Not your typical work week

Flexible work arrangements refer to workplace policies and practices that offer employees flexibility in when, where, and/or how work gets done. Better known in the HR community as “flex time,” these arrangements began largely as limited options offered on an ad-hoc basis to individual employees.

This workplace practice has evolved into a broad range of full-time and reduced-time arrangements. Rather than solely seeking to accommodate individual employees, companies are now looking to incorporate flexible work arrangements strategically as part of overall business goals including increasing productivity, improving employee recruitment and retention, and expanding customer service.

Flextime helps the business not only in HR issues, but also in operations and production by reducing operating costs and improving productivity.

There are five main alternatives to the standard five-day, nine-to-five week:

• job sharing
• telecommuting
• compressed time
• flextime
• part-time work

In a survey of 551 human resources professionals by the Society for Human Resource Managers (SHRM) it was found that the number of companies offering each of these alternatives is on the rise.

Job sharing - where two people alternate doing the same job, is offered by 24 percent of the companies SHRM queried. Some form of telecommuting, which involves working from home or an alternative site via computer, is common among 37 percent of the companies. Compressed time, in which ten or more hours are packed into a day so that the employee can work fewer days per week, is an option with 33 percent of the respondents surveyed. And flextime, or the ability to start and end your workday at a time other than the typical nine-to-five, is offered by 64 percent of the companies represented.

Frequently employees look to HR to sponsor an alternative work schedule within in the company. For many of us, sponsoring and arranging an alternative work schedule isn't so easy. Nevertheless, it can be done.

Before you begin, make sure that your clearly represent the company’s expectations to the employees requesting the alternatives. They need to bear in mind that your decision to seek alternative schedule options may come at a price. In most cases the workload is not significantly reduced with such an arrangement, and the company will expect top productivity. This means, when it is all added up, employees may be logging more hours - just putting in the time at home rather than at the office. And some managers, consciously or subconsciously, may read an employee’s alternative schedule as a sign of low commitment to your job.

Six ways to get to the alternative schedule you need

You've figured out what you want to do. Now comes the crucial part: getting the organisation to say yes.

• "The central issue is control," observes work-options consultant Pat Katepoo. Many bosses fear they will lose control if their employees are not in traditional work arrangements." Your job then is not only to alleviate leadership’s fear but also to demonstrate how much better and more efficiently employees could do their jobs if they were to get the situation they desire.
  Don't wing it. "You'll regret being impulsive," Katepoo advises. A verbal suggestion may be summarily dismissed. Approach this like any other business initiative: Put the proposal in writing and make appointments with key decision makers to discuss it.
  
• Emphasise the business perspective in your proposal. Cruel as it may sound, leadership doesn't really care about baby sitting problems, family pressures, or the price of gas. How will your change of schedule affect retention and employee engagement?
  
• Consult your company's mission statement, stated values or employee handbook in drafting your proposed arrangement. Use language from that in your proposal. It's harder to say no to an idea that reflects what the company says it values.
  
• Look for precedents - other companies in your industry or your community doing what you want to do. Such examples could make the leadership team more comfortable with accepting a change.
  
• Be prepared. Rehearse how you'll deal with potential objections. If the leader says, "We've never done this before" or "It's not our policy," how will you respond? Suggest testing the new arrangement for an agreed-upon duration (say, four months or so).
  
• Be open to compromise. Instead of giving you all of the alternative options requested, the leadership team might counter with allowing you to test one or two options. At that point the ball is once again in your court.

Additional Resources:
For help in putting your proposal together visit: www.workoptions.com. There you will find downloadable proposal templates for telecommuting, compressed workweeks, job sharing, and part-time schedules as well as other resources.

Copyright 2006 Great Lakes HR Now and CBS Radio Inc.  Used by permission.  All Rights Reserved.