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September 29, 2003

Do You Know...

Not only is Jason Mitchell, Astron's Statistical Analyst, a May baby...he's a Mother's Day baby, too! May 13, 2007 will be next same-day celebration honoring Jason and his mom.

Alternative Work Schedules - What's Their ROI?

Organizations have a buffet of alternative work schedules to choose from, all designed as optional benefits to aid employees in the work / life balancing act and improve retention and recruitment in the process.

The most common types are:

Flextime: Employees work the customary eight hours per day, but with options as to when they may arrive and depart. Many such policies indicate core business hours (i.e. 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.) during which all employees must be present.
Compressed Workweek: According to a study commissioned by the Center for a New American Dream, half of American workers would give up a day's pay for a day off. With a compressed workweek, they don't have to. This schedule represents the natural extension of flextime; employees work forty hours per week in fewer days.
- Most common is the 4/10 schedule, whereby employees work four ten-hour days each week.
- In the 9/80 schedule, employees regularly work nine-hour days, and take every other Friday off. A variant allows half-days each Friday.
Job Sharing: A single job's responsibilities and benefits are split between two employees. Communication between the two is crucial, as is willingness to work part-time and in collaboration.
Telecommuting: For employees whose jobs require neither direct contact with customers / coworkers nor frequent access to office materials or records, telecommuting allows working from home during part or all of the week. Email has made this a workable option for trusted employees. Communication regarding work assignments and performance is critical.

Alternative schedules may be implemented on a seasonal basis. For instance, one New York City publishing house has instituted a 9/80 half-day schedule during the summer, giving its employees a break on Friday afternoons.

Coordinating a compressed workweek is, of course, far easier for exempt employees, whose pay is not tied to hours worked. If you are considering a compressed workweek for nonexempt employees, be sure to take state and federal wage laws into account. A 4/10 schedule may not be feasible for hourly employees in California, where overtime begins each day after eight hours of work, as it would require paying eight hours of overtime each week for a forty-hour schedule. A 9/80 schedule could be doubly problematic in a state with similar legislation.

In order to determine which of these schedules will work in your organization, consider the issues your employees face. Flextime can help employees schedule childcare and education; a compressed workweek can relieve the stress, tolls, and parking fees symptomatic of a daily commute.

One common concern that may hold up the implementation of such schedules is their profitability. Consider the cost of problems resulting from an inequitable work/life balance: mounting stress, burnout, reduced productivity, and termination. Treat alternative work schedules as a way to combat turnover.

As alternative schedules can be implemented with a minimum of monetary investment, this concern is likely to be tied to worries about productivity. There may be an assumption that more days worked equals more work accomplished, but recent statistics show this equation to be spurious: more hours worked don't necessarily mean more work.

For years, American work hours continued to climb while other industrialized nations took more time off. However, since 2000, according to the International Labor Organization, hours worked in the US have declined each year, even as American productivity increased. In 2002, American productivity surpassed that of Europe and Japan, and the average American worker clocked 1,815 hours (down from 1,978 in 2000), for an average of roughly 35 hours per week.

An inverse relationship between hours worked and productivity is no fluke, the study suggests, pointing to Ireland as a vigorously developing economy whose productivity doubled between 1980 and 2002 even as their hours plummeted during the same period from an annual total of 1,900 to 1,668.

In order to prove the worth of alternative work schedules, keep similar tabs on the work being done in your organization. If your hope is that alternative work schedules will lead to less stress and greater enthusiasm among employees, measure their output before and after implementation.

Productivity and customer service will be further aided by a well-developed schedule, one that considers the needs of the organization on each business day, and ensures full coverage.

To prove the link between alternative work schedules and improved retention / recruitment, consider an employee opinion survey on the subject. How much of an impact have the new schedules made on morale? How many new hires were swayed by scheduling when considering a position? The best source of data on these questions is your own workforce.

Assuming an otherwise constant work environment, other indicators that may help you determine if alternative work schedules are helping or hindering your business include:

Use of sick days
Change in rate of absenteeism / tardiness
Customer satisfaction surveys
Departmental profit levels
Work completed more quickly / backlog of work
Size / quality of applicant pool

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ISSN Number 1549-0467