Does flex-time attract new hires?

Yes

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by David B Hitchcock

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Does flex-time attract new hires?

Does picking your children up from daycare on time sound attractive?

Companies are looking for ways to attract good people without paying them more money. That's understandable since most companies have less money to go around these days. People care about things other than money, and the main thing on that list is time. Allowing employees to use flex-time will attract new hires for sure.

What is flex-time?

It wasn't many years ago when all companies had set work hours, and punch clocks to make sure you were there on time and didn't leave early. It was the way that companies made sure you worked your full day and earned that full day's paycheck. Flex-time started appearing to enable employees to work the same number of hours each day, but not always during the same block of time as everyone else. With both parents in the work force, which has been happening since the 1970s, there is less time outside of work to get things done and flex-time is the answer. For example if a normal work day is from 9:00 am until 5:00pm, flex-time would allow you to work from 10:00am to 6:00pm. Some flex-time arrangements even allow employees to work a bit of overtime each day, and take a half day or even full day off each week. The arrangement depends on the company, the work, your boss, and you, the employee.

What are the benefits of flex-time to employees?

Everyone has things happen in their life - doctor appointments, day care scheduling issues, or running to the bank to make sure the mortgage will get paid. In those bygone years, companies didn't care about those issues. That forced employees to take care of all those issues on their own time, sometimes when those services were not available. With flex-time, employees have less stress and a better quality of life as they can plan these periodic tasks without fear of being late for work, or rushing through traffic at the end of the day to get to the bank before it closes. In some cases that rushing is not only stressful, it's dangerous as well and can be the cause of many traffic accidents. Not only does this working arrangement relieve stress in the employee, but also in their family as well since they don't have to rush around as much either. And less stress in general makes for a happier and healthier family. Think of it this way - if you have to pick up children from daycare at 4:45pm, will you take the job that lets you work 8 to 4 or the one that forces you to work 9 to 5?

What are the benefits to employers?

It's easy to see why employees like the arrangement, but what does the company get out of this arrangement? On the surface it would appear to be easy for the employee to slack off, and take advantage of these arrangements. But studies have shown that people with flex-time work schedules work hard as or harder than other workers. The main reasons for this are that they want to keep the arrangement and are willing to work harder for that privilege, and that often they feel like they are being monitored even if they aren't. It doesn't have to be the boss watching, if rumor-prone Rowena tells the boss you were surfing the Internet after hours it could be trouble for you. There is also the benefit of time shifting resource usage. If the company pays for power consumption based on peak usage, having say 25% of the work force working early, and 25% working late will lower that peak and save money. It will also lower the bandwidth requirements on internet usage for email, research, and Voice over IP phone calls, enabling the company to get a cheaper plan with their internet service provider. And long distance charges can be avoided if an employee is coming in early. If a company has offices in many time zones, this voluntary time-shifting can avoid paying employees overtime to come in early or stay late to remotely take part in a meeting in another time zone.

All of these reasons add up to savings for the employer, and together they can add up to a considerable amount. It comes down to a company trusting their employees to be loyal and hard working, and in most cases they won't be disappointed. The workplace will become a happier place that any potential new hire would want to be a part of.

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