Flextime touted for firms, workers

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Jun 11, 2004 | by Jenifer K. Nii Deseret Morning News

A deeper level of employee engagement, commitment and retention. Higher productivity. Less absenteeism. And in the case of one U.S. company, $200 million in annual cost savings.

Flextime -- a broad concept encompassing a number of strategies aimed at giving employees greater flexibility in the hours they work and supporting employees as "whole people" with lives beyond work -- will soon become "as commonplace as working with technology," according to Ellen Galinsky, president of the Families and Work Institute.

And if that's true, Galinsky said, "It is incumbent upon us to continue to design new ways of working that benefit both employers and employees."

Galinsky was the keynote speaker at a workplace flexibility conference Thursday at the Grand America Hotel. The event, one of eight seminars nationwide presented by the Families and Work Institute, Sloan Foundation and select affiliates of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, underscored the changing nature of work and changing needs of workers.

"This is not your father's work force," Galinsky said, citing a 2002 Families and Work Institute study that found that today's work force is more technology- and knowledge-driven than in years past. It also is more diverse, including more people of color, women and mature workers.

Workers responding to the study reported that a 40-hour work week is no longer the norm -- men reported working an average of 48.2 hours per week, while women reported working an average of 41.4 hours per week. More than one in four respondents reported regularly working at least one weekend day per week. The lines between work and "life" have been further blurred by the advent of mobile technology, Galinsky said.

Though companies may not be able to change many of the realities of doing business in the new world of work, Galinsky said they can create "effective workplaces" where workers feel supported and valued. Flextime is an increasingly important component of that, Galinsky said.

"Our data continually show that it is linked to the things that employers care about," she said. "Secondly, it has the criteria that cut across all of these characteristics. That is, it's asking people to be responsible for results, to share responsibility -- the company and employer and the supervisor -- and it provides the support for doing so."

Workers in effective workplaces report higher levels of job engagement and satisfaction, Galinsky said, as well as better retention and mental health.

"We looked at mental health because our data show that it is a major issue in the United States," Galinsky said. "The World Health Organization says that in the year 2020, depression or stress- related illness will replace cancer as the number two cause of disability and death. So it is something I think we have to pay attention to -- the way we're working today."

If businesses are skeptical about the "whole person" defense for flextime, some companies utilizing flextime programs argue it also shows up on the bottom line.

From a business perspective, flextime makes sense, said Linda Ivie, human resources director at Salt Lake-based ARUP Laboratories. ARUP offers an innovative "seven-on, seven-off" shift, in which workers work seven days, followed by seven days off; a free on-site health clinic for employees and their families; a free on-site wellness center; flexible shifts; and tuition reimbursement for workers and their families.

"There is a real business case to be made," Ivie said, noting that turnover since the company implemented its various employee-friendly policies has dropped from 21 percent to 11 percent. The company, which employed about 35 workers when it started in the mid-1980s, now includes 1,580 employees.

Global computer giant IBM launched its first flextime programs in the 1950s, but it wasn't until the 1980s that it recognized flextime as a "business imperative," said E. Jeffrey Hill, IBM senior human resources professional and associate professor at Brigham Young University. It was in that era when IBM lost more money "than any other company, ever, in the history of the world," Hill said.

The company's flexibility programs started out as a way to save money and grew to reflect the company's efforts to move from a "face- oriented culture, where you're evaluated by your presence, to a results-oriented culture, where you're evaluated by your results."

"The way that you accomplish those results are at your discretion."

IBM offers flexible scheduling, reduced-time, remote office options and a variety of extended leave options. Today, Hill said, the percentage of IBM employees who work primarily from an IBM facility has declined from about 95 percent to about 58 percent. More than 10 percent of IBM employees work primarily from home.

As a result, IBM has saved money, Hill said, citing a 1999 Harvard Business Review story that estimated IBM's annual flextime-related cost savings at about $200 million.

E-mail: jnii@desnews.com