There was never a question of whether Sally Wineman would come back.

When she had her first child, she had only been with Bellevue-based Gallagher Benefit Services of Washington for a year-and-a-half. Then her second child came right after, so she took maternity leave for an entire year.

That was 15 years ago and now she’s in a top-level position at her company.

“I’m a good example of loyalty to an organization,” said Wineman, corporate counsel with Gallagher, an employee benefits consultant firm that works with employers to help them develop their employee benefits programs.

Wineman, 45, also exemplifies a trend that many employers are discovering: female baby boomers in their mid-40s to 50s are becoming the most coveted and valuable worker in the United States workforce.

“If you look at the workforce, we’re seeing that the landscape has really changed and we’re heading in to a shortage of available employees,” said Nita Petry, 51, Gallagher president who has researched data from multiple surveys, including the Met-Life report that looks at workforce trends.

As the aging workforce exits in the next few years, employees will be looking to fill the talent pool and (there will be a) shortage of skilled workers, Petry said.

“When you look at who will be left and who will be valuable to an employer, then what is identified is more women working in the workforce, more women re-entering – empty nesters – and women choosing to stay in the workforce longer because they need second incomes,” she noted.

Women baby boomers make up a large population within the workforce, they’re trained and they’re ready to take on leadership roles, Petry said.

“They bring that responsibility of taking care of the family into the work place and what you have is a very responsible, conscientious employee that equates to loyalty, which is very hard to get in the workforce,” said Petry, who supervises her office’s 100 consulting and management staff, 80 percent of whom are women. “So what you get from an employer’s perspective is something pretty special.”

In addition, many female baby boomers have the experience of managing the entire global health, welfare and budgets of their own families and now-grown children, which carries over to their careers, she added.

Many are looking for the “secret sauce” of their careers: reward, leadership, volunteerism and challenges in their career, as well as life balance and flexibility, she said.

Though the company has not intentionally targeted the baby boomer demographic, Gallagher does leverage women’s skills and growth needs and that has attracted many women to the Bellevue office, Petry said.

Wineman left her private practice to come to Gallagher because her work/life balance was not being met.

“I had my babies and the company has accommodated my need for flexibility all the way up through their years and they are now teenagers,” Wineman said. “I’m flexing for different kinds of reasons than I used to; it’s not to get them off the bus, it’s to make sure they’re staying out of trouble now.”

Nora Hoisington, 46, went from being a receptionist with a brokerage firm 14 years ago to Gallagher’s leading consultant.

The company has people in management that, whether they are in the midst of families or taking care of their elder parents, there are options for them to work from home, Hoisington said.

“They’re able to do that and still maintain a full-time job, flexible work hours, which I think is the biggest thing a female my age wants,” she noted.

Hoisington was able to work all the way through raising her twin girls, who are now age 20.

In addition, Gallagher offers many volunteer opportunities, including a day off with pay for events such as Eastside Domestic Violence Program wine procurements.

“We look different and there are a lot of women in senior and tenured roles here,” Petry said of Gallagher, noting that many of these positions are held by the baby boomer demographic.

However, the company itself, which has 8,000 employees internationally, still has a ways to go to target the woman baby boomer, Petry noted. At a recent awards conference in Chicago, Gallagher President James Durkin noticed the absence of the demographic and asked the company what they could do to change that.

“It’s interesting that they do see this as something that they haven’t tapped into and as a big opportunity,” she said.

Carrie Wood can be reached at cwood@reporternewspapers.com or 425-453-4290.