I woke up this morning to bold-faced headlines heralding another increase in gas prices.
Even though my gas tank’s on “E” right now and I have a 35-mile drive each way to work, I wasn’t too put off by the prospect of spending $36 to fill up my mid-sized car’s tank. The truth is, I’m not driving to work this morning. And I’m going to wait to fill up my tank until I absolutely have to. I’m working at home writing this column, proofing my dummy pages and writing and responding to e-mails on an hourly basis with the people I must communicate with today.
And who knows where those employees are, as we e-mail back and forth.
Fifteen percent of SBN employees have flexible office hours. Another estimated 30 percent of our editorial and sales staff work at home at some point during the week. In fact, our top-producing sales manager, who holds one of the highest-pressure jobs in the company, works at home part of the week.
Our HR manager tells me that we have an unwritten policy that states, ‘If the job gets done, it’s not important where the job is getting done, but that it’s accomplished in a quality and timely matter.’ She adds that the flexible schedules are dictated by the employee, not the manager.
She has observed a drastic change in employee morale since this policy became effective. Now that the taboo of putting one’s family, or personal needs first has been removed, employees are happier and more comfortable in their jobs, she notes. Family needs have always come first, she believes, only now that fact is openly recognized by both employees and managers. The result: a more content work force.
We learned about five years ago that we must offer schedules that accommodate employees’ personal needs in order to attract the caliber of staff we need. And now that the unemployment rate is at a 30-year low, that benefit is no longer optional. Employees are demanding it. Our HR manager tells me that the second most common question she is asked by prospective employees is about our flex-time policy. If we can’t offer the schedule employees are demanding, we risk losing that person to another company.
Even manufacturing companies are offering flexible schedules. To keep machines running, one local company offers employees the opportunity to work 10-hour work days, with Fridays off. About 10 percent of those employees work that schedule, the company owner says. So far, the arrangement has worked, although the owner says it is not always possible to offer flex-time in every production facility.
As the competition for quality employees increases, employers must find new creative ways of attracting a better work force. In SBN‘s case, flexible scheduling has been an effective mechanism to compete in that arena. Connie Swenson (cswenson@sbnnetcom) is editor of SBN.
