Building a Business Case for Workplace Flexibility
by Cindy S. Johnson, CPA, CIT, partner
One of the biggest business trends of the 21st century has been the growing acceptance of flexible work arrangements among many employers. These range from flextime and telecommuting to job sharing and cross training.
The economic downturn has forced many companies that might not have normally considered such arrangements to take a closer look at how they can help their employees work more efficiently and save the company money. In the process, they are discovering that the benefits often go well beyond dollars and cents.
The fact is, many employees today expect their companies to offer flexible work arrangements, especially younger Generation X and Generation Y employees who place a high value on maintaining a comfortable work-life balance. Business owners and managers who don’t offer flexible arrangements may be at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to attracting and retaining high-caliber young employees.
The primary types of flexible work arrangements offered by companies today include:
Flextime This is often the easiest and least expensive option. It simply involves letting employees set their own work schedules, as long as they don’t interrupt the workflow or adversely impact customer service.
At many companies, there’s no legitimate business reason to require that employees be at their desks by 8:30 a.m., or out to lunch between noon and 1 p.m. Everyone’s biorhythms are different: Some people function well early in the morning and start to run down later in the day, while others are the opposite.
Therefore, it often makes sense to let employees set their schedules so that they’re working during the times when they can be most productive. Flextime may also help employees better juggle home and family responsibilities, whether arranging for child or elder care, or simply allowing them to attend their children’s soccer games or school recitals.
Cross training and job sharing Also referred to as multi-skill training, cross training allows employees to “trade” jobs with each other temporarily. It tends to be most common in manufacturing environments, where it may be easier for workers to learn new skills that will enable them to perform tasks other than those required to do their normal job. Job sharing, in which two or more part-time employees share one job, tends to be most common in office environments.
These can both be win-wins: employees usually welcome the opportunity to broaden their skills and thus make themselves more marketable, while employers benefit by having a more flexible workforce.
Telecommuting Working from home has grown from a novelty 10 years ago to a fairly common and accepted work arrangement. It’s estimated that 2.5 million employees now consider home to be their primary place of work, and another 17 million work from home occasionally.
Setting up a successful telecommuting program is a bit more involved than giving your employees flextime, but depending on your company and the composition of your workforce, the benefits may far outweigh the effort and cost involved.
These benefits include:
- Lower facility costs: With some employees working from home, you may need less office space, thus reducing your occupancy costs (rent, mortgage, utilities, etc.).
- An expanded talent pool: Physical location is no longer a barrier to hiring the best employees when they are able to work from home.
- Greater employee retention: Similarly, if top employees are forced to move out of your city, you don’t necessarily have to say goodbye to them.
- Higher employee productivity: Employees who work from home do not face the kinds of interruptions that their coworkers in the office usually do — everything from meetings to water cooler chit-chat. They may also be able to work during the times of day (or night) when they are most productive.
- Higher employee morale and loyalty: Most employees who telecommute consider it to be a valuable benefit and are willing to work even harder to keep it.
Of course, there can be a flip side to each of these benefits. For example, while you may enjoy lower facility costs, these will likely be offset somewhat by the costs of maintaining employees’ home offices (e.g., business phone lines, Internet access, virtual meeting software), as well as travel to and from your office for out-of-town employees.
The productivity benefits of community are based on one very important assumption: that your remote employees are self-disciplined and responsible enough to manage themselves and not be sidetracked by the many potential distractions in their home — whether young children, the television or Internet, or simply chores or projects that they work on while they’re supposed to be working for you.
For this reason, be very careful in deciding which employees may work from home. Some companies require employees who request telecommuting literally to interview for a new job and prove that they are responsible and disciplined enough to handle it.
It may be smart to begin any telework arrangement with a trial run of 90 or 120 days. This is usually long enough for both you and the employee to gauge whether it’s going to work or not. If not, the employee can probably be brought back into the office with minimal disruption — thus saving his or her job, and saving you a valued employee.
SidebarDoing It Right
A mid-sized company in Texas provides an excellent case study in how to implement flexible work arrangements successfully. This three-time recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Award for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility has adopted what it calls a “people first” flexible workplace strategy to grow the business without overburdening its employees or compromising client service.
“This strategy has proven to be beneficial as we make adjustments to our business in response to challenges posed by the economy,” says the company’s president.
Employees choose their own schedules, fill out a proposal and submit it to their supervisor for approval. Flexible work arrangements have been critical in helping the company retain talent. In addition to flextime, the firm also allows employees to work from home, either full-time or on an as-needed basis. This arrangement allowed them to retain a key employee who recently had to relocate.
The company is very careful in selecting which employees are allowed to work from home. “It’s not for everybody, because not everyone can self-manage,” says the president. “Also, isolation can be a side effect, so it’s important for remote employees to come into the office for ‘face time’ periodically.”
Telework arrangements are monitored very closely for the first 90 days to gauge whether they’re working. “It needs to work for our clients, for the business and for the employee,” says the president. “Our employees realize that it’s a privilege that must be earned.”
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For more information, please contact:
Cindy S. Johnson, CPA, CIT, partner
330.255.2437
Email