(FORTUNE Magazine) – IF ONLY good-guy companies finished first. Work at Tandem Computers probably surpassed most people's idea of a dream job. At its printed circuitboard assembly plant in Watsonville, California, there were free-flowing beer parties on Fridays, a swimming pool, and ergonomically designed chairs for every weary back. Best of all was the benevolent CEO, James ''Just call me Jimmy'' Treybig. When employees complained that working long hours over the Christmas holidays to meet year-end deadlines cut into their family time, the big-hearted Texan responded, ''I'll see what I can do.'' What Treybig should have done for these folks, he now realizes, was insist they radically improve productivity. Instead, he sent them home to their eggnog and outsourced the work. To his surprise, he saved a considerable amount of money. Two years ago Treybig sold the Watsonville plant to SCI Systems, which kept on -- at lower pay -- just two-thirds of the 270 people Tandem once employed. Says Treybig: ''You can't bend so far to protect peoples' lifestyle that you cost them their jobs.'' The man who once described Tandem as a ''socialist'' company has straightened up. Reminded of FORTUNE's 1987 story, How Jimmy Treybig Turned Tough, his response was, ''Yes, but not tough enough.'' Last year, when Tandem's losses hit $500 million, he began the truly tough process of trimming salaries by 5% and eliminating 1,800 out of nearly 11,000 jobs. He also cut back on his famed Friday beer busts. Quarterly get-togethers like the one pictured below welcome family but emphasize business, in this case Tandem's new Himalaya line of computers. Any boss worth his options knows that productivity depends as much on satisfied workers as smart processes. So out of enlightened self-interest, most companies have devised policies that give people some slack in juggling work and family commitments. But as Treybig discovered, paternalism can fail employers. It can also fall short for employees. At many companies, people worry they will jeopardize their careers if they take advantage of perks like job sharing and lengthy maternity leaves. Says Sheila Madden, Tandem's manager of corporate staffing: ''There is a natural tension between family goals and corporate goals.'' Is the tension resolvable? Can a company be both competitive and caring? As employers bolt from lifetime commitments to employees and seek to renegotiate that contract, they're sending mixed messages. While waving the family- friendly banner with one hand, they are tossing out the chicken soup with the other. And the soup is disappearing just when the labor force could use more of it. Six million single mothers leave their youngsters and go to work today, double the figure of 20 years ago. Over roughly the same period, the number of working couples with children under 18 has risen nearly 60%, to more than 14 million families; as an added stress, some of these families also care for elderly parents. Work/Family Directions in Boston, which sets up child and elder care support systems for companies, found that about 15% of employees in large companies have an aging or infirm dependent. If these overextended workers feel abandoned, their employers could justifiably say the same. A Roper poll of 1,027 women and men for Working Woman magazine in November found that ambition isn't what it used to be. Nearly 80% defined success as having a happy family life or relationship. Dead - last among seven choices, says Roper's Nick Tortorello, ''were the very things people prized in the Eighties: money, career, and power.'' Says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, director of the Center for Leadership and Career Studies at Emory University in Atlanta: ''The edge has come off baby-boomers. They're trying to recapture lost areas of their life.'' Bosses can't necessarily extract the extra mile, but they can -- and do -- demand extra time. Harvard economics lecturer Juliet Schor, author of The Overworked American, says that people today work more than they did 25 years ago -- the equivalent, in fact, of a 13th month each year. In a survey of 10,000 managers and professionals at major corporations, Work/Family Directions found that working mothers averaged 44 hours a week on the job and 31 on family responsibilities; fathers put in three more hours at the office but logged just half as much time as their wives on child care and household chores. When FORTUNE polled over 200 CEOs, close to 80% said they will have to push their people harder than ever before to compete in the Nineties. That's particularly true at downsized companies, where fewer people do just as much work. After announcing layoffs at Sprint's benefit-laden long-distance division last August, President Ronald LeMay exhorted employees ''to be introspective about the adequacy of your commitment . . . 40-hour workweeks are a relic of the past.'' Even as they squeeze, employers remain well intentioned. Rare is the midsize to large company that doesn't offer -- at least on glossy paper -- some sort of child care assistance and flexible scheduling like part-time, telecommuting (working off-site or from home), compressed workweeks (40 hours in four days), or flextime (the freedom to start an eight-hour day slightly early or late). A survey of 1,034 U.S. businesses by the employee benefits consulting firm Hewitt Associates found that 78% offer child care support and referral programs; 60%, some kind of flexible scheduling; 20%, elder care programs; and 9%, on-site child care. But good luck finding companies where use of these programs is either widespread or wholeheartedly embraced by management. A survey of employees at 80 major companies by Work/Family Directions showed that fewer than 2% of eligible employees take advantage of job sharing, telecommuting, and part-time work options. Though virtually all the companies say they allow part-time work, only 51% have formal policies, and just 1.7% of employees at those ! companies take advantage of the option. Flextime is the most popular benefit: About a quarter of the companies offer it, and 24% of those eligible seize the opportunity. ''There are penalties for using these policies,'' says Dana Friedman, co-president of Families & Work Institute in New York City, another group lobbying for a workplace with as much give as get. ''You lose your seniority, and co-workers resent the hell out of you.'' A senior tax accountant at Ernst & Young says she felt a chill from some colleagues when she went part-time after her son was born. ''People resented me for going home after work instead of heading out for a few drinks the way I used to,'' she says. And a former vice president at Bankers Trust, now a full- time mother, admits she used to have misgivings about working mothers. ''I feel guilty saying this,'' she says, ''but before I had children I resented women who were on the phone with their babysitters, husbands, and pediatricians.'' Employees often pay a price for taking what's offered them even though the companies, paradoxically, appear to reap some benefits. WMX Technologies in Oak Brook, Illinois, sponsors support groups for parents that address everything from discipline to schoolwork. The company estimates the counseling saves it $1,600 a year per participant by lowering absentee and turnover rates and the use of medical benefits. Corning says its full plate of family- friendly programs has cut turnover in half since 1986. And Aetna estimates its family-leave policy saves it roughly $2 million a year in replacement costs. Perhaps the biggest payoff for companies that purport to make life easier for their employees is the public relations bonus. Witness the clamor to make Working Mother's annual list of what it says are the 100 best companies to work for in the U.S. Last year more than 1,000 companies submitted their family-friendly credentials for consideration, twice the number that applied in 1992. Having a nice-guy reputation helps with recruiting, and surveys show that people will even sacrifice higher pay for more flexibility in their lives. But not everyone believes the companies on Working Mother's list deserve their gold stars. Just ask the long-distance operators and customer service representatives at Sprint, which appeared on the 1992 roster. Although people at headquarters can use all sorts of flexible policies, long-distance operators say they are put on warning if they arrive even 15 minutes late to ! work. Says Ronnie Brown, 28, a single mother who works in Sprint's customer service office in Dallas: ''When we saw that Sprint made the list, we said, 'Do we work for a different company, or what?' There's a double standard here.'' Sprint doesn't debate that charge. Certain work, it says, simply doesn't lend itself to flexible hours. ''We offer very generous family benefits at Sprint,'' says corporate employee relations manager Anne Kinney. ''But flextime for operators isn't an option. We have to run a business.'' Working Mother dropped Sprint from its 1993 list. Says deputy editor Betty Holcomb: ''It became clear to us that Sprint wasn't following through the way it should have.'' EVEN WHEN top management broadly defines its benefits and makes them available across the board, lieutenants down the line may not feel obliged to dispense the largess. ''I call it supervisor sabotage,'' says Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild. ''Senior managers say 'If I worked long hours with children, so can you.' '' Corning, purported to be a saint among sensitive employers, has found practicing its policies considerably harder than printing them up. Says Wendy Luce, who used to manage one of the company's ceramics plants: ''Management tends to be very traditional. They still want line managers in the plant from 7 A.M. to 10 P.M.'' Supervisors, in turn, expect the same from their troops. ''Just because we have the policies doesn't mean everyone has bought into them,'' says Sherry Mosley, manager of Corning's work/life balance department. Diehard supporters of family-friendly policies can unwittingly sabotage the works. What's an ambitious employee to think if the boss regularly works through the dinner hour? Catalyst, which tries to further women's progress in the workplace, will honor the Bank of Montreal later this month for its commitment to flexible policies and the advancement of women. Yet bank president Tony Comper regularly works 65 to 70 hours a week. Go figure how employees -- who feel subtle pressure to work equally hard -- find time to tuck in their kids, much less rear them. Truth be told: Face time counts. Putting in long hours, even if you're twiddling your thumbs, is still viewed by many bosses as a sign of loyalty. Marcia Kropf, a vice president of Catalyst, conducted focus groups with up to 200 people at a dozen major companies. ''We'd hear over and over,'' she says, ''that men who take off in the afternoon from three to four-thirty to play ) squash but stay at their desks until seven are seen as more committed than women who work nonstop but leave at five.'' Does anyone out there walk the talk? Morrison & Foerster, the second-largest law firm in San Francisco, with some 550 attorneys, comes close. Other companies might well benefit from studying the firm, a model of partnership, not paternalism. MoFo, as employees call it, embraces more than women and children in its family-friendliness. When partner Arturo Gonzalez, 33, son of a railroad laborer, was a summer associate at the firm after his second year at Harvard law school, his older brother was arrested and convicted after four trials of murdering his ex-wife's lover. ''A partner here helped me work on the case,'' says Gonzalez. After joining the firm, he defended his brother pro bono on company time. The brother served 7 1/2 years in jail and is now free. Mothers also get a break at MoFo. Women can remain on the partnership track even if they work part time. The hitch is this, says MoFo partner and former part-timer Rochelle Alpert: ''Litigation is not a Monday, Wednesday, Friday business. When the matter required it, I put in grueling hours.'' Such give and take pervades the partnership. ''We grew up together in this firm, and we're willing to cover for each other when it's necessary,'' says MoFo Chairman Peter Pfister. ''That's far more important than any policies on paper.'' While the atmosphere is nurturing, the firm's success depends on each attorney's willingness to pull his or her weight. In other words, a company can support its employees' needs. But only if the work gets done. And only if most people, most of the time, don't ask for chicken soup.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: FORTUNE CHART/SOURCE: U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS CAPTION: Of all married couples with children under 18, here is the percentage in which both spouses work. Of all mothers with children under 6, here is the percentage who work outside the home.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: FORTUNE CHART/SOURCE: WORK/FAMILY DIRECTIONS CAPTION: Percent of eligible employees who use flexible work arrangements