by Lee VanAmee

Created on: January 23, 2010

Before you go in to negotiate a better work schedule, be prepared with some solutions for your manager or boss; not just reasons as to why it will work for you personally. 

There are usually a few things standing in the way of getting a more flexible schedule at work. These issues have to be addressed before you start working different hours so that your company can be pro active and you won't have to be jumping all over the place trying to fix any holes the schedule change may have brought about. 

Productivity: Yours, mine and ours; this meaning that your hours may not just affect what you are doing and when you are doing it, but it could affect a whole department. For instance if your boss needs vital reports from you and 3 other people before a 2 p.m. production meeting every day and you are asking to be out of the office at noon, they may be able to improvise or maybe not. There may be someone in the company that depends on an email you can actually send remotely and you don't have to physically be in the office to send it. There are a lot of scenarios that can affect your schedule and the schedule of others so you should be prepared to be able to have an answer as to how you can handle each occurrence in case it would come up. 

Other employees circumstances and hours: There are some companies that have an across the board policy, in a nutshell what is good for one person has to be able to work for everyone. When it comes to flexible schedules, this can become a nightmare fairly quickly because someone has to monitor it, etc. and the mangers have to know when and where everyone is at any given time. So, if you are asking for a more flexible schedule that means that every employee can also ask for a different flexible schedule for their own personal reasons also, this can usually be accomplished without much work if it is a very small company. But the larger the company and the more employees you have the more human resources are required in trying to keep everyone's schedule realistic to the productivity of the company as a whole.   

The hours and the type of business you are in: If you work in a store that is only open certain hours or even an office that operates on a strict schedule, you may be asking for something that the company is not open to. The reasoning behind your needing more flexible hours may be helping in your personal situation, but if the company you work for has only one set schedule, you may not have much lee way. Most offices are on an 8 to 5 schedule because this is standard business hours and schedules are not usually changed much or varied this way. 

Just be prepared to answer to any of the contingency questions that the department/company or office may have. That way you can assure them that this is something you have thoroughly thought about and have done the research to accommodate any and all side effects of the new schedule you are inquiring about.

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