have a great career at Ernst & Young, and we also want them to accomplish whatever it is they want in their personal life," says Billie Williamson, director of Ernst & Young's flexibility and gender equity strategy.

For good reason: A 2004 study by the nonprofit Families and Work Institute found that employees who put a higher priority on family than work—or who put an equivalent priority on family and work—are less likely to report feeling overworked than people who place their jobs above all else. Surveys of IBM's global workforce have turned up similar findings when it comes to balance.
"We know from our surveys that employees who tell us they have better balance tend to be more positive about the company. They indicate they are more willing to stay with the company; they tend to be more productive," says Maria Ferris, director of IBM's global workforce diversity programs.

Ultimately, looking out for employees and making sure they're not putting in long hours at work at the expense of everything else in their lives makes good business sense. "It has huge impacts on health insurance, productivity and employee engagement and retention," says Shannon. And she should know: The turnover rate at Patagonia's Ventura headquarters—with its surf breaks and bike rides by the beach—is less than 5 percent a year.

TIME AWAY
Sometimes, getting employees to step away from their desks and make time for themselves requires more direct intervention. Enter the benevolent HR cops. Not taking vacation? At Ernst & Young, "someone comes and talks to you," says Billie. It's one of several 100 Best Companies that make sure employees take the time off they've earned. "They'll ask why you aren't taking vacation. If your workload is too heavy, we start taking that away. We need our employees to be effective professionals, and they clearly need some time away from it all."

And then there's Pricewaterhouse-Coopers, which has gone to great pains to spell out to its employees how to behave when they're not at work, as though gently reintroducing them to a long-forgotten concept. The company's "It's the weekend" pop-up reminder on employee computer screens goes on to tell employees to curb their enthusiasm for sending emails on the weekend: "Firm research has shown that if you send a note, the recipient will feel compelled to respond." If it can wait, "help reduce weekend email overload for both you and your colleagues by working offline in the local replica of your mailbox."

In addition, PwC recently distributed an employee handbook entitled Rest and Relaxation: The Value of Time Off. Among its instructions: "Try not to call the office to discuss business matters [or] check voicemail or email. You are either on vacation or you're at work; you shouldn't try to be in two places at one time." And perhaps most important, "Enjoy your family, friends or solitude."