The Case For Flextime & Telework
Struggling with work/life balance? We've got you covered.
As schedules fill up with after school activities, family dinners, drinks with friends and other social occasions, staying cooped up at office past 5PM becomes less attractive. Our suggestion? Don't let another year go by without making an effort to improve your work/life balance. It's time to present a few solutions to your management team, and we can equip you with the know-how to make a compelling pitch.
The Basics
Alternative work arrangements, including telework, flextime and compressed work weeks can help alleviate time wasted sitting in traffic, while enhancing productivity and morale. Let's break the options down:
Telework
Telework is a business strategy that improves employees productivity by allowing workers to skip the stressful, time-consuming commute. It also helps leverage cost savings and improve employee morale.
Employer Benefits: Business continuity when the unexpected strikes (we're looking at you, I-85), improved recruitment and retention of employees, 10-20% increase in employee productivity and a reduction in absenteeism.
Employee Benefits: Reduced stress, less time in traffic means more time to use for work and pleasure, higher morale, and improved work/life balance.
Compressed Work Weeks
Employees work the same number of hours, but in fewer days. Common formats include four (4) 10-hour days for a standard 40-hour work week, or 80 hours over nine (9) days. Compressed work weeks have been show to lower facilities costs and extend customer service hours.
Employer Benefits: Reduce operating costs, improve employee morale, expand service hours, reduce employee absenteeism, and create talent recruitment.
Employee Benefits: Reduced stress, less time in traffic means more time to use for work and pleasure, higher morale, and improved work/life balance.
Flextime
Help employees avoid peak rush hour by allowing them flexibility in when their work days begin and end. Employees still work all of their required hours in a day but during the times that work best for their commutes and the company's needs. This program can be on a periodic, open-season basis.
Employer Benefits: Improved recruitment and retention of employees, a reduction in absenteeism, and increased employee productivity and morale.
Employee Benefits: Reduced stress, less time in traffic means more time to use for work and pleasure, higher morale, and improved work/life balance.
The Pitch
Presenting these options to your management team can be intimidating. Here are a few tips and tricks for presenting the subject:
Emphasize Employer Benefits
Not only do you need to think like your boss, you need to think like your boss' boss, who is likely going to be the one to ultimately make the decision to implement a flextime or telework program. That means you'll need to make the case that these programs benefit the company, and most importantly, present sound data supporting that claim. As always though - Midtown Transportation has your back.
Telework programs have serious impact to employer's bottom lines. They eliminate tardiness and time wasted commuting to work, increase employee productivity by an average of 10-20%, reduce employee absenteeism by an average of 2-4 days annually, improve employee morale, improve recruitment and retention by an average of 50-65% and lower facility costs and the demand for parking.
Why the increase in productivity? Teleworkers have fewer breaks, fewer distractions, less stress, shorter "commute" times and reduced sick days.
Baby Steps
Most employers won't be ready to jump into a formal telework or flextime program. These programs take time to setup, refine and train people on. Start with the idea of a pilot program. Piloting a telework or flextime program can give your employer the time to assess if a formal program is right for your them. Moreover - a pilot or formal program may not be right for every employee. Employers can use a sample pool of employees based off seniority, job responsibilities, performance reviews, etc. to test the waters.
Know Your Resources
Know you and your employer have free resources available! Our Midtown Transportation team can assist employers in the following ways:
- Connecting you with free consultants who can help design and implement a compressed work week program that fits your needs.
- Assistance identifying appropriate job functions & departments that would be most conducive to telework or flextime programs.
- Developing a telelwork/flextime policy, templates for telework/flextime agreements and related documents.
- Assistance with educating and securing buy-in from managers.
- Guidance in how to make current programs more efficient.
- On-site training sessions for teleworkers and telemanagers.
- Ongoing program evaluation and refinement. This include online surveys for documenting program impact.
Looking for some extra help before you sit down with your employer? Email mt@midtownatl.com.
