Flextime: myth or reality? - fewer corporations offer flexible working programs than media suggests

Business Horizons, Sept-Oct, 1994 by Karen S. Kush, Linda K. Stroh

Managing the balance of work and family is of continued interest to employers and employees alike. Recent research suggests that this issue is no longer just a women's issue. Men's attitudes are becoming more like women's in that they too are demonstrating a greater interest in child rearing and turning down work situations that make it difficult for them to handle their family responsibilities. Hall (1990) suggests that men's careers are also being affected by family responsibilities.

As men and women begin to make compromises in their lives to handle both family and career, organizations may be forced to make compromises themselves. Many suggest that dualincome families and single parents need more flexible work schedules to handle the limitless number of situations that can arise when raising children. Sick children, school vacations, and holidays can all present overwhelming challenges for employed parents. Without a flexible work schedule parents are often absent from work or distracted from doing their work.

This study is concerned with one benefit companies can offer their employees to help them balance their family and work responsibilities more effectively--fiextime. Our purpose is to investigate the extent to which companies currently offer formal flextime programs. We explore reasons why some companies have not considered flextime as a benefit for their employees and whether they are planning to implement such a program in the future. We also discuss the benefits and disadvantages associated with flextime based on feedback from companies that currently offer such programs.

During the 1980s, flexible work schedules were hot topics of conversation for managers and human resource professionals. The New Ways to Work Conference Board suggested that "flexibility" was the watchword of the 1990s (Olmsted 1990). An abundance of popular press articles flourished indicating that a large percentage of employers offered flexible work schedules. Yet the reliability of this information is questionable.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics cited that 61.4 percent of 10,345 employers responding to its 1989 Employee Benefits Survey offered flexible work schedule policies. Fog-four percent of these same firms specifically claimed that they offered flextime. A 1990 Conference Board study found that 50 percent of its sample of 521 major corporations offered flextime, and a 1992 Work and Family Survey Report stated that 57 percent of 1,004 companies had implemented flextime, while an additional 14 percent were considering it for the future.

Mattis (1991) found that flexible work arrangements offered to managers and professionals were largely informal arrangements established at the request of the individual employee. Although a 1991 survey of 50 firms conducted by the Pickwick Group found that 92 percent of them offered some form of flexible work schedules, it also found that "most companies still view flexible schedules as experimental... and few survey respondents reported having a consistent policy in this area" (Soremet and Mallins 1991). This could lead one to believe that many of the supposed flextime programs sponsored by companies are temporary, ad hoc arrangements offered to accommodate the needs of specific employees or work groups and are not necessarily available on a permanent and consistent basis to all company employees. For example, many corporations may offer these arrangements primarily to female workers who want to return to the workplace after bearing children and need flexibility in their schedules.

A discrepancy seems to exist between articles in the public press and other observations. Could it be that some of the companies formerly surveyed who indicated that they have flexible work schedules are not really offering flextime consistently and permanently to a significant portion of their employees? Perhaps surveys of flexible work schedules have not clearly defined what constitutes a formal flextime program, leaving that judgment for the respondents to make arbitrarily. Or, do some of those companies offer some degree of work schedule flexibility only on more of an ad hoc or temporary basis, depending on the need to accommodate the requests of specific individuals? Based on personal observation in this field, we hypothesize that the majority of employers are not currently offering formal, consistent, and permanent flextime programs to their employees and have no immediate plans to do so in the future.

METHODOLOGY

The sample for this study was drawn from Crain's Chicago Business magazine's listing of "Leading Private Firms in Chicago" (1991). Recent labor statistics suggest that the greatest growth in the 1990s will be in smaller private organizations. Our purpose in studying this population was to produce survey results that could be generalized to these smaller private employers. This sampling technique assumed that larger corporations may have abilities and needs regarding flextime that differ from those of smaller private firms. Thus, surveys were not mailed to any firm with 5,000 or more employees. After eliminating these firms from the survey population, every second company left on the list was selected for participation.