Advantages of Flextime
The Advantages of Flextime
When an employee wakes up at 5:30 in the morning for 20 years someone has to think that this sometimes becomes very routine and boring. Get up at 5:30, be at work at 8 and then watch the clock until 4 that afternoon. This describes many peoples’ attitudes to their workday. What if they are a night person and say could work from 11 that morning to 7 in the evening? This is the idea of flextime and it is gaining in popularity in the United States’ major and smaller corporations.
Flextime is basically allowing an employee to pick the hours of their workday around the core mid-day hours, such as 11 A.M. to 2 P.M. They determine their own starting and stopping hours to best suit them, but they must still put in their regular weekly hours of work. In practice most employers only give employees a limited amount of freedom in choosing their hours, such as an employee has to be in by 10 A.M., but to a mother who needs to have a few more hours of rest in the morning this could make a huge difference in her attitude toward work, job performance, and absenteeism. These are just a few advantages of the flextime work arrangements. (3)
"At Ernst and Young, the focus is on results, not face time," says Denny Marcel, a member of the company's New York-based Office for Retention. "Employees know that they can choose flexible work arrangements (FWA) and still be competent. We empower people to decide how, when, and where they get their jobs done." (5). Flextime often gives employees a sense of empowerment and motivation to their jobs. Flextime scheduling often works as a motivator. By letting employees more or less set their own hours, an employer is telling them two things: "I trust you to put in the time and to be productive," and, "This is your chance to show you can be a self-starter." Both of those are powerful motivating messages (2).
Flextime can also help retain a company’s most prized employees. This excerpt is from a September 2001 issue of Sales and Marketing Management.
“One morning in 1998 Bruce Fleischmann, a sales manager with Pfizer, was out making calls with a salesperson who had just returned from maternity leave. Fleischmann noticed that the woman, whom he knew well, just wasn't herself. She seemed anxious and preoccupied. So Fleischmann asked if something was on her mind. "She just burst into tears," he recalls. "She said she felt torn about whether or not to be home with her child or at work; that even though she liked her job, it was tough to do that and be a new mother." A few weeks later the salesperson quit, unable to find a way to combine work and parenting. "It's a typical situation," Fleischmann [next page]