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September 13th, 2007
Why Flex Work Makes Sense
The whole notion of flexible work arrangements—letting employees work where they want and how they want—is a smart idea that is finally starting to take hold. We’ve written about it several times here at Workforce Management, and earlier this year we gave our 2007 Optimas Award for Innovation to Best Buy for a program developed with CultureRx that drives better business results by getting rid of the traditional rules of work and letting employees decide how they can best get their job done.
Flex work doesn’t work for everyone. Some businesses are based around people performing a service or doing a job at a specific time in a specific place. But as IBM has shown, applying the “on-demand” principle to the way people work can have some big advantages for the company as well as the worker.
I found myself thinking about the growth of flex work this week when I read a USA Today story that focused on this startling trend—commutes are starting earlier and 1 in 8 workers now leave for work by 6 a.m. Back in 2000, the ratio was 1 in 9 workers leaving for work by 6 a.m. That doesn’t sound like much of a change until you consider that it means that some 2.7 million additional workers—15 million overall, about 10 percent of America’s workforce—feel they need to leave before 6 in the morning to beat the rush on the roads.
“This ‘commuting creep’ is changing the lives of tens of millions of Americans,” the story says. “It affects everything from the breakfast-food industry to television viewership trends, from traffic-signal timing to newspaper delivery times, from carpooling patterns to personal fitness routines. Increasingly early commutes also are altering workers’ relationships with their families.”
It’s clear to me that this pattern is only going to continue, After all, I am one of the 2.7 million additional workers who now leave for work before 6 a.m. in order to beat traffic—a much more common pattern out here in the Far West where getting into the office earlier has the added benefit of making it easier to get hold of people on the East Coast.
Has your business gone to a flexible work schedule? Are you considering it? If you’re not, you should, because it has the potential to make your workforce much more productive, efficient and happy. It’s an idea whose time has come.
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Thanks for championing flex work. It’s made all the difference in the world to me and my coworkers. It seems so obvious…
Another reason to go to work early is to be home by the time children come home from school. As my new middle schooler adjusts, I’m very happy to be able to be there when he comes in.
Posted by: A. Cottingham | September 18th, 2007 at 5:37 am
I am trying to sell our organization on moving away from the usual standard office biz hrs of 8-4:30 p.m. Particularly for our salaried staff at various manufacturing sites. What are some arguments I can use to convince mgment — aside from the points mentioned in the ariticle that than more and more employees need to get up earlier to, not beat traffic, but get in on time, and the fact that there would be less emissions from vehicles contributing to cleaner environment; less stress for employees and less stress on family life.
Posted by: Liana Zuidwyk | September 18th, 2007 at 9:01 am
I have long been a champion for flex work. It certainly doesn’t always work, at least for 100% of the employees, but it seems logical. Providing flexible options for work decreases employee stress, decreases sick leave and other medical costs, and increases productivity. Also flex work permits an organization to increase their “customer service” coverage by increasing the span of employee presence. The traditional 8-5 M-F workweek (representing only about 27% of the full 7-day week) does not ideally serve customers (internal or external) in a world that is increasingly 24/7 driven. Flex time should be “reasonably” interpreted to include flex hours, flex workdays/weekends, flex holidays, flex leave, etc. Flex work has to be implemented carefully and scheduled properly to ensure proper employee management, but it should pay dividends!
Posted by: Marcus Horton | September 18th, 2007 at 10:52 am
Flex-time works particularly well to keep valuable employees as part of your work force as opposed to having them retire.
Many employers are now offering flexible work assignments and as a result retiring employees decide to stay on for months and even years after scheduled retirement.
This is a win win for both employee and employer. Sites like www.RetiredBrains.com and www.retirementjobs.com have searchable data bases of retirees so employers can seek out employees with the skills they need. The State of California in anticipation of substantial numbers of retiring state employees has just instituted their own data base of retiring state workers putting together those retirees who wish to continue working in some capacity with departments that need skilled and experienced workers.
Posted by: Art Koff | September 19th, 2007 at 7:36 am