NORWELL, MASS. -- WEARGUARD CORP. receives an average of 20,000 orders a day for uniforms and rugged work clothes, most produced in its big factory here. Yet in the middle of the company's vast telephone center, an order clerk named Jacki Hunt is taking calls from stranded motorists in need of a tow. "Thank you for calling Farmer's Roadside Assistance," she says.

Ms. Hunt is part of an experiment designed to combat the effects of seasonal employment. With outerwear sales in a summer lull, she and dozens of other WearGuard employees are on loan to a Boston-area motor club for the busy driving season. Then, when WearGuard's business peaks this fall and driving declines, she will go back to taking orders for blue jeans and work boots -- joined by clerks across town at the motor club, specially trained for the switch.

WearGuard has a huge stake in fighting employee turnover. Its principal jobs -- telephone clerks, order packers and sewing-machine operators -- aren't exactly the stuff of which lifelong careers are made. But among its full-time staff of 1,200, WearGuard controls annual attrition to 13% through an unusual complement of benefits. Flexible shifts, on-site day care and summer camp for kids preserve the loyalty of working parents -- to say nothing of the inhouse dry cleaner, bank, oil-change center and mammography clinic.

NORWELL, MASS. -- WEARGUARD CORP. receives an average of 20,000 orders a day for uniforms and rugged work clothes, most produced in its big factory here. Yet in the middle of the company's vast telephone center, an order clerk named Jacki Hunt is taking calls from stranded motorists in need of a tow. "Thank you for calling Farmer's Roadside Assistance," she says.

Ms. Hunt is part of an experiment designed to combat the effects of seasonal employment. With outerwear sales in a summer lull, she and dozens of other WearGuard employees are on loan to a Boston-area motor club for the busy driving season. Then, when WearGuard's business peaks this fall and driving declines, she will go back to taking orders for blue jeans and work boots -- joined by clerks across town at the motor club, specially trained for the switch.

It's an ingenious alternative to the conventional solutions for seasonality: layoffs and outsourcing. And while the WearGuard formula may not work everywhere, its origins -- in teamwork, technology and trust -- have universal relevance.

WearGuard has a huge stake in fighting employee turnover. Its principal jobs -- telephone clerks, order packers and sewing-machine operators -- aren't exactly the stuff of which lifelong careers are made. But among its full-time staff of 1,200, WearGuard controls annual attrition to 13% through an unusual complement of benefits. Flexible shifts, on-site day care and summer camp for kids preserve the loyalty of working parents -- to say nothing of the inhouse dry cleaner, bank, oil-change center and mammography clinic.

The big wart in the WearGuard system is temporary workers, more than 400 every fall. Many are between jobs and quit midway through the season when they find permanent work. Training costs soar. Quality declines. Outsourcing the peak work is no panacea; an outside contractor, the company believes, could never match the efficiency and consistency WearGuard had built into its operations over the years.

LISA ZANKMAN inherited this problem when she became vice president of human resources in 1992. For three years the seasonal-employment problem worsened as WearGuard's sales shot through the roof.

The answer began to emerge several months ago from Ms. Zankman's attack on a different problem. On the production floor and in the telephone call centers, self-directed teams abounded. Yet she judged middle management to be estranged from the participatory culture of the company. As an exercise in fostering collaboration, she put seven vice presidents (including herself) in charge of cross-functional teams to attack special problems.

Ms. Zankman's own team was devoted to the intractable issue of seasonal employees. An accounting manager, a call-center manager, a manufacturing chief and others came together. The brainstorming began. More flexible flex time? Retention bonuses? Changing the hiring profile? Outsourcing?

Hey, what about sharing workers with another company? "Wouldn't it be great," Ms. Zankman asked, "if we could find a company with a different peak season?"

As it happened, another team member said she already had. Barbara Piepenbrink, who directs WearGuard's customer service, served on the board of a local trade association with Dea Harrington, who runs operations for an outfit called Cross Country Motor Club. Cross Country works for auto makers and insurance companies fielding distress calls from car owners with towing coverage. Cross Country's seasonality, with peaks in the summer vacation months and the winter fender-bender season, was practically a mirror image of WearGuard's.

"We have this kind of wacky idea," Ms. Zankman told WearGuard's top management.

SOON, OFFICIALS were poring over staffing projections to see if lending workers was practical. This was different from outsourcing. The two companies were proposing to cast their lots together. It did not hurt that WearGuard's Ms. Piepenbrink and Cross Country's Ms. Harrington were pals who knew the culture of each other's company. "We're talking about trusting each other with our customer base," Cross Country's Ms. Harrington says.

Initially the companies considered driving employees from one workplace to the other. But along the 25-mile stretch between locations lay the horror of the Big Dig, a decade-long project to put Boston's main roadways underground. Fortunately, a few thousand dollars worth of telephone switches could accomplish what a highway could not. "We can send calls back and forth instead of people," Ms. Zankman said.

Balancing the costs was another issue. Wages and benefit rates were close but not identical, and WearGuard was likely to need more help from Cross Country than vice versa. In the end the companies agreed to bill one another for the salary and benefits of each employee on loan.

The new arrangement began as a pilot project in March, after 50 WearGuard employees had been trained by Cross Country and linked to its computer system. Both sides have declared the test a success. This fall, as the driving season declines, Cross Country employees will be trained to take phone orders for WearGuard.

Ms. Zankman is now looking for a Boston-area company with which to share her seasonal machine operators, but this time, technology is little help. "You can't do that electronically," she concedes.