From...

November 19, 1998
Web posted at: 11:30 AM EST

by Julia King

(IDG) -- Stuck next to whiny Aunt Edna at Thanksgiving dinner? Count your blessings.

You could be among the legions of information technology workers stuck at the office this year testing newly implemented year 2000 software or trying to beat other year-end project deadlines.

Gary Peteritas, an SAP project manager at Hoechst Marion Roussel Inc. in Kansas City, Mo., said he expects he will be eating breakfast, lunch and dinner with IT colleagues during Thanksgiving weekend and at Christmastime. About 75 people from the pharmaceutical company's 200-person SAP project will be joining him on the job.

"We have a 1/1/99 go-live date, so we'll definitely be working over the holidays," Peteritas said.

So will Steve Frick, a systems analyst at Delfield Co., an equipment manufacturer in Mount Pleasant, Mich., which has less than seven weeks left to convert to a newer, year 2000-compliant version of manufacturing software.

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"It's a drag," Frick said of the revved-up project schedule and extra work. "A lot is being crammed in due to the company's goal of finishing as much as possible in 1998. It's too much, too fast, unreasonable and excessive."

To help soften the sting and boost worker morale during the crunch, some companies are offering incentives that range from full-course holiday meals to extra pay and additional time off after the first of the year.

At Automatic Data Processing Corp. in Roseland, N.J., IT workers collect an extra $100 each month for wearing a beeper around the clock.

"The extra money's just for carrying the beeper, whether they get called or not," said Dan Gamarello, vice president of product development at the payroll processing company.

Workers also can order meals, at company expense, from dozens of area restaurants.

"I don't expect them to bring in a bottle of Dom Perignon [champagne], but they don't want Burger King night after night, either," Gamarello said.

Hoechst plans to serve its IT workers three meals per day. The company also has increased from five to 10 the number of vacation days IT workers can carry over to next year. If workers have accrued more than 10 days, Hoechst will pay them for the additional days.

Meanwhile, Orlando Regional Health Care System is taking the opposite approach.

"We're giving our people the holidays off this year because chances are they won't be able to have any time off next year," said Rick Ridge, year 2000 project director at the company in Orlando, Fla.

Nabisco Inc. in East Hanover, N.J., is giving IT workers the vacation days they request this year. But that's because the company has put a moratorium on IT worker vacations between mid-December 1999 through mid-January 2000.

"We're expecting no one to be on vacation for those four weeks, but we wanted to make sure not to do that two years in a row," said Tony Del Duca, vice president of information services.

Wawa Inc. IT manager Dave Kelble said he managed to skirt the vacation issue up front by buying separate hardware on which to test remediated year 2000 software code. That way, IT workers at the Wawa, Pa.-based company wouldn't have to wait until users were out of the office during weekends and holidays to test the systems.

"When we started this project, I remember people talking about how many weekends there were left to solve the problem. I figured, Let's just buy the [extra test] systems now, and we can always put them into production somewhere later on," Kelble recalled.

But when IT workers do come in to work during the holidays, employers "need to address the family issue," said Gerard Walsh, a vice president at Special Recognition Inc., a Whitehouse Station, N.J., firm that helps companies set up IT retention plans.

For one client, Walsh said his company is putting together a "complete outsourced Thanksgiving dinner" for IT workers who will be expected to show up the day after the holiday.

"The company is providing the meal on Thursday in workers' homes, but the staff is coming in on Friday," he said.

At other firms, Walsh said, workers are being offered a bonus, an electronic device or some other gift in lieu of carrying over more vacation days than is typical under company policies. After all, "you don't want someone racking up eight weeks of vacation that they'll want to take in 1999," he said.

Senior editor Barb Cole-Golmolski contributed to this story.