Workplace flexibility is the modern-day equivalent to a non-toxic relationship; both thrive on growth, quality and personal freedom. Recent trends suggest that flexible work schedules are here to stay. In the wake of COVID-19, a flexible schedule has emerged as one of the most desirable attributes for candidates when choosing a workplace. More and more professionals are demanding flexible work hours, time and locations for a healthy work-life balance. Read on to learn how this will affect your employee scheduling practices.
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Like any evolutionary process, flexible work has become a cornerstone for recruiting the best talent and enhancing organizational productivity. Businesses have started to come to terms with the altered workplace dynamics in the post-pandemic world while relaxing the mandatory confines of office spaces. By offering a flexible employee scheduling policy, you can attract a higher chunk of superior candidates while boosting the satisfaction rates of existing employees. You also attract skilled candidates with external obligations like supplemental employment or childcare, preventing them from committing to fixed working hours.
Tools like video-conferencing, cloud storage and access to solid internet connections have made work arrangements easier to manage. From full-time remote work to job sharing and offering part-time gigs, your flex schedule policy can be a mix of formats that work for your business without hampering overall performance and efficiency.
What is a Flexible Schedule?
It is an alternative to a traditional nine-to-five workday and 40-hour workweek. It allows employees to vary their clock-in and time while working for the required hours daily or weekly. As per the United States Department of Labor, “A flexible work schedule is an alternative to the traditional 9-to-5, 40-hour workweek. It allows employees to vary their arrival and/or departure times.”
The concept, which has existed for quite some time, has sprung into the spotlight again. Flex models vary from company to company — some require their employees to work 40 hours a week with a set number of hours daily, while others have a core time policy for all the teams. Core time means that all employees must be present during the overlapping hours for collaboration or team meetings regardless of their time zones. The Labor Department adds, “Under some policies, employees must work a prescribed number of hours a pay period and be present during a daily core time.”
The following questions can help you decide whether or not implementing a flexible schedule policy will work for you:
- Do longer office hours translate into high productivity or just an attendance hack?
- Does electronic communication meet your daily requirements?
- Is it possible to maintain contact with your field staff without asking them to mark their appearance in the office for meetings or other formalities?
- Do all employees need to be physically present for entire shift durations or only for specific periods?
- When your employees travel for business, do they work from hotels or airports?
- When you encounter an urgent issue over the weekend, can you tackle it from home?
Armed with answers to the above, you can begin to understand the buzz around the flexible schedule concept and why future-savvy companies have started adopting it. According to an Owl Labs report, 80% of full-time employees said they expect work-from-home to continue even after the government lifts COVID-19 restrictions. Workplaces should therefore be prepared to extend flex work options to a majority of their employees.
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Types
Compressed Workweek
A compressed workweek reduces the number of workdays per week with an unequal distribution of hours on working days. For example, a company can offer a four-day workweek to its employees with 10-hour shifts, making room for an extra day off. Or you can compress two weeks of work into nine working days, allowing for two additional non-working days per month.
This arrangement offers employees additional personal time and saves on commuting time and expenses.
Flextime
Flextime lets employees customize their operational hours daily as per their productivity levels. Some members find mornings to be more productive, while others are comfortable working at night. Employees also have the luxury to take longer meal breaks rather than sticking to rigid break allowances.
Freedom to customize working hours prevents burnout as employees can choose to work when they are well-rested. This format can boost individual outputs.
Alternate Schedule
How do you employ professionals who are unavailable for regular shifts? The answer lies in devising alternate schedules that differ from a traditional Monday to Friday workweek. Alternate schedules allow employees to take up second shifts, night shifts or work weekends while freeing up their day to accomplish non-obligatory tasks.
Flexplace
Flexplace allows employees to work predetermined schedules from home or any other location (other than the office). You can choose to offer this arrangement for a set number of days (daily or monthly) and gradually extend it full-time. It includes the following types:
- Telecommuting: Telework is a format where employees use computers and other communication devices to overcome time and place limitations.
- Hoteling: Instead of working from a permanent workplace, employees can reserve coworking spaces to accomplish their tasks. The arrangement reduces dependence on conventional office spaces and reduces employer overheads.
- Snowbird Programs: Snowbird programs allow employees to work from warm regions during winters. This practice broadens the candidate pool irrespective of age constraints.
Remote Work
Remote work allows employees to perform their jobs away from the office premises permanently or for a temporary period. When COVID-19 wreaked havoc last year, remote work made it possible for organizations to continue their operations with minimal disruptions. As per the 2021 State of Remote Work report, a staggering 94% of the respondents stated that they would want to continue working remotely for some time for the rest of their careers, even though the pandemic pushed them into it.
This model offers employees greater flexibility to live and work from anywhere across the globe. Since the employee’s location is insignificant, you can scout for talent worldwide. You can make the format successful by implementing video conferencing and effective communication channels with remote teams.
According to the Buffer report, the most significant benefit of remote work is the flexibility it provides, followed by the option to work from any location. While 32% of the respondents chose flexibility as the most considerable advantage of remote work, 25% voted favorably for freedom to work from anywhere.
Job Sharing
Job sharing is a model to accomplish tasks in the shortest possible time. You can equally distribute a full-time job between multiple part-time workers. This way, every employee can work a part of the workweek while others work the rest.
Work sharing covers you during absenteeism and crucial periods. You can reassign the job among the employees familiar with the tasks rather than bringing a fresh member and starting from scratch. However, you need to ensure that the work is distributed equally among those involved.
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Benefits
Letting employees take ownership of their time while choosing when and where they want to work offers numerous benefits to your company. Below are some benefits of adopting a flexible schedule policy:
Broad Talent Pool
Flexibility as a practice gives you access to a broader talent pool spread across different parts of the world. You can appoint skilled individuals from anywhere while growing into a diverse and inclusive workforce. It also eliminates discrimination as professionals from diverse backgrounds can work for the same online company.
Flexible work schedules appeal to the professionals who don’t want to commit to rigid working hours, live far away from your office, have outside work commitments like childcare, work second jobs or care for sick family members. An evolving flexible schedule policy has made equal opportunity a reality.
Transparency
A flexible schedule policy works well in a transparent digital ecosystem with employee monitoring tools. Online tools help you monitor employee productivity, attendance and work hours accurately. Regular employee tracking also reduces absenteeism and boosts productivity.
Increased Productivity
Once you adopt a flexible work schedule policy to foster employee-driven work culture, you will witness an increase in employee engagement. A happy and motivated workforce can help you scale greater heights with ease.
Employee productivity improves when they don’t have to battle rush-hour traffic or work during less efficient hours. A flexible schedule allows employees to be more dedicated and focused during work hours. Additionally, having a distributed workforce ensures that your company operations continue during emergencies like a pandemic or extreme weather conditions.
Employee Retention
Your employee retention rate will be higher as flexible work schedules favor employees heavily. The lesser the discontent with company policies, the longer you can retain your talented employees. Part-time shifts also offer greater flexibility, reducing employee discontent.
Cost-Effective
A flexible work schedule requires work outside the office so you can save on office supplies, rent and other utilities. You can opt for a group health insurance plan for your work-from-home employees while avoiding expensive individual insurance plans.
Healthy Employee Work-Life Balance
Flexible work schedules strive to restore the optimal balance between work and personal life. Many professionals struggle to manage their career demands while finding time for friends, family, creative pursuits and self-care. Employees caught up in this daily juggle are at an increased risk of stress and burnout.
A healthy employee work-life balance is, therefore, key to consistency and efficiency.
A flexible schedule that prioritizes employee convenience is a morale booster. Employee satisfaction levels also improve as overbearing hierarchical interferences hardly bog them down. According to Upwork’s Future Workforce Pulse report, 36.3 million Americans will be working remotely by 2025, an increase of 16.8 million people when compared to pre-COVID statistics.
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Planning for Success
Transitioning to a flexible work schedule policy can cause concerns about employee management and productivity. However, you can reduce these initial hesitations by adopting strategies that strengthen professional bonds between you and your employees while boosting overall productivity. Here’s how you can make flexible schedules work for you:
Choose the Right Software
The success of your company’s flexible work arrangements depends heavily on technology. It is crucial to pick an employee scheduling tool that fosters communication and collaboration among employees whenever they want to work.
Define Expectations
It is pertinent to communicate your expectations and define boundaries before extending flex schedule models to employees. Make your staff understand some basic rules — when they should be in office, the number of hours they must work, how often they check in with team leaders and repercussions for not meeting these expectations. Once employees understand the rules and penalties clearly, they are less likely to break the rules while remaining consistent.
Set Employee Accountability
Flexible schedule arrangements can only be successful if the employees are self-motivated to complete their tasks on time without constant supervision. To do so, make your existing staff understand that they are responsible for their actions regardless of their work hours while ensuring that your newly hired employees can self-manage. It is advisable to devise a structure to hold underperformers accountable when they fail to meet their deadlines or are inconsistent.
A strategic approach with a clear set of rules will help you develop a workable flexible schedule policy that meets your organizational needs.
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Final Thoughts
In the age of the hustle culture, work from anywhere has become a reality for many modern businesses. Flexible work schedules earn you the reputation of a new-age company while enhancing employee engagement.
You can choose to offer the flexible schedule option only to those employees who meet specific performance standards or complete a mandatory training period. You can also use it to strengthen your recruitment process by highlighting it on your company’s career page and listing it prominently on vacant positions.
However, workplace flexibility is a relatively new concept, and you must cover all its legal aspects before implementing it as a company policy. The US Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not apply to flexible work arrangements, and such models operate as a mutual agreement between companies and employees. Formulating company guidelines that don’t discriminate between the regular and remote employees (like pay structures, leave allocation, perks and promotions) while safeguarding employee interests can take you a long way.
How have flexible schedules benefitted your organization? Tell us in a comment down below!
