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What Are Advantages/Disavantages To Flex Time?
achurch asks: "I work for a fairly large Japanese software company which runs most of its divisions on a fixed time schedule (i.e. 9:00am-5:30pm plus overtime). I happen to be in the one division that has a flex-time system, but I've been hearing rumors of late that the company is considering getting rid of that and putting us back on shift, too. My gut reaction to that is 'you do that, I quit,' but I'd like to put together a viable argument for maintaining/expanding flex here. So I'd like to get some opinions on why flex time is a Good Thing: What has flex done for you/your company? Why do you (or don't you) prefer flex to a fixed schedule? Reasons that appeal to management types would be especially helpful." I'm sure this question is one that is on quite a few minds out there. Have strong feelings about this either way, then please share them here.
Our boss actually thinks it's a good idea, as it gives the sysadms longer "opening hours". Some of us like being there early in the morning, but then also leave early in the afternoon, while others prefer sleeping longer in the morning, and then also staying longer in the afternoon. Then people in the rest of the building can get hold of us outside the 8-16 schedule.
Then there's the fact that we all are different. I have the hardest time getting up in the morning, so I don't. They could force me to be there at 8, but then I'm basically not functioning before after lunch. Fortunately they understand and respect this.
Often times, management has exactly zero foresight and needs its grunts to constantly be around to make up for this shortfall. Poor management and flex-time are a bad combination. The only meetings that flex-time should hinder are those spur of the moment, knee-jerk meetings.
My 0.02 - keep the change
I never had a single employee be terminated under the "two milestones" policy after their first three months, though I did fire two employees who failed under this system in their three month probationary period.
Most of our employees did extremely well under this, and in fact often beat their deadlines, while still maintaining their high profiles in Team Fortress and other games. We had a couple employees that had problems with meeting their deadlines, and needed more close supervision and less flextime was allowed to them.
But in general, this policy allowed us to consistently meet our deadlines. My ex-employees are now recognized at their current companies as being exceptionally good at meeting their deadlines. ---Ell
I am personally in a lucky position to work 'full-time', but to be completely without any working hours. Mostly this is because the things I'm doing right now are not very tightly linked to other things in the company, but also this is what I demanded from my boss when I decided to continue on this contract.
I really enjoy this kind of free schedule, there are things I have to do daily, but sometimes I may spend couple of days even without visiting my office, doing the necessary things from my home. Those days when I've stayed in my home, dressed just in my underpants have usually been even the most effective - somehow I feel that being in a precise location (this office where I'm sitting right now) allows me to just spend my time doing useless things (like I'm doing now).
I have things I have to do daily to keep things going - these usually take a couple of hours. All the other things are projects with a longer schedule, and everyone is satisfied as long as these projects get done. And they do.
I feel much better selling my employer my work than my time. Time-based salaries belong to early industrial factories, not to people who do creative work! The result is what matters, so salary should be based on results! Having employees in the office fixed 8 hours a day is a form of slavery. Everyone should be happy in what they are doing and in the way they are doing. (Just read Marx!)
I'm assuming you code here right? The simple answer is that if you are in a position that you only have to put in so many hours a week, rather than being in a particular place at a particular time, it is obvious that they are going to get the most productivity out of you by letting you work when and how you want. Is there any real reason why they need to have you at work the same hours as everyone else?
I wouldn't know about that, I think the longest 'rush' I ever went on was 10 days long with an average of a 30 minute nap each day. After that, ofcourse, it takes 3 days of solid sleeping to recover but it was worth it :) (this was when I was working for myself)
When I was working for a medium-sized accounting firm (in the IT department that is) they had a rigid schedule of 'be here at 8am, leave at 4:30pm' - since I'm a night person, if I have to be there at 8, I stumble around like a zombie until at least 2pm, then I get started and my 'best' time is pretty much from 4pm thru midnight.
I quit there - then moved on to an ISP where I did sysadmin duties and some tech support. All they had policy wise is "just make sure you work 40 hours a week, we don't care when you come in". Because everyone had a cellphone and a pager, it wasn't a problem. So on some days I'd come in at noon and work till 9pm and hike on out to home, some days I'd come in at 9pm and work till 6am the next morning. There were more people like that :)
All in all I think it depends on the 'corporate' environment on whether or not flex time is a good idea. I work for myself now, so it's not a big deal anymore - I work about 8 to 10 hours a day, and I'm happy as can be :)
There is no sig...
I think you missed the point.
My employer has enough confidence in me to get the job done. I collaborate with them all the time, but when it comes down to the implementation, they stay out of my way so as to not muddy up my reference implementation. Then, from there, they may modify the code.
And this is why I don't work for you. I'm confident enough in my programming skills as to not need a hand-held trip into compiler candyland. Design, however, is almost always a collaborative process, something I never even touched on since it has VERY LITTLE to do with this topic. I don't know about you, but I don't go on a 24 hour binge working on the design. I break it into 8 hour pieces.
A happy engineering director with great programmers.
But are your programmers happy?
-Erik-
Well I was on flex time. My wife went out of town and I looked after our (at the time) 2 year old for the week. Three days I had to go into the office with my two year old. I also worked my ass off late into the night so that I would not fall behind on the sites current project. End the end they screwed me out of a week of vacation that I did not really think counted as vacation. Now if someone offers flex time I run like hell. I think a good idea has been raped by a Management mentality that in the end only serves to screw over the employee for the good of the company. I really feel that because of flex time and the blured line of what is and is not vacation screwed me out of over a grand of vacation pay.
Last one in jail is a fascist.
Absolutely. It is a wonderful feeling to fall asleep and wake up because you're not tired anymore. The angry, beeping thing next to my bed now only shows what time it is, no more waking people up.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
I've never yet seen a flexitime scheme that prevented people working 9-5 if they so wished...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
I haven't seen too many flex-time policies that allowed people to take entire days off. Usually, they are of the "come in early, leave early; come in late, leave late" variety with some rules about what core hours you need to be there. The core hours are when team meetings are scheduled. If people could take entire days off whenever they pleased without much notice, the whole world would go topsy-turvy.
Saving up extra hours to take takes off is a pretty good idea in theory, but in the extremes if people try to work 20 hours/day for 4 days straight, and then take the next 10 days off, the office will not be very productive.
1) The person doing that probably won't be doing their best work during those 4 long marathons.
2) If the person isn't there for core hours, they are going to miss meetings, won't be interacting with their peers, etc.
I think that the "day off" version of flex-time would only work if everyone in your team agreed on the day. And if everyone is on the same time, it isn't really flex time anymore!
I would be dead in the water without flex time. It's one of the few things that I require at a job. Thankfully the boss at my company is also a programmer who functions best late at night. It's not unusual to see a lot of the tech people rolling in around 9:30 to 10:30. Of course we're usually here well after all the morning risers are long gone, but quite frankly I wouldn't have it any other way.
As for reasons to give to management. My best recomendation is explain to them how you can come in the morning on a fixed schedule, but that they will garner the most productive work from you if they let you have flex time. If that isn't enough also be willing to negotiate "core business hours" when you will be in so that everyone can get in touch with you. Also be consistent in the times that you show up. If you do all of those, unless your company is completely overrun with bureaucracy you should be able to sway your supervisor, who should be the only one that matters, and/or their superiors.
Remember stress productivity for the company, especially with the japanese. They may not like the individuality, but if you're gaijin they may overlook it.
I'm working right now half-day, but I expect one month later to start working full-time, and i'm only work full-time if my boss give me flex time, because i want freedom. Just like i want to use free software cause i can adapt it to me, i want a free schedule to adapt my work to my life. Adapt my life to my work is a big error, people should reject that kind of jobs to force every enterprise to give freedom to their workers.
Fixed time actually is a relic of the industrial age, and was only necessary because the machines of the industrial age required workers to be synchronized to its rhythms. You had to be on time or else the whole factory would be delayed. Since most jobs, including the job of the person asking this question aren't based on Machine Age rhythms, but on the information flows of the Internet Age. Flextime therefore is a natural thing given the nature of the work involved, and is not just a perk or a benefit. Forcing people to come at fixed hours actually makes them less productive.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
If you are so poor at scheduling, you're doing a very lousy job managing your company, and so, you don't even deserve to have employees working for you!!!!
--
Americans are bred for stupidity.
Wow. You run into the oddest things - never been to Camp Susque, but my wife has some really fond memories of going there for summer camp while she was growing up. She'll be psyched to see that you're up on the web now, and I know that she'll be planning to send our daughter there when she's old enough to go :-)
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
I would have expected this to be the #1 argument in favor of flex-time. People have different productivity cycles. Me personally, I've tried a lot of different schedules, and oddly, the one that works best for me does not have a 24 hour period. I work best on a 25-hour cycle of sleep 9 hours, work 8, play 8. Now obviously I can't put in as many hours as the typical 8/8/8 worker, but the fact that my productivity goes up with a 9/8/8 schedule makes up for it.
Also, I am a student. Over the course of a typical week, I sleep for about 55-60 hours, work 12-20, have class and class work 16-24 hours, and play the rest of the time. With this broken up schedule, I simply don't have enough contiguous play time and towards the end of the quarter (i.e. this week and last week) other parts of the schedule start to take the heat. Let it be said that my GPA would be a few points lower if this school didn't offer so many classes at night.
That's me, and everyone's different. Why companies are compelled to have everyone on a fixed schedule... I don't know.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
I have flextime now. It was one of the major factors that attracted me to my current job. In my previous position, I was at a federal agency whose "flextime" (and they even called it that) meant, basically, pick one of the following time slots and stick to it forever: 7:30-4, 8-4:30.... Laughable. I pushed the envelope by asking for an 8:30 start time. Problem was, 8:30 was considered the absolute last moment anyone could walk in the door without being considered late... so if I came in at 8:35, I was "late" even though it was five measly minutes past my agreed-upon start time, and the secretary would put me on the "late list" to be circulated to the supervisors so they would be apprised of such earth-shaking events as my oversleeping by 5 minutes.
That seriously damaged my respect for the place: I felt their priorities were seriously screwed up. I'm a tech writer. I sit in my pod all day and write documentation. It shouldn't matter what time my butt hits the chair, as long as I have a couple of hours where I can reach the people I need to talk to. The only conceivable reasons to make me adhere to a fixed schedule were: (a) employer power trip; and (b) conformity for conformity's sake.
Over the course of two years I lost many hours of productivity to fretting over this kind of trivia. If I left the house late and knew I'd arrive at 8:34, I would be in a vile mood by the time I arrived, just full of sarcastic things I wanted to say to the officious secretary who would pointedly look at the clock when I walked in the door. I was perpetually exhausted; I'm a night owl who can't get to sleep before midnight, but I was up before 7 every morning to get there in time.
How can I frame this all in terms management will understand? Everyone else said it pretty well--it's a matter of morale. Most geeks are independent-minded people with excellent built-in crap detectors. When we see an employer focus on meaningless things like start time and dress codes, we conclude that the employer is an idiot and proceed to slack off and eventually quit.
Send them email at late hours. Leave them voice mail at late hours.
Blar.
Pro's
Cons
- Communication (although partially solved by mobile phone).
- Coverage for management, support etc. if the company is anal and wants managers, support staff etc. around for you, they need to be there for all the hours.
This probably won't help much because most of the pro's are personal, but if your company is cool they should realise that stuff that makes you happier and work harder is "A Good Thing"(tm).Yes, but that can be worked around by various means. My company's gotten around it by requiring "core hours" of 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., where everyone's required to be present. Basically, this means I have a two-hour window (7:30 a.m.-9:30 a.m.) when I can come in, which seems reasonable to me...
We, too, have flex time with mandatory core hours. Unfortunately, we also have the requirement of arrival and departure consistancy and my current PHB, a micro-managerial type, is extremely picky about this. The result is that we don't have most of the advantages that you cite. I still prefer it, though. I'm a morning person and it's much easier to get things done before the majority of the people show up.
well, in your "friend"'s time it works like this: they don't comp, he gets another job..
Lowmag.net
I think what you mention is called "comp time", or compensatory time for overtime worked. We have this along with flex time. It helps keep down on unpaid overtime, which you don't get if you are an exempt employee. If you are salaried and you run comp time, you are considered exempt -- any amount of time spent at the office will suffice as long as the job is done. Unfortunately, this is abused by some companies, so the logical result by HR to counteract some of the effects is comp time. You get time for time in vacation hours. It works great here.
Lowmag.net
maybe I am wrong about this one, but I have always thought that flex time meant that you work 8 hours a day ( or 40 a week), and that as long as you get those hours in, it doesn't matter when they are--so if for example, you worked 10 hours today, then you only needed to work 6 tomorrow, an d if you like to work between 6:00 and 3:00, then that is fine, as is working 10:00 and 7:00.
At least this is what it meant at my last job--by the definition that you give I am on flex time now, even though I work from 4:00 to midnight--i thought I was just on the evening shift
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
My team practices Extreme Programming and this mean that we together need to work the same schedule. The basic reason is that when we are working together (in the same large room in fact) communication is very fast and we are more productive.
Our team an another team can have totally different schedules without affecting productivity. We also borrow some of the ideas in other posting here: 1) Have a core set of hours that the team should be in the office for. 2) Get other team members to cover for you if you have an appointment.
Troll???
;-)
mmm, I take it private jokes don't go down well on public forums
I don't exactly entirely agree with that.
I think, even at a camp, that flex time should be available to the public. For-instance. If I wish to get up at 9, and start working then, as long as there is adequet staff (2 or 3) to cover setting up for the tables, and what not for breakfast, then you know, you shouldn't need those extra people, who often times just stand around. In addition, people are often, i've seen, not doing much of things, and they could be doing more, or multiple people do one person jobs, so in fact I think no matter, just about, what organization you are in, you can have some flex time.
I used to work at Texas Instruments. We had mandatory core hours for communication purposes, but flex time otherwise. Not a problem until my group ran into a new manager that wanted everyone there by 8:30! Our answer, we left at 5:00 on the button. Projects started slipping and he got bent out of shape. We explained several times that anchors worked both ways, they kept the boat from moving backwards, they also keep the boat from moving forwards. A shift assignment is an anchor, no matter what you call it. Bottom line, after 3 months we were back to flex time and he was blamed for project slippage.
Ergo, flex-time make better use of company resources!
Read a good book lately?
Read a good book lately?
My company is on flex time, but my boss abuses it. He comes in after 12 and since his department gets off around 4:00, he gets to sleep off maybe half of his time at work and go home at around 9.
The key phrase here is "mandatory core hours from 9-3". Which, in my book, pretty much makes it as un-flex-time-y as can be.
Ahh, internal corporate marketing. Gotta love it.
The company I work for gives all salaried employees 16 hours of flex per month... that flex time covers holidays, sick days and vacation, but when they start you out at 40 hours and give you 16 hours per month, it turns out being a SWEET deal!
The real advantage of flex depends on how quickly you acrue and with what other benefits package it comes... if you don't acrue very quickly and you don't have any other time off, it sucks.
-C
"This above all, to thine own self be true"
i am not able to function normally before 11am.
/. until 11. then i would start to work.
so if i was forced to get in at 8:30, i would be able to do it. i would then sit in front of the screen and stare at email or
as it is, i come in at 10, read/write email for an hour and then work.
flex time makes me a lot more efficient for my employer.
I used to work in a support center as well. The best schedule I ever had there was a 4 10-hour days on, 3 days off schedule. Sure by the end of that 4th day you feel like dogshit, but ohh the continual 3-day weekends. Heck, there was one time they shifted around what days I was working, and I ended up with a (one-time-only) 6-day weekend. Plus, my "weekend" was usually in the middle of the week, allowing me to get as drunk as possible without having to worry about the damn no-alcohol-sales-on-sunday crap...goddamn bible belt blue laws.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
The downside is that it's a lot harder to find time for meetings but that's what irc is for. On the other hand; we can react much faster to questions from our customers...we're able to fix problems that come in at 18:00 before the next day by default. 9-17-companies will have a hard time trying to accomplish that.
I also looks like we work much more efficient because our employees can work when they want to so they usually work when they're best at it (after midnight that is). I have no evidence that this is true offcourse, but it certainly looks like it. NOTE: Since we only work with parttimers, I cannot say how this relates to a fulltime-employee-company but I don't think it's much of a difference.
0x or or snor perron?!
One thing I'd like to add is that staggered shifts help a little with the commute. Sometimes that extra hour offsets that traffic jam that happens at the city choke points.
My wife take classes during the day and works in the evenings. My flexible hours allow me to spend mornings with her and work during roughly the same hours. I can come in at 10:30AM and leave at 8.
Disadvantages are that dealing with others on more normal schedules can be a pain.
I currently work for a Fortune 500 and I would like to say that flex time does indeed work for lagre corperations. We have core hours from 10 AM to 3 PM. All employees must be at work during those times. These 5 hours are more than enough to accomplish and face to face duties that are necessary. We can come in as early as 6 AM or as late as 10 AM. One of the benifits is that employees can adjust their work to corespond closer to their biologic clock. Thus, they get more work done when they are maching their own natural rythms. I and another coworker work from 6 AM to 3 PM. Yet three others on the team work 10 AM to 7 PM. This means we have someone on site to handle problems 13 hours of the day. This ability to provide such immedeate onsite coverage, without having to page someone, has made our group very dependable and respectable. This occured not because management dictated it to be so but because we chose it. I stongly suggest that your company continue flex time for the employees with core time to ensure communication. As a personal note, I can get tons done before 8-9 when many people start comming in. Its also wonderful to beat the evening rush hour by two hours. I am happier driving to and from work, thus I am a happier employee.
Flex time is also more family friendly, it enables employees with children to more easily organise their working hours. If you operate a more fixed policy you may well lose some of these employees to other companies who offer a more flexible arrangement.
I remember when I started work in a big IT shop a few years back. My supervisor was going over all the benefits, one of which was flex-time. He then asked me what time I intended to come in. I said 9:AM. He said "everyone else comes in around 7:30. Why don't you give that a try for a while." It turned out that flex wasn't very.
was i the only one who saw ``flex'' and got confused? alas, i ``yacc'' =)
ID-10-T is a way of life
Also, depending on where your company is and the traffic situation there, it's considered a good thing to allow your workers to not be adding to the morning and evening gridlock. In areas which may be trying to stay off the EPA's dirty air list, there may even be financial incentives for the employer to do this.
I've been working 4 10s for about 3 years now. I definitely prefer 2 on, 1 off, 2 on, 2 off. With that pattern you never really have a work week. You are always within 2 days of a day off. So even if for some reason I work and then have to do something or can't sleep, I still only have to make it through one shift until I have a day off to recover.
I work in a research lab and flextime is a perk that compensates me for the lower salary for being in research.
One thing you need to do is to convince your management that flextime is a perk that helps them to recruit and retain people. Make it a bottom line issue for them.
we use flex time where i work and it works out quite well. as long as you show up to your meetings during the week (of which my earilest is 11am) and get the work, i could come in at midnight and work until 8am and then go home. it provides maximum felxibility in persoanl time too, which si goodbecause there are some days where we'll ber at work fort 14 hours, and then next day only for three to make up for it. i say quit if they go on a schedule
We had Flex at AT&T when I worked for Keane. You could work 45 hours for two weeks and get a day off the next week. This gave you time to do all those chores that usually require a day off like going to see your parole officer. We were consultants so AT&T didn't like it that much but it was a great recruiting tool and kept people in the office more. Plus we were oncall so we were required to work the day if needed with no makeup day. Win-win for the company.
Of course, they ditched it eventually and suffered a boatload of turnover for it. I found that some of our management only gargled at the fountain of knowledge.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Your office needs a key holding system and needs to pay to have security available etc for longer hours (if the office is normally shut up and turned off after a certain time
However, to the crux of it, I couldn't work where I do without it. I commute 50 miles in and out each day. I could drive, only with the local road network, it would generally take just as long so I get the train. Trains are unreliable and even if I got up early and tried my hardest, I think the earliest I'd be in is generally 9:30. With Flexi time it allows your workplace to have a wider choice of employees from different areas, and, if they commute by train, then they can work on the train too.
Most importantly, programming-type work is very unreliable work in terms of time. Generally, something takes up your time towards the end that you didn't expect. By having a flexi-time system, the employee can work extra hours on getting it fixed (as you generally need to sort such problems ASAP before you forget your train of thought) and just take a few hours off later. For instance, finishing early on a Friday
However, certain roles don't lend themselves well to flexi-time. Telesales, Reception, and most Customer Service roles require a number of member of staff to be available between certain hours. Most other jobs will work to flexi-time, as long as it isn't abused (e.g. coming in at 1pm and finishing at 9-9:30pm).
One thing I can say is that fixed hours usually allow you getting payed for overtime. Especially in IT there are moments when one has to pull overtime a lot - during weeks in a row (can you spell "oh-my-god-we-need-to-roll-this-out-by-yesterday-o r-sky-is-going-to-fall -on-us"? I know you can). In many of these cases overtime can be considered as a saction to poor management or clueless managers.
Now, if you're doing flex time - depending on the amount of bogons in PHB's head - you may wind up doing same or more overtime but this time for free. Guess who's winning?
Then again - if they're aware that happy workers are more productive than disgruntled ones - they may well have some clues about efficient management.
On the other hand - flex time vs. fixed time may well be a problem of age and habit. I for one am at the age when I could use some extra-money and so I am willing to do extra-hours without much fuss. It will come the time when personal comfort and age and other problems (like kids and such) get to have higher priority than work and money you get from doing over-time - it is then when you get to appreciate flex time.
Bottom line to this is - if they are bastards and get to take bad decisions that require overtime work - make sure you charge them accordingly. If they continue in error - abandon ship - it doesn't worth your health/time/gray-matter to bother with such lusers anyways. If they are nice however - talk to your manager and see if you can work it out in a way both will be satisfied. Managers in posession of clues are known for their understanding of things and kindess.
Ino!~
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Click here to win a free 66G VXA tape drive
Most people evaluate flex time from inside the company. Looked at from outside it can have significant environmental implications.
1) It can have a negative impact in that the building is required to host 'users' for more of the day. More A/C, lighting, etc.. (Realistically, few buildings throttle down much during marginal occupancy. E.g. the cleaning crew turns on all the lights anyway. E.g. for short periods it actually costs more to let the tempertature fluctuate.)
2) It can have a positive impact on external systems, as the load is spread out. E.g. water, power, sewer, network.
3) The big one (at least from my point of view dealing with traffic systems) is on commuting. First, shifting workers off-peak decreases the peak load and makes the commute easier for everyone else. Second, it makes the commute much easier for those off-peak workers.
There are disproportionate effects on emissions (and fuel comsumption). Faster commute means the engines are running for a shorter time, plus there is less idle or start-up time, both of which are high-emission/high comsumption operating modes.
4) The company can gain PR points through the use of flex time for the above reasons, and it might be convinced to keep some divisions on it for that purpose.
You can't take the sky from me!
I don't know about most doctors, but mine has appointments starting at 7. I've often had quick appointments and gotten into work by 8:30 or 9.
I find it really hard to choose a Doctor sometimes. Maybe here's another thing to remember to ask about.
-Jordan Henderson
"How many people have been at a meeting that went nowhere because "someone" was "taking thier day"."
Ths could apply just as much to annual leave or sickness as flexitime. Perhaps we should ban those as well...
In the organisation I'm in (UK Government) flexitime is allowed, but is down to the policy of the individual section as to whether they operate it or not. But there are 'core hours' (10am-12pm and 2pm-3:30pm). Most important meetings tend to be held in those hours, with folks getting on with the non-co-operative stuff outside those hours. Although there does seem to be a long hours culture in the organisation, there are supposed to be limits to how long people actually work (not before 7am or after 7pm, and you have to take at least 30 mins lunchbreak) The nice thing is, you can take a 2hour lunchbreak if you make up the time.
On the whole it all works pretty well and I think people are more apprecuiative of the fact they are given the responsibility of managing their own hours, rather than being treated like children who have to be in bed on the dot of a certain hour.
I've worked in both a very large company, and a very small company, both of which used flex time. An important aspect to keep things working smoothly, and yet accomodate various people's schedules is to maintain some "core hours" where everyone is expected to be in for meetings and such. For example, 10-3 are core hours, with people coming in early and leaving at 3, or coming in at 10 and leaving late. It just takes the effort of letting your manager and team know when you expect your regular hours to be, so that they can know when to start knocking on your office door.
Of course there is always the chance that someone will abuse the core hours, coming in at 3pm, but even this can work as long as they make a point of coming in during the core hours for scheduled meetings. (Unscheduled meetings are a problem though...) The 3pm'er on one of my teams actually worked out well, because I could identify bugs all morning, and he'd fix them after I went home. And you just didn't schedule meetings until 1pm if you could avoid it. (Which coincidentally made the rest of us happy as well. There's nothing like a bad morning meeting to ruin the whole day.)
Whether or not this will work depends upon the type of work you're doing. If people can be primarily self motivated, you don't depend on constant face-to-face team interactions, little "on-call" customer support is required, and status meetings etc can be scheduled in advance, this should work fine. Otherwise, your mileage may vary.
The best arguments for this are a relaxed atmosphere and employee satisfaction. You aren't worried when you are running a little late due to traffic, in fact you can work your hours to avoid bad traffic. You are free to take care of errands or medical appointments in the mornings or afternoons.
Flextime has been one of the big requirements for me as I've looked for jobs, and I expect you're not the only one at your company that values your flextime. Let your managers know just how big an issue it is for you and your coworkers. If they value their employees, and it is desired by enough of them, they may change their minds about taking it away.
It would probably help if you can find out the reasons management would like to get rid of your flex time and then address their concerns rather then come up with your own arguments. Is it an accounting problem, is there a morale problem in other divisions because they don't have flextime, ECT. Once you find out why management wants to end it, address those specific reasons and then demonstrate the benefits they as managers receive from employee flex time,like increased productivity, higher morale, less unscheduled sick/vacation days. If
it isn't a pissing contest between managers you have a decent shot of keeping it.
Frode!
I have no
A manager went to his programmers and told them: "As regards to your
work hours: you are going to have to come in at nine in the morning and leave
at five in the afternoon." At this, all of them became angry and several
resigned on the spot.
So the manager said: "All right, in that case you may set your own
working hours, as long as you finish your projects on schedule." The
programmers, now satisfied, began to come in a noon and work to the wee
hours of the morning.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Very true. Management should love flex time, people tend to work more with it.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Obviously, this must be good... else tsetsem, like most of us other plodders, wouldn't have time for such an exhaustive summary ;)
There's just no telling....
If flex time is important to you, then quit if they take it away. The job market is booming right now, especially for techies. It is a lot easier to take your talent elsewhere than it is to fight a corporate culture that doesn't suit you.
IMHO you should also gather information if paid overtime (GASP!) when working shift is an option.
For the management types the agument may sound: shift time makes you organize your time better.
--
For a long time I've really enjoyed working when I feel like it. Basically since it allows me to get out of bed at 10:00 instead of 7:00, but I've finally come to notice the greatest disadvantage of flexi-time (we use the British terminology in South Africa) is that I'm never quite sure when the jobs done. When and when my private life starts and my job finishes is quite important to my mental health and working fixed time puts all this resposibility on my employer and leaves me free to work hard when I work, and play hard when I play. (Maybe I should rather be doing psych than math...;)
- Carnun, Son of Danu -
"Existentialism lead to nihilism. Nihilism lead to dancing"
Markee, your fears are justified. I once worked at a company that used flextime combined with competitive performance reviews; e.g. your performance was determined relative to your peers, so everybody knew they were in direct competition. In addition, they always set extremely ambitious deadlines. The end result was that work hours automatically shot up to the maximum level the human body could withstand -- without management ever having to say, "you must work x hours per week" or anything like that. People came in early, stayed late, worked every weekend, slept in the office, ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner at work, and pulled all-nighters. People were unhappy but the system absolutely worked. The employees were unbelievably motivated (at least until they burn out and get fired) and the company was extremely successful.
This post covers the issue quite well. In addition, flex-time can help with commuting. I prefer to arrive at 6:30. I can make my 28 mile commute; from my driveway, to the parking garage, and up to the 13th floor; in under 40 minutes on the average. If I HAD to work normal 8-5 hours; the traffic would be horrendous. In the winter on a snow day, its nearly unacceptable. That, in itself, would certainly have a negative effect on my disposition once I finally arrived to work.
Communication on a project is important and communicating across flex-time schedule differences can be a productivity bottleneck.
I think most agree that techies like the idea of very flexible hours. At our lab, we have about half techies and half "regular" staff. The regular staff complain significantly when any little perk is given to a tech person (ie flex time etc) even though it may not be appropriate for the "regular" staff. Any thoughts on this? Just tell the "regular" staff to accept things? (Split the two groups into two rooms? Not really all that easy.) Thoughts? C
This discussion is useful and timely, as we are investigating possible avenues for flextime.
:)
Unfortunately, in a company of 75 employees that is basically a manufacturing plant for lower end retail advertisement there is not much payroll room for support personnel. The groupthink described above became necessitated by a very many people needing constant access to the brains of few. I imagine this is more common outside industries that are focused on technology, but instead use it to facilitate many processes.
The need for overtime hours has been ameliorated during my reign as local techie through the use of advanced graphics technologies and smarter manufacturing techniques. Still, we work in a business that keeps us constantly in touch with our clients. Contact is not limited to a select group of CSR's, but instead spread throughout the worker population. Customer contact will always triumph over flex-time. A change in manufacturing model could offer some assistance as could some more advanced communications technologies. For now, though, it is all about grinding the hours. At least it pays well
I hear you on that. I was working a job where I had to pick up the slack from losing two people. I was coming in at 6:30 am and leaving at 8 or 9 pm for a large chunk of time. One week after several months of this schedule, I took off at 4pm a couple days in a row (still coming in before 7). My manager pointed this out to me as bad behaviour. I don't work there any more.
In Japan, one very good argument you could make involves two trends:
In a common case where the elderly mother/father lives together with the family, a degree of freedom is often necessary to deal with certain problems that might pop up.
Child care is another good point; but elderly care doesn't follow the same types of schedule that is usually involved with school-aged children, and thus requires even more flexibility.
I know when I get rolling on a project I can go for hours, so why not take the next thursday off. to make up for the time.
Although, the drawback to flex time is you always feel like there is never a good time to take time off. Once you get past the stumbling block that you _always_ have to do something, then flex time gets to be pretty nice.
I think too many of us feel the pressures of IT mounting and feel as though we _have_ to work 12 hour days. If projects are late and you are working 12 hour days, there is a need for more employees on the projects (usually).
Let your boss know it's just not going to work that way, they won't fire you, cause they already are short handed. You might even get promoted for being so straight forward.
Take every last second of your vacation time or IT will kill you.
</rant>
AF-Design, web development.
I would hazard a guess that some of the companies that require fixed schedules are managed by the same sort of people who gave us geeks such trouble in high school.
I think that the underlying meme is "everybody ought to be the same". Differences are not situations to be worked around to mutual advantage, but are potential problems that must be elminated.
(I worked with the military as a civilian expert for 18 years. They don't encourage differences. Gave me quite the perspective.)
-Eldurbarn
i think you mean PHB, not boss. in my book, boss isn't synonymous with idiot.
believe it or not, there are actually some supervisors in the world who don't micromanage and spew dilbertisms every which way.
i think you *might* be thinking of comp time. you know, you work a few extra hours one day, you make upfor it by getting time off later in the week in lieu of paying you overtime.
as far as doing personal work in office time, i've never heard of employers specifically allowing that, unless you've stayed past your 'shift' and and thus on your own time. however, i've had jobs where any time you spend in the office should be spent doing office work. (they frowned on my quake marathons. drat!)
further, with comp time, you can only take that time off when the workload allows - so if you have something to do, sure. blow it off today but you better come in over the weekend.
I've read a lot of people going on about the positive aspects of flex-time, but I think many would agree, there are a few negative aspects as well.
I work in a job that allows flex-time, and I'll admit I generally like the flexibility. But, quite frankly, I'm one of those people that needs either the stress of a deadline or to be forced to sit in front of my terminal to feel very motivated. Usually then I feel very motivated, so I get a lot done, however.
One thing that working a job with regular hours (which were still semi-flexible, but much more rigid than I have now) was that I got a tremendous amount done. I still make all my deadlines (or at least most of them), but before I'd hit my deadlines early and with flying colours... That's one thing I miss about my old job, the attention one tends to recieve when one does an excellent, as opposed to just a good, job.
Now I find myslef trying to make appointments with co-workers, etc. just to ensure that I go into the office regularly. I swear I'm ready to block Slashdot from my web browser so that I stay on task when I'm there.
In short, flex-time only works if you're not a brutal procrastinator, which I am. I think that a system that expects fairly regular hours, but is willing to give a little (or a lot sometimes) is a much better alternative for some of us.
If my enemy's enemy is my friend, what happens if my enemy is his own worst enemy?
...so my experience is rather different. I work a support desk that is open 7am to 9pm mon Friday. My shift is 10am to 9pm 4 days a week. Initially this came about due to our lack of staffing, coupled with a requirement we have french coverage during core hours (which menat our frnach analysts could not work the late shift).
Our manager implmented a plan to cross-train less technical analysts to cover the night shift, but found they just don't have the skills to provide the support required by our clients.
At first I thought my skills were being wasted, and not used at all on Fridays, but I realized due to the lack of skill in our cross-trained analysts, having me there during most of the core hours (to take calls and assist other analysts), plus having me there to cover 6-9pm mon-thur solo means our clients get good support.
Do I mind? Not really, though I get a bit burnt out by thursday evening, I get to recharge Friday, and enjoy the weekend.
Is this really flex-time? I dunno, not very flex really I suppose, as I didn't choose it. Still, offers another perspective on somewhat non-traditional staffing.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
you've never worked in the printing industry have you, I spent a large part of this last summer in quarter-crew conditions, due to absenteism and goofing off
Read my plan to save the Bengals
1. The age old reason: programmers are happier working in flexible environments not just flexible time
2. Communication is important, but unecessary distraction by unscheduled interruptions kills productivity. Schedule meetings when necessary and make those the only required times.
3. Most of the developers I know like to work at night(when there are less distrations around.)
4. You cannot expect someone to show up at 9:00 am after working all night.
5. This is a job hunters market - I cannot afford to lose a talented developer due to old traditional practices.
Firstly, I was at the Scottish Prison Service. Their flexi-time was a kinda bondage-and-discipline set-up, left over from the old Scottish Home & Health Department days. It demoralised employees and took away from the job satisfaction simply because it wasn't flexible enough. As a contracter I just had to work 09:00-17:00 (with o/t), and I found that the temps were happier than the permanent staff.
My second experience was with the Registers of Scotland Executive Agency. Their set-up was that you had to work a minimum of 37 hours per week, and that you (generally) couldn't start before 07:00 or finish after 18:30. Apart from that you were your own boss regarding time. Of course, if you wanted to start after 09:00, leave before 15:00, or have a half day, you had to speak to your line-manager, but they were pretty good about this. The other advantage was that you could work as much overtime as you liked up to 55 hours per week. All-in-all the employees were really happy with their jobs. In fact, it didn't feel like a job; it felt more like something you went to and did in the day because you enjoyed it. Of course the money was good too, but the flexi-time was the big bonus.
Må jeg få en tjener? www.nine9.ukshells.co.uk
Since then, I've been less lucky, but having a family constrains your time anyways, so it is less of a drag than it could be. Also, I do little coding anymore - I'm a database geek. This means I am in high demand, yet often in places that tend to be very firm about hours. The net effect is, there aren't enough people who want to cover the early shift, so I tend to let myself get stuck with it.
So now I work as a contractor in a very rigid large .mil, get up at 3fricking30 in the morning, vanpool an hour, and deal with the problems that have already arisen from the people there an hour before me. flextime and most especially telecommuting are very foreign concepts to management, yet they have given me grief for leaving to get the vanpool on time with an outstanding problem I could solve in 5 minutes from home. But people tell me it used to be much worse - there's an unpredictable freeway bottleneck getting to work, and they used to dock people for being late because of that!
So what the hell, I'm making big bucks and getting home while it is still daylight. So I'm not as productive as I could be - who cares? Productivity as the be-all and end-all encourages management abuse of the system, like exempt (from anti-slavery laws) workers and cutting overtime for technical workers. Those greedy bastards in the silicon valley! I finally get a sweet overtime deal, and they cut it in the name of "productivity." How the hell is that supposed to make me productive? It just makes me not care so much to work overtime! Then they just get cheap H1B labor from overseas anyways. But I don't have to care about that, because they always realize eventually (after the disasters) that they need someone who can communicate and is willing to work the unwanted hours.
Oracle and unix guy.
At the place where I work, we were given flex time with a condition: Our manager was okay with whatever schedule we came up with, as long as we put in our hours and make sure that SOMEONE is here during the required coverage hours. It makes things extremely flexible, and yet provides the coverage that the managers want.
Our company has a flex time policy, similar to a comment I read here. It is loosly based around employees being present between the core hours of 9-3, then only that a 40 hour work week (more if projects deem so) be met. If more is required, then there is an unspoken policy that comp time can be taken. It all evens out, and makes it much easier for us to feel like we can take care of "the things in life" that always need to be taken care of, like doctor's appts., dentist appts, parent - teacher conferences, etc, without thinking that we will be late for work, since we can just stay later, or come in earlier. I for one, love flex time, just because it lets me have more flexibility when things come up that I can't schedule weeks or months in advance.
And if you negotiate well you may even be able to ensure that overtime is fairly charged in a flex time enviro.
:wq
In today's world it only works with flex-time. If an employer doesn't have it, then workers will be taking an hour here and there of vacation time to take care of some problem. With flex-time, if I run late, I simply arrive and work later. Without it both I and the company lose an hour.
And usually the fixed times are such that you must drive during the worst periods of heavy traffic so are more likely to have accidents, and you come to work frazzled.
And there you get the real reason that many companies aren't so hot about flex time; it makes things easier for workers at the (apparent) expense of managers. Since the managers are the ones making the decision about whether or not to go to flex time, their opinion may be very different from that of regular employees. That suggests that if you want to convince your company to switch to flex time, you need to figure out an argument for how it will make managing easier, not for how it will make life easier for employees.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Having a flex schedult reduces turnover.
I don't know where you live but here in California, turnover is pretty high. Company with flex time have lower turnover rate. This reason speaks to the companies many motivation, money. It cost a lot to higher/train someone and get them up to speed.
My favorite schedule to date is 9/80. 9 hours mon-thurs 8 hours friday, 9 hours mon-thurs fri off.
having every other friday off is sweet.
If flex time is the only thing keeping you there, I would start calling your contacts, prepare a resume and give them all the good reasons list, and tell them you'll leave. Since your reason for leaving is because there changing the rules on you, i wouldn't even be to concerned about giving 2 weeks. But thats me, and I've been screwed by plenty of companies who said there would be no downsize, then be let go the next day for downsizing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"I have a question for you but you don't seem to be around. I'll try to sort it out myself, but if i can't, then i'll contact you tomorrow."
That will get them!!!
P.S. Naturaly you always manage to sort those things out ...
Oh... so you may not be allowed to start working at 7:00am anymore?!?
--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Flex time tripled the number of LAN games (Quake and the such). Didn't last long.
Exactly like Tsetum said... The BEST reason a software company should offer flextime is because if they don't... Someone else will. If they are that archaic in handling their high-demand employees... WALK! And make sure you tell them why during the exit interview.
For those of us who are real night owls, and those who are so much night owls that they qualify as sleep disorders, flex time is a fantastic blesssing.
In fact, I sometimes end up working flex time at places that do not offically support it.
Insomniacs, delayed and advanced sleepers of the world unitie! Why should we be persecuted for our biology!!
The key purpose that I see for flex time is that it fosters creativity. There are times when ideas and solutions seem to stop similar to writer's block. If you have freedom with flex time, then you alleviate one of the stressors that prevent you from working in the first place. Does it really matter when I solve a problem?
Another purpose is simple respect. Here's the goal, report in when you reach it. Our work is not built on the military metaphor with structured organization. If we were in a factory, it applies. But if you are in the high tech field, you need freedom to be creative which is a perfect match for flex time.
At the place where I work, Camp Susque we have to schedule things down to the very minute because of how hectic things can get. Unfortunately, these beautifally laid out schedules often go awry, because people forget to ring the bells signifying the time to move on to the next thing on the schedule. So, everything gets moved and we have to change schedules to fit everything in. Basically, any schedule is not laid in stone and is fairly flexible...and everything works out in the end. I figure, as long as somone starts work at 9 and ends by 5, the ends justify the means and the scheduling doesn't matter.
The anti-salmon
We have flex time with core hours as well. A well organized company should not need to be chatting with eachother in meetings and the like all day long. As long as there are around 3 - 4 core hours a day, your productivity should only increase.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
What type of business are you in?
What region are you in?
What's the average age of your employees?
I think all 3 of those give widely varying results to scheduling - and none of them are ignorable.
In addition, I have to agree with many previous posts; It takes me about 40 minutes to drive to work, and flex time lets me avoid the traffic. This lead to a happier developer, which leads to more productivity, blah, blah, blah.
Personally I like it. It allows the developers a good bit of freedom and does keep the morale up (a good thing considering the fact that we have to deal with a union that does not want us here). In addition we also give comp time so that any hours over the standard 40 are logged as extra vacation time. This works out well for me when I want to do stupid things like take a weekend trip to Tokyo.
Prof. Frink: "Here is an ordinary square."
Cheif Wiggum: "Whoa, whoa. Slow down, egghead!"
- Do my company's customers expect/require the affected staff to be available at certain times? If so, flex-time may itself need flexibility, i.e., your company may need core hours. If you're a sysadmin running a website, you're on call 24/7, anyway, so flextime is a laughable reality. If you run the MIS helpdesk, you must deal with the iron discipline of the clock. If you're a programmer or web developer working on a website, you probably don't have to even show up in the office most of the time, let alone suffer from designated work hours.
- How self-motivating are the people affected by flextime? If they are very motivated, you will see a net gain from flex-time; people like that tend to take home work anyway. If they are not very motivated, the results will be mixed. If there are morale problems or you have legions of slackers, you will get negative returns as they go to the gym or raise their kids on your nickel.
I have worked for companies where they had 10/4 (ten hour days, four days a week) schedules, and the net result was that the motivated people were there on the long "weekend" that resulted anyway. The ones that weren't motivated became clock-watchers four days a week. Similarly, my ex-employer went for a 9/9 schedule (nine hours per day, nine days per two week period with every other Friday off), and this also resulted in much bogus absenteeism. Of course, they already had a serious problem with morale because of their command and control mentality. Another experience: Hughes Aircraft, another former employer, tried mandatory ten hour day five days a week for all salaried employees just before I started there in 1987. The net result was those people putting in 60 hour weeks cut back, and nothing got done!In general, I think flextime is a good idea. It makes retaining smart people easier. But you have to balance that against the needs of the customers, internal and external.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Where I work, we have flex time and overtime pay if it's authorized. So, the two are not mutually exclusive. We have 40 hour work weeks, no matter how you add it up, so flex time is a great benefit for the employees. Occasionally, the department might have to stay late one or two days to meet a deadline, but that is either made up by having Friday off (or partial, depending on the number of hours) or by giving an extra $6/hour for exempt employees. Wage earners get time and a half. Btw, fixed or flex hours, if you are on salary, you are considered exempt and your company is not required by law to pay overtime. Of course, you aren't required to stay with that company either.
As for your other points:
1. You can do peronal work in office time, if it's a flex time. You can move around
You might be able to do personal work in the office, but it's your time (at least if you're honest about it).
2. Weekends are not free when you work in flex time. you gotta finish off the things you are supposed to do but you did not do because of flex time.
Thats just wrong. If you haven't put in your 40, then you might have to work on the weekend. But, if you have put in your 40, save the work for Monday, it will still be there. If they want you to work beyond 40, they can pay you overtime, but thats with either schedule type.
At my company, we have a flex time policy, and it works great. There are two requirements that blend together nicely with flex time to make life easier for everyone.
1) Core hours. Everyone must be at work during a few certain hours, the rest of the time, they can come and go as they please.
2) Meeting times. You have to show up if a meeting is scheduled.
I wholeheartedly agree.
However, my politician Manager, who just made Vice President after not watching the Team I'm on because he was too busy "promoting" himself to the higher-ups, has decided that I'm a bad apple and need to be on double-secret probation until I've "learned my lesson."
Here's a guy who was tasked with making sure the Team I'm on made its goals. He put the Team Lead in charge, a youngster with no managerial skills, and personality issues that prevent him both from working effectively with others and from taking advantage of these others' very useful skills! The Team Lead failed miserably, and the Manager got a promotion, a nice corner office, and (most likely) a bundle of stock and a big raise.
It's no wonder everybody on the Team got a bad performance appraisal this year. Which means less stock and salary for the little guys -- which of course means there's more to go around "up there." (Their behavior is not lost on me; I'm learning to play politics myself. But I've got nowhere to go at that company -- they've made sure I have a reputation as a loose cannon, and they're doing everything they can to promote that because it helps their agenda, somehow.)
Those who are reading this know who I am. So know this: I got stock and salary this year. Both of which were above the average -- and some people got nothing. If I was rewarded, then how can my performance be so abysmal that I need to be subjected to Performance Counseling, and forced into fixed hours which are simply not possible with the insomnia my psychiatrist has diagnosed me with? It's obvious to me I'm being rushed out the door.
It's also obvious to my attorney.
This situation had better go away over this coming weekend, or there will be Hell to pay. The attorney's not cheap; why be on the defensive when there's a pot of gold if you pull the trigger? (Retaliation three days after you make Management aware of a very serious problem will be acknowledged by a jury -- which will significantly reward the victim, who is out of a job either way.)
Back to the point: flex time is a wonderful thing. As long as you are exceeding your expectations (and are not pushed into a corner and then constantly interrupted), then it shouldn't matter if you come in late, or even if you come in at all! Why waste resources when you can do more with less? (I.e., gas, time driving, the expense of maintaining an office and a parking lot, a corporate network, etc. -- just pay for ADSL for your employees, and let them work from home. They don't work out? Firing them's a lot easier when they're not on site to pull a completely different kind of trigger.)
I'll have my own company soon. And I'll treat the employees like black boxes. It won't matter to me if they're tripping on acid -- as long as they're achieving more than I expect of them, I'll be happy with their performance.
The company I work for used to be like that. It isn't now. And the stock's down. Coincidence?
They'd like us to think so.
--
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
If you're not registering your time, how in the world does the accounting department capitalize the software you develop? Or maybe that's only for software that gets sold and you're working on internal systems? CalamityJ
OK, How many of us, if given flextime, would be working a straight 40 hour shift. I know I would. 2 full days worth of work, coupled with an obscene amount of caffeine, and you're off for the rest of the week. I don't know about everyone else, but I certainly wouldn't mind starting my weekend on Wednesday morning...
The best story I can tell ya is that our dept got flex time. Core hours 11a-3p. So you could come in at 6 and leave at 3. Get all your hours in. That lasted 6 months.....management didn't think we were productive enough and said a) core is 11a-4p b) We ( employees) were not doing flex time right....we were supposed to stick to 8a-5p and 'occassionally' ( monthly) come in at 7a or 6a or 11a. Total bullshit of course. Has productivity increased?????
At the company I work for we have a pritty good flexy time policy, the start of the day is between 8 and 11 and the end of the day between 4:30 and 8(the next morning;->) were all on fixed rate pay with no over time allowence, but if any one takes the morning off they have the option of working the difference of taking it as holiday.
The mood in the comapany is fairly good and productivity is higher that in other fixed shift companies I have worked in, and people tend to work longer.
No one ever gets pissed off in the morning(xcpt with daylight saving) and kids can be collected from school. Holidays are also seen as important things to take you can tell the difference when someone comes back from holiday after working solid for 3-4 months.
If they do change your working pattern then i do them mental torture.I don't know what japanise couts are like but if there anything like american ones appear to be then your quids in.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I likewise am in the same situation. If production isn't what matters than something is seriously wrong. What compelling arguments can one really create for why programmers should be on defined schedules?
We've decided that after a point, time is more important than money.
Hear, hear! I would rather make $60k with a 10-minute commute than $80k with an hour commute. Some things are just worth more. What is that $20k if I'm too tired to enjoy my off-time?
I much rather take 1 day a week off to take care of personal stuff and work it off on Sunday or Saturday as i see fit, rather then have a lot of "flex time". This is what iv been doing lately at my job (im a programmer, VB/ASP/COM) so i could take that time during the week to take care of speeding tickets, dentist appointments, and car repairs.
But i also think that employers should allow workers to be able to come in to work a little late (early) and therefore leave later (earlier) if they need to. This is especially great for all us 19 year olds that stay out with their friends till 12-1 every night, and can't make it to work by 9am. (Or have to leave early some days due to other more specific reasons)
I had flextime at my last job at americrap, and it was great. All the other people were FORCED to show up at 6:45, but I could come in as late as 8:30. We could also take a long lunch, and go to lunch whenever we wanted! (The "normal" people had to take a half-hour lunch at 11:30.) I have flextime at my current job too, and I absolutely love it! I think it's great for employee morale (not having to worry if you get stuck in traffic, for instance). It's also good for the employee-boss relationship (not having to deal with the "I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU ONE MORE TIME AND YOUR FIRED!!!!" crap).
We have a window of about 2 and a half hours in which we can show up, and most people show up within a 1 hour window anyway, so it really *isn't* an inconvenience to the workplace.
"It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it."
Time is fun when you're having flies.
-Kermit the Frog
"No way man, it's 6. I'm leavin'..."
_ The bureaucracy is expanding to meet
the needs of an expanding bureaucracy.
I work for a company that allows flex time up to 120 minutes. Meaning...regular buisness hours for our company are 8am-5pm, but most of our engineers, designers, shop workers and general production workers are allowed to show up 120 minutes past 8am (as long as they stay the same amount of time past 5pm). Only the front office workers who answer the phone and such have to be there to open. This works out very well for most people because life does not always happen on a set schedule. What if your kid gets sick or misses the bus? You WILL be late someday. A flex schedule let's employees know that the company trusts them to get their work done and feels that they are responsible enough to not have someone telling them where to be and when.
"This goes out to those that smoke out the bong..." -Busta Rhymes
According to a recent report, the actual amount of time spent working by flexi-time workers varies considerably, with a range from 32-300% of a shift based work pattern.
The obvious conclusionm is to persuade the company that all the slackers who are only working at 50% efficiency should be sacked. This would give a better average efficiency, and higher morale amongst the hard workers. It also means that flexi-time benefits the company
I'm sure it sounds good to clueless management, but whether they say you can stop tracking your time or not, under most state laws they are still required to pay you for any overtime worked.
Exempt employees are, of course, exempt, but if they were having to pay you OT before, they'll still have to pay you OT in the future--or you can refuse to work it. It will be in your own interest to keep track of time worked whether they require it or not.
No relation to Happy Monkey
Here are some interesting articles that might be used as ammunition for flex time... http://www.heritage.org/library/categories/regulat ion/fyi132.html
http://www.womans-work.com/flex-time_policy.htm
http://www.readingeagle.com/krt/business/benefits/ html/2b.htm
and just to be fair,
http://www.zonecommunications.com/july00_7/employe rs_7.htm
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
Personally I feel like I have more control over what I do and it takes some of the pressure off not having to clock in and clock out. I feel it's more productive
My boss has implemented this concept of core hours for me (I say "for me" because I am my company's only employee. The other 3 are the owners and my bossi.). I think it's a happy comprimise. Essentially, I have to be in the office from 10:30 to 2:30 everyday (all meetings are conveniently scheduled in that time). So half my hours are fixed, the other half (or... well... three fifths, really) are flex. It keeps everyone happy here, but, like I said, I'm the only one in the position to complain. :)
To elaborate on each of the points:
Working more time than non-flexWhen you're working flex-time, it's very easy to put in extra hours. Frequently you're not watching the clock and it's easy to come in to work at 10am, figuring you'll leave at 7pm, only to find that one more bug just as you're ready to leave, and then you find you're still at work at 6am. While this is great from a short-term productivity standpoint, in the long-term it can lead to burnout. Having everyone leave the office at the same (or nearly the same) time means that you have a cue that it's time to leave. If something is critical, you can stay late, but it's easier to know when it's time to leave, especially when no crisis is brewing, and in the long run, that helps avoid burnout.
It's not as flexible as you might thinkOne of the biggest frustrations I had with flex-time was people who would schedule meetings near the end of core hours (those hours when everyone must be in the office). When (as seems inevitable) the meeting runs long, instead of being able to escape the office before rush-hour, you've missed the window for an easy commute, and you might as well stay another few hours. Similarly, people who schedule meetings at the beginning of core-hours want their meetings to start on time, so you have to plan to get there at least a half-hour earlier. Both of these meeting effects reduce the flexibility of flex-time.
Wasted time because schedules don't meshAnd finally, what do you do when you're one of the people on the late shift and you need to talk to someone on the early shift who's already left for the day? When the thing you need to talk about is something that's blocking you from getting anything done, you go home early, having put in a short day, and the project you're working on is delayed by a day. Alternately, the person who was in early and left early gets called back in to the office to help with the problem, and it's the same effect as if they'd gotten caught in a late meeting
The one thing these all have in common is that they can be dealt with by competent management, but there are far too many companies that lack such management. Then you start running into problems like this with flex-time, which causes either burnout, or just plain resentment.
It's much simpler for a company to manage fixed-hours than it is to manage flex-time. If the quality of the staff isn't up to handling the challenges of managing flex-time, it may be a better solution to have fixed hours.
The last place I worked asked us to be in from 11:00-16:00 every day, but everything else was up to us. This seemed like a fair comprimise (people could schedule meetings but we didn't have to punch in and out), and no one complained about the core. I was definitely more productive from 10-noon, but a lot of people had their best hours late at night. Forcing everyone on to the same schedule seems like a no-win situation: the employees are unhappy and the company gets less productivity.
--- On the other hand, you have five fingers.
I have worked factory time, I'm now a systems engineer on a flexible schedule. I'd have to say that I much prefer flex time. I get more work done by far, I actually see my family and friends on a regular basis. I also don't take advantage of the system, they get at least 40 a week from me. The reason the Homer Simpsons of the world work a set schedule is that every aspect of their job depends on everyone else being there at the same time. You can't exactly have an assembly line function if half the people haven't shown up yet. I don't think it's a matter of preference for people in that position, it's a matter of necessity...
Rack up the hours early. I like getting a few 'spare' hours on account early in the week ... that way, if something comes up unexpectedly, I can deal with it (e.g. car breakdown, sick kid). If something bad _doesn't_ come up, I take off early on Friday afternoon. (OK, I maintain a min of 44 hours before splitting, but that's generally done by Thursday evening). I tend to get in early, and leave late, to avoid rush hour traffic ... leaving early on a Friday has the same benefit.
Lunch. Most days, I'm quite happy to inhale my food at my desk while I type. I don't need or want a full hour. If I get in at six, I can leave at two, not three. Mandatory lunch 'hours' are for sales reps and managers. Those of us who don't need to network over beer'n'nachos at the local sports bar are quite happy to forego the time off in the middle of the day, effectively getting the same hour at the end of the day instead.
Leave and sicktime aren't the only problems. So are other meetings and obligations.
Of course, this is avoided when you schedule meetings around people rather than scheduling people around meetings. Fixed scheduled meetings only work when everybody involved has the same hours and obligations. If not, they end up as little power games between the people scheduling the meetings.
In other words, how many people have been at a meeting that went nowhere becauses "someone" was "in another meeting that was more important".
Setting the granularity in hours or minutes just means that accounting must be done for every meeting and conversation and which project it was on or what percent of it was on which project. Unless you are in an industry that bills customers by the hour, the overhead outweighs any benefits. After all, who sets their ship date as Thursday, November 16th at 4:37 PM?
...on team projects. It is hard to meet face to face on an ad-hoc basis that way.
For people that work alone to a deadline, it should be fine. But how many people really work independently?
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
in my opinion anyway.
at least with flexitime you get the option. if i was on flexitime i would stay working 9-5.30 most days, but sometimes you just need more than the (half) hour at lunch to like go to the bank or post office or something without ruining your lie-in on saturday morning. where i work noone will mind if you do spend an extra half hour or something out of the office anyway, but it's still better to be on flextime so noone is inconvenienced.
---
---
Never send a man where you can send a bullet.
I'm a civilian at a law enforcement agency. The officers generally work fixed shifts of 4x10's. Hourly civilian employees work 5x8's. Most groups within the department let salaried civilians (i.e. me) work 9/80's: eight 9-hour days (72 hrs) + one 8-hr day for 80 hours in 9 days: I get every other Monday off.
It is flexing because it's not 4x10 or 8x5 and I have some flexibility in my sched: I officially work 7-5, but my real hours are more like 7:15-5:30. My boss is cool with this and she's very flexible in letting my move my off-day up or back a week or several days to accomodate trips or whatever.
My preference would be working 4x10 and having every Monday off, but the Big Boss thinks that 4x10 leads to programmer burn-out. I guess he doesn't realize that there is little difference between being here 9 hours and 10 hours and that we're already all burned-out.
So, a hearty YES! to flex-time. The best hours I ever worked as a programmer was 10-7pm. No rush-hour traffic, sleep in late, and I was guaranteed 2 hours a day of no interruptions.
(alas, we cannot telecommute due to security regs, but telecommuting is a big factor in flex time)
--
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
Meeting scheduling doesn't have to be difficult depending on your groupware system. If everyone maintains their personal meeting schedule, or knows that their group meets every other Tuesday from 2-4, there's no prob. If your groupware can read other people's schedules to check availability, then you're good.
But if you're relying on emails and voice mails to schedule a meeting, you're in trouble. Too much info can get forgotten: use email and a good group scheduler.
--
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
It also means that he can be more responsible, and work the hours he is most fit - some days he goes in very early, while other days he doesn't get in until well over an hour after other employees.
It saves us childcare expenses, tears, and hassles. Our employer saves money, but more to the point, employee retention is high, even though salaries are not top-notch.
We've decided that after a point, time is more important than money.
Wait a second...I didn't realize that 'flex-time' was equivalent to additional days off, a.k.a. a separate reservoir (sp) of vacation.
What's this Submit thingy do?
Although my firm has official rigid working hours, there's a certain amount flexibilty and toleration.
Flexible working hours means I sometimes arrive a little later than I should do, but maybe I also leave a lot later than I should.
By making hours more rigid, they could be assured that I turned up on time, and be assured that I left on time as well.
-- Hob - Java Spectrum Emulator
Employees, on the whole, prefer flexitime.
Correction, you and me may prefer it that way, but there are hordes of employees being extremely happy at working 9 to 5, 5 days a week, and not having to think about scheduling their time. Go work in a factory for a little while and check the way the average Homer Simpson reasons...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Ahh, such an Utopian thought. You know it, I know it, my boss knows it. What else is there to say...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Cripes, you're right. How did I do that? And even worse, why didn't the second one go down as -1 redundant?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Either way, it's still WORK. Even if you develop a pattern that's outside of the normal 9-5, you're still going to be looking at the clock for the last hour or so waiting to get home.
If that's the way you get through your working day, you should stop reading Slashdot and start reading the ads. There are jobs out there where WORK can actually be quite entertaining...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Either way, it's still WORK. Even if you develop a pattern that's outside of the normal 9-5, you're still going to be looking at the clock for the last hour or so waiting to get home.
If that's the way you get through your working day, you should stop reading Slashdot and start reading the ads. There are jobs out there where WORK can actually be quite entertaining...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
That's not what I'm trying to say, some people don't/can't make their own schedules. These people have to be forced to be in at a certain time and to stay until a certain time. The fact that these people really should get another job has nothing to do with it. It's just that flex-time is a bit difficult for some of us...
PS. I'm definitely not from Florida...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Flex time boosts productivity and moral for simple reasons:
o Employees can exercise, attend their kid's school functions or take them to doctors without any hassles.
o Employees like to have a modicum of control over their lives.
o The above results in decreased stress.
o Exercise, and lower stress, leads to lower absenteeism and more energy on the job. And to fewer coworkers going postal.
o It provides the illusion that the employer isn't an organization of pointy-haired jerks.
--
Point two: (Largely negates point one). I worked for a Japanese company for almost 8 years and I think you can safely bet the mortgage money that the decision has been made in Japan and nothing you say will make the least difference.
"Obtuse Anger is that which is greater than Right Anger" - Lewis Carroll
maybe then they will understand a quote from Bridge of the River Kwai.
``Be happy in your work.''
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
Elaborate on this compt time, please. I have a friend who works 55-60 hours a week, week in/week out, because he's salaried. How's comp time work?
I take classes at the local college all the time and flex time enables me to work different hours daily and still make it to these. I get my full work week, they benefit from my improved knowledge. Everyone wins.
The only problem is that some employees think that flex time means working from 9am-1pm PST and taking off from 1pm-6pm and then working from home from 6pm-whenever. Some of our tech support issues need to get escalated to this particular developer, and it totally screws over people on the east coast.
Flex time should have the caveat that you are at work during business hours 75-80% of the time, not just working the night shift all the time.
Or maybe he was one of the disabled people there. There is such a thing as having a physical disability and a high IQ at the same time.
While you have clarified that the gentleman in subject does not have a disability, you are still referring (with your 6th graders example) to mental abilities, not physical handicaps, as I was explaining in the previous post. Also, to use *one* example to make a blanket statement that everyone is doing this for political reasons is kind of scary. (But I will say that I think this whose mess is ridiculous).
I've played on both sides of the management/engineer fence, and have seen the system you describe work, even in some pretty extreme conditions. The problem, from the management point of view, is getting coverage when the job requires coverage. That requires some coordination. I've had to fill in the gaps when someone just didn't show up, and I wasn't at all pleased with that. There can also be a problem when the core hours are too short, because collaboration actually matters, and a lot of the good work gets done in hallways, by the coffee machine, or as the result of random encounters. There are very few technical jobs that you can really do in isolation. Quite a few people seem to think that they can, but that's their lack of social skills talking, not the real needs of the job. So, flextime works just fine if management and employees communicate. But everything else probably works fine too under those conditions. So don't have a slimebag for a boss, and you're all set. If your boss is scum, then by all means, vote with your feet. Nothing else will fix that. Another observation about flextime came from one of my old bosses: "Sure, you can put in your 70 hours a week anytime you like, as long as you're here when you're needed." At the time she said it, I thought it was a joke.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
... unfortunately, I don't have my research library at hand. However, I will try to get back to you with empirical data. Until then, here's a few suggestions: You've already identified one of the main reasons for maintaining the status quo: if you are considering quitting over this, most likely many other employees are as well. Given the cost of recruiting and training new people, eliminating flex time could prove extremely costly. I'd suggest providing The Powers That Be with an off-the-cuff cost-benefit analysis. an informal survey of your work group to get % consider leaving & % likihood that they would consider leaving. Figure in average recruiting (HR man-hours, signing bonuses, advertising - usually $5-10k per hire in tech companies), training, and lost productivity costs and you have a rough estimate of the *immediate* cost of the policy change: # of affected employees x % who would consider leaving x % likelihood of leaving x replacement cost per person You can also point out that a fixed-schedule is not necessitated by your industry. As a rule of thumb, flex-time is not appropriate for industries that need to meet regular, daily deadlines - e.g. finance, education, transportation, broadcasting, etc. - but is of extreme utility in those with sporadic but major deadlines, such as software development. As noted by many others already, it allows workers to satisfactorily meet both personal and work needs. Also, again as noted, flex-time allows for persons with non-standard circadian rhythyms to function more effectively. While 60% of the population naturally is most effective between 9am & 5pm (hence the standard business schedule), 40% does not. In cases where someone's natural biorhythym varies from that scedule by more than 6 hours, forcing them onto it can have a serious impact on productivity. (Think of the problems with workers on 2nd shift...) There's a lot of information available thourgh both the APA (www.apa.org) and the National Institure of Occupational Safety and Health on shiftwork & the benefits of flextime, should you have time to dig. Throwing a bit of research and a few large numbers$ at your managers would definitely help. Good luck, "C" :)
Regardless of the company, productivity is a high priority. Show them how they can "kill two birds with one stone" by increasing productivity and having employee satisfaction. The CEO types really like hearing how they can make themselves look better.
Couldn't agree with you more. I'm on flex with core hours from 11:00 - 5:00. I find it saves me at least 1 hour travel time every day. This definatly makes me a happier and more productive employee. I don't think management is paranoid, just jealous. You see, while they're sitting in rush-hour traffic I'm just getting out of bed. I find that I put more overtime in now too.
I work for a WONDERFUL company called MindVision Software. Here we have kind of a mix of flex time and shift time. Basically, how it goes is you need to be there from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM. They even allow us to come in before 9:00 and stay after 5:00. On a normal work day I choose to come in at 7:30 AM and leave at 5:30. However, when I NEED a day off, I get it. When I need to take off for an hour or two in the afternoon, it's not a problem. The way it works is that the employee shows an actual DESIRE to work at the company by abiding by its rules, and putting forth some extra effort to accomplish your daily job responsibilities. On the other hand, MindVision shows its appreciation by giving us great benefits, giving us an awesome atmosphere, allowing us time to ourselves if we need it. Basically, the point is that we WANT to work here. I don't think being allowed to come in whenever you want is going to make you want to go to work any more, it's just going to allow you to wait 'till the last minute to put in your 8 hours. I think companies seriously need to work to earn their employees' devotion and employees need to seriously work to appreciate the job that they have.
In my position, as a product manager and software developer, my employer offers flex time with no specific times I need to be in. Additionally I can choose to work where I want, so I work at home sometimes, sometimes even at the public library if I wish not to be interupted at all. The reason this is permitted (in my case at least) is because my employers know that with my work ethic I will be in the office when I need to be and will deliver the results that are required, and they don't care what conditions these things are delivered under. E-mail is an important communication tool that replaces quite alot of verbal discussion, with the benefit that these things are in writing. A laptop, cellphone and home phone line for dial-up are supplied and these are sufficient for most of the work I do. The benefits to me of this scheme are: 1. I can spend daytime hours with my young children (3 and 7 months); they are accustomed to me being involved for limited periods during the day. 2. I can assist my wife with the difficult job of managing 2 young energetic children (e.g. I can take my 3 year old to pre-school classes). It was also essential when both our children were first born, since this was a difficult time and it permitted load sharing. 3. My employer still gets the things they want. 4. I probably get a more concentrated work period than most office-workers: I attend very few meetings (we tend not to have many meetings; e-mail is a preferred way of getting things across and having discussions etc. It is not all eutopia, however. Like any busy person with many responsibilities, there is no easy way to balance out all the things that need to be done during the day. So I still find that many days I don't get a long enough burst of work (especially when I'm developing), and many days when work pressures are eating into a fairly stressful domestic life. I know, however, that it would not be any easier to manage if was required to be in the office from 9-5 (or whatever). Cheers.
For years we have had flex time, with a expetation that we work regular hours. Doesn't matter what hours so long as everyone knows when to look for you. That is I work 7-3:30, nobody expects to find me after 4. the guy next to me works 10:30-??? I don't know as I'm never in late enough to see him leave.
Reciently management has been trying to change that. My boss told me flat out one day that he sees no reason to come to the office more then one day a week. He also started nagging me to get DSL or cable, and when he found out those were not avaiable told me to expense out ISDN (which is much more expensive then cable to DSL despite being slower, but and least ISDN is avaiable - though the line has a different area code from my regular phone line)
At the last update my boss's boss's boss told everyone that thing will change. Having the france office do some work is just a dry run, soon we will not pay re-location expenses when hiring someone out of state, we will pay for their home office. We are expected to figgure out how to work with people in different time zone. Part of that is for all of us to work from home at least one day a week.
The point of all this: compition for emploiess is moving into town. Previously there were not many places for a high tech person to work (Minneapolis - CDC and Cray were the big names. Cray has been in trouble for a few years, and CDC isn't the same company that built the Cyber), now Sun is opening a office, and several other companies have already, with the only goal to attrack tech workers. Any company that doesn't compete well for workers will soon find that they have none. (Of course a recession/depression could change that) Flexably schedualing is just one factoring in compeeting for employees, but it is becoming an expected one. So the company can learn to compete now, or they will find that other companys not from their area will be hiring their emploiees. Their choice, my boss is hiring.
BTW, the cynics will point out that by allowing me to work from home I don't get paid to take an extra day off when snow prevents me from getting to work. Previously we got paid without taking vacation for a blizzard.
Reduced use in PTO (personal time off). You can have a Dr. appointment early in the morning or late in the afternoon & not use that time off
If your core hours are 9-3, there's still no time for most doctor appointments: from what I've seen, most don't start until 9, and stop taking appointments at 3, if only to be able to handle the backlog of the day. You still need to get out half-days for these things, but the option is there that employees can make up the 4 hrs in other days if they stay a bit longer or come in earlier.However, this does allow those that need conduct various errands during the normal bankers hours to be able to make those without waiting for a weekend or missing work time. It's also a big boon for employees with children at school, as they can be home for them when they come home if they opt for early hours and leaving by 3.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
History:
Working for a small studio, there are somethings that I am the sole support person on. The stuido wants to be high availability, so when things break, I have to run in and save the day. (Side note... caller ID is great... any call before my alarm goes off better be work).
Because of this, I have tried to make a personal rule that I have at least 10 hours between leaving work and going back in. Because of the flex schedule that I work with, if I am fixing things at 3 in the morning, people don't complain if I don't come back in till noon. My manager understands the give and take of being both a coder and a support person and what it can do to a person's schedule.
The downside:
Something broke last night. I found out about it 45 minutes before my alarm went off, so I went into work almost 2 hours before I am used to. I fixed the problem and then went on to my next project. The problem is that a person I needed to talk to was not going to be in for a while ( it ended up being 2 hours later ). I had to side the issue untill he got in, which frustrated me, cause I wanted to brainstorm and had allready shifted into thinking mode for the problem.
Summary:
Flex is good to keep a good, healthy environment when the job can call at all hours. The problem with flex is when you want to but don't need to talk to somebody because they may not be in.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
What has flex done for you/your company? Why do you (or don't you) prefer flex to a fixed schedule?
Quite simply, flextime has allowed my employer to employ me. A year ago, I was working as an independent consultant. My wife and I have a small child. With the flexibility of my consultancy, we were able to work out home childcare with another couple, so that one of the four of us was at home each day. Not only is that important to us, but it also saves us a lot of money for daycare.
My current employer, by offering a good benefit package with family healthcare, flexible working hours, and good technology to work with, was able to bring me in, even though they were offering a decidedly average full-time salary (which is substantially less than I could have made on contract). Why? Because doing interesting work without crimping my family is an appealing option that overrides the choice between good money vs. great money.
Without flexible working hours? No way. I would have turned down the offer in a heartbeat. I'm by no means a big hoo-hah in my field, but I have enough experience that I can reasonably shape the conditions of my employment. Were I younger or single, of course, I might go for a high-travel or fixed-hour job. But I think the correlation between more experienced, valuable workers and the requirement for job flexibility and good benefits is undeniable. Without them, most places (imho lots of now-defunct dotcoms, for example) tend to collect a workforce of greenhorns and gamblers.
J
I think not...(*poof*)
Indeed - I find that I work best at times when no-one else is here. The office environment is so distracting during the day, that I get work done best before 8.30AM and when working at home. A day at home when I have a definite plan of action or spec to work to (and therefore less interaction with my cow-orkers), I get about a weeks worth of "office-time" done in one day. And I get my laundry done, and real food for lunch.
I generally work about 10am to 8pm, largely to avoid traffic (and because I'm a lazy pig in the morning) - the management here doesn't really mind what hours I work, as long as nothing catches fire, and things are pretty much on schedule.
(mental note - emacs keys do not work in IE text boxes - pfeh)
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
From my perspective, it is great. I can take my dogs to the vet or go to the dentist on my Friday off, so I do not schedule these things during my week. It also is nice to have extra days off because the US typically does not give enough time off to workers (I have 2 weeks vacation / year, but 3 next year). 9/80 means ~20 3 day weekends.
From a company perspective, it can be inconvenient if you need to talk to an employee who is off. I have also noticed that employees have a tendency to abuse the system, The most common abuse is not working 9 full hours M-Th. Finally, if we are busy with a beta release, we sometimes need to work on our scheduled day off. Some employees tend to bitch when this happens.
Although I work for a large company, the 9/80 program is discretionary by department. Some managers refuse to allow the 9/80 schedule. Personally, I think this is because these managers have lazy employees and the 9/80 would exacerbate the problem. However, if you are in a department that has 9/80 your friends or colleagues from other departments may harbor jealous feelings.
I have noticed that the management style dictates the success of the 9/80 schedule. Micromanagers and anal-retentive managers do not like losing the perceived control on work hours. This is a valid point, given the common abuse of slacking on hours. OTH-Managers that worry only about results (which != hours) tend to be happy. This is cool because if you get your work done asap, then managers tend to leave you alone (isn't this true without flextime?)
"Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life."
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
Flex time is a good thing if you can make a good division between the freedom of your employees and the demands for certain time events. Here we have a full staff in flex time. Each day, one of us stays from 9 to 18:00 to serve calls and make routine tasks. Our flex time means you can go in and out 24 hours a day. No questions are given, no one argues if you have 2-3 works more. The only conditions are:
-that time endlines should be accomplished (most of our work is project-based).
-that you should be available wherever you are (even if you travel to Antarctida)
Our work as an ISP turns over a serious level of automatisation so routine work is minimal. However our project-based nature is not completely sweet and rosy. Some remain here sometimes for days. It is usual to see 1-2 of our workers having a deep snap in th sofa during the day. At night there are always 2-3 hackers doing what cannot be done at daytime. Somehow this sometimes looks like working on Mir. However everyone likes this regime. Only ex-wifes hated it...
& amp;nbsp; Flex time = Happy workers
Shift time = Unhappy workers
Happy workers = Boss who feels he doesn't do his job properly.
Unhappy workets = Boss who feels he does a good job.
--
Americans are bred for stupidity.
...Flex time is good, m'kay. If you are working on project that takes more than a few hours (ie, most of them), do you want someone telling you that you have to go home at 5:30, and that any time past then is overtime? Where I work, if I work a 10 hour day, Friday == 6 hours, etc. That way, I can keep working on a project when I'm on a roll, but come the end of the week, it's goodbye job, hello life!
Luckily, I work for a company that farms out teams of people on a consulting basis. All my company cares about is that I spend at least 40 hours a week here, and at least 35 of them billable to the client. After that, it's all good.
Eric
I've noticed that folks who work the regular 9-5 assume that if they're not there, you're not there either. If you show up at 11, you must not be pulling your weight, because they don't SEE you there till 7pm. Or 9pm. Or midnight.
Anyone got suggestions for coping with this?
tangram
Some people do their best thinking other times than 9 to 5. I think much better later in the day. My boss is a morning person, and he'll wake up at 5 am and come in and work, we get there at 9, and he takes a nap for a couple hours. For this current stage of our project we've all gotta be there 9-4 at least because of having to interact with other businesses.
When we were doing just plain old research and development and we didn't have to deal with businesses on fixed schedules, we were all on flex time and it worked out nicely. I was a night person, so for a while i worked noon-8pm. We all got to be there for the part of the day where we did our best thinking...
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Play Six Pack Man. I
In my experience if you tell people the MUST work 9-5, then that is precisely what they do - if you remove their flexibility to come in when traffic and their personal schedule/preference suits them, then they will usually react by going home at 5:00 pm (and zero seconds). Careful what you ask for!
When people are allowed to come in when they choose, then they are much more likely to respond with a more flexible give-and-take attitude and stay beyond 8 hours.
Finally a company that switches from flex time to fixed hours is likely to lose at least a few people (probably some of the more creative/productive ones) to who the flexibility was important.
Non overlapping hours can be an advantage, if you're trying to support stuff. I can expect there to be someone in our office from 6:30 to 18:00. We used to have someone who would work from 12:00 to 20:00 or 21:00. Our on call people only had to deal with the the time there was no-one in the office, reducing stress on them and giving better service.
My whole reason for wanting flex time is commute...
/. in the middle of the day....so before 9:30am [when 50% of the office bothers to show up] and after 5:30pm [when the slackers leave], I get most of my work done.]
if I sleep in by 30min more, it's more beneficial for me to not leave 'till 2hrs later than I normally would.
I work in DC, and if I leave before 7:30am or after 9:30am, my commute's about an hour or so. During the main rush 'hour', however, it easily adds 30min to my commute. That's an extra 30 min of stress that I've had before I've even thought about getting any work done, and like many people, I tend to be much more productive when I'm not stressed.
[Although, I also tend to be more productive when dumbasses aren't asking me stupid questions and distracting me, and I lose train of thought on my project, and go reading
Unfortunately with my job, I have no clue some nights when I'm going to get to leave as people forget to tell me about projects which have been planned for months, but my part suddenly has to be done by monday [and I'm told the friday before], so I can't depend on public transportation, as they only allow you to park at the metro lots for 24hrs, and they're a few months off from completing south side of the green line.
If also means that I can't carpool, as I can't onconvenience someone else if I might have to stay an extra hour or two on a semi-regular basis.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
No, I haven't. I have, however, often been handed a key to the joint. I have even gotten the hours for my cardkey changed so I could get in late. I have a key now where I am currently working.
I confess I find the idea of a company throwing out it's employees at 5pm to be surpassingly strange.
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
In addition to the fine responses about the usual benefits of flextime (reduced traffic, lunchroom congestion, and LAN loading), I'd like to add another psychological benefit:
At work, a few induhviduals make a point of watching others comings and goings. Perhaps they imagine themselves supervisors. Their not-so-subtile looks and gossip create a negative working environment.
By going to flextime, these negative busybodies have a much tougher job keeping up. Usually, they are not capable of it.
In fact, physical meetings are the hallmark of poor organizers, of people who don't have better to do with their time.
In general, this may be true, especially for "staff meetings", but there are cases where a face-to-face works and teleconferencing, even with video just won't cut it.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Now I'm working at a different company. I can and do come in whenever I want. So do all my co-workers.
So all that background aside, here's what I think the advantages of totally open hours are:
- I get enough sleep. I rarely use my alarm clock. Infernal machine! This makes me happier, healthier.
- I put in more hours. Me and my coworkers are pretty into our work, so we sometimes get carried away. If I chose to I could certainly work 9-5, or only 40 hours a week, but flexible hours certainly don't preclude that!
- I can work when it's quiet in the office. Hustle and bustle make me less productive. I think that mild attention deficit disorder is common among techie folks. If they gave you your own office instead, that might help alleviate this concern. =)
- If I didn't live so near my office, I would like to commute during off-hours.
So, by switching to fixed hours they cause you to lose sleep, work with more distractions, spend more time getting to work, for what? So you spend possibly fewer hours working and are unhappier? Great.Well, it's nearly 4.00 in the morning, and I've been here for 3 hours, so it's time to get back to work.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Where I work, the company has flex time. We have core hours (10-4), but if you're going to be in late, it's not a big deal, as long as you let someone know (perferably your manager), via email, or phone. If you need some time to run errands in the morning, (which I find is invaluable) or in the afternoon you can, not a big deal.
We also have all the programmers and artists send out a daily update to their managers and team (for scheduling reasons, and efficiency.) That way if someone is in late, they can work later, and have a "record" that they didn't slack that day.
Cheers
We're an offshoot of Dupont, and we've had flex-time for the longest time.. What we have are "core" hours from 9am till 3pm. You get to choose your 8hour day outside of that.
The advantage of shift-time's are that people can know when they can find you. Various activities such as network administration can be "paged" when needed, and coders are sent on week-long excursions which could even run into the weekend if necessary, so the exact hours that they work aren't always important. Secretary positions, however, tend to be more important and lend to shift-work (as would assembly line work).
For us, various benifits like a kitchen, flex hours, free soda, etc were in lue of higher pay, and for me, that was just fine. If I had to choose between higher pay and a less stressful working environment.. I'm all for living a higher quality life.
-Michael
-Michael
In exactly the same way, I cannot do productive work in the morning hours. Instead, I read /. and other webpages, email, and think about things I need to do. But I am not a morning person, yet I have to be into work about 8-8:30ish.
I have some flex in that. Most employees here are required to be in from 7:30-4:30 or 5. That is because they are support staff and our support hours for our software are 7:30-5pm. If they aren't here, calls don't get answered, people get upset. However, I'm a programmer; the calls and customers don't rely upon my skills directly. Therefore, it's entirely acceptable for me to come in later if it suits me better.
The reason I really can't "flex" more than 30 minutes or so is because the other employees look down upon me for it. Even if I stay till 5:30 or 6 to get my hours in, they still feel resentment at the fact that I come in later some days. I think part of the goal of making flex time work well is educating your employees on why flex time is being used and what it does for your employees and company as a whole. I know I would be much happier if I was able to flex more than I do and not have people upset with me.
Blog,Twitter
1) I think a serious report would examine productivity rather than actual hours on the job.
2) Average efficiency will always be average. If you're continuously going to fire people in order to increase productivity against what it previously was, it's going to get very hard finding new employees all the time.
The way to deal with the occasional anal-retentive clock-watching manager is to frequently send mail at 8pm saying "Hi, I need some advice on how to do Foo", and followons at midnight saying "Haven't heard from you, so I'm doing it This Way, and meanwhile I did That, Those, and These".
A decade and a half ago, Bell Labs was changing our work hours from 7.5 per day to 8, and the original pre-announcement blurb didn't mention flextime. Anybody I knew who worked with computers immediately responded "If they make us come in by 8:00, we'll all leave by 5:01.", because none of us worked rigid hours. The real announcement said we had flex-time, and we resumed normal working conditions, which gradually became more flexible, and the world has radically changed since then.
Some jobs are really communications-intensive, and they're a bit different. If you're doing phone support, you're doing phone support, and you need to be there when the customers call, but you still need a workforce that spreads out the hours so they support the customers doing evening applications in California as well as morning work in London. Again, you really need good communications tools, and if that means working from the train by cellphone, that's fine.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This doesn't really help when arguing with your boss, but every one is missing a big advantage to flex time.
The big advantage to flex time that a lot of poeple don't see, is that its actually cheaper in terms of civil infrastructure. Having everyone go to work at 9 and leave at 5:30 creates huge traffic and equipment use spikes. Highways are not designed for average traffic across the day, they are designed for the rush hours when the traffic load is an order of magnitude higher than the rest of the day. The same goes for buses and subways and everything else that transports people. By increasing the length of the "rush hour" using flex time, the peak traffic load goes down significantly. The existing civil infrastructure works better and needs fewer upgrades. Everyone saves tax money.
I would not be surprised if there is a significant spike at 9am in many other areas as well due to the start of the work day. Things like electrical power, telephone use, and others most likely all have a similar spike.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
I haven't seen too many flex-time policies that allowed people to take entire days off think.
There is a flavour of flex-time that lets you have one day off for every nine worked (or one hour for every day). One policy in particular was "work 40.5 hours per week", so you just had to pull 81 hours every check. In the department I was in this meant people took one extra day off every two weeks... It also meant that people could (in theory) work any hours they wanted as long as they got the job done. Most people came in early on general meeting days but worked causally the rest of the time. It took a while before I figured out everyone's individual work periods.
--8<--
--8<--
- You can drop off your kids at school (or wait with them at home until the bus arrives) in the morning before going to work.
- You can go home at lunch to care for a family member/pet/whatever.
- You can leave work for a couple hours to go to the doctor.
- You can leave work in the middle of the afternoon to play golf or go shopping.
Business text books call this empowerment.
If the bean counters need business justification, then explain to them that flex time improves worker morale, which in turn leads more job satisfaction (which means less turn over).
BTW, I have worked for the same company for almost twenty years, and have never been told what time I have to be at work. And then people wonder why I keep working here... there's more to life than money.
north.coaster
Some management geniouses out there believe that a worker putting in 16h/day does twice as much as one that puts in 8h/day. "Unfortunatly" people get tired, and tired people do less - worse, if you don't rest enough outside work, next day you come in already tired ...
On the other hand if you:
- Have the social skills and the know-how to defend yourself against this kind of management
- Have had the luck or the inteligence of moving yourself into a company were this doesn't happen (congratulations)
- Have a dolphin like brain or a bionic brain and thus need no sleep
then flextime is great. In this situation, you can work 9-to-5 everyday if you really want to (thus having the same results as with fixed schedules) or, go as far as - if the flex is really flex - come in at 2pm leave at 10pm.Basically flextime moves the choice of schedule from the employer to the employee!
On the other hand, with flextime you don't have an external pressure to get up early, thus demanding stronger willpower 8-)
I've had flex time here at work for several years and I am much more productive because of it. With it I:
-- Take less hours or days off for personal stuff.
-- Am less likely to handle personal things during work hours.
-- Spend less time commuting because I can work my hours around the traffic (telecommuting is always best, but sometimes you can't).
-- Have more skilled people because they don't have to quit to take classes part-time or full-time. And those same skilled people tend to stay longer (one very valuable employee would've left years ago without flex time)
Those are the biggest things. Part of it depends on the employment environment where you are, because these arguments wouldn't hold up if I still lived in South Dakota. But here in Calfornia they are big reasons that most companies have flex-time and many companies have it just to compete.
Isn't that why meetings are schedualed in the first place? If you like having unschedualed meetings, flex time can be a problem.
I always thought that flex time was a way by which the management would save money. It doesn't have to pay overtime to ppl who work more :-)
There are a few other things too that come to mind.
1. You can do peronal work in office time, if it's a flex time. You can move around.
2. Weekends are not free when you work in flex time. you gotta finish off the things you are supposed to do but you did not do because of flex time.
any other issues ???
You can never underestimate the importance of having the people who work under you happy with their jobs - at the end of the day, money isn't everything and people will leave for an equivalent job that offers what you are, but with a nicer environment if they don't feel comfortable where they are. I'm sure many people here have left for no other reason than the fact that they didn't enjoy working somewhere.
Flexitime makes people happy, and thus increases productivity. In a modern office environment it costs you little to let people come in at non-standard hours. But there is one thing to beware of - you can lose the interaction between team members which is necessary in a large project.
My policy was to allow flexitime but with "core time" in which people have to be in the office. This is especially important if your time has to interact with clients, to ensure someone is always available. But you also need it to arrange meetings, briefings and progress reports. Typically we'd have a core time of 11-2 three days a week, with half the team on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and the other half on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, letting us have team meetings on Fridays.
So I think flexitime is a good idea, but you can't let it get out of hand or else your team will fragment and productivity will drop rapidly.
Jon Erikson, IT guru
To the degree that you and others genuinely feel that way, that's the single most powerful argument you could make.
I don't mean to sound like a "I would never take a job that required me to read Word documents!" kiddie but if you and your coworkers really feel leaving would be a more attractive option than staying, you should definitely make that clear to management.
I doubt it.
Every part of IBM that I've worked for uses flextime - core hours usually 10:30am until 3pm, and it works very well. And IBM is hardly your dotcom startup. It has been, in my experience, an exceptionally good company to work for.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I don't think that the question about whether flex-time is good or bad is one that can be answered so easily.
For someone who's supposed to be answering phones (ie: secretaries, PR people, etc), flex-time is bad. They MUST be around to answer the phone when it rings. Or meet clients when they come in. Etc. It's not like it requires brainpower to pick up a phone, anyway.
For other jobs that don't require as much personal interaction such as programming, engineering, art, etc., then flex-time is good. When you're working creatively, managers CANNOT order you to be creative on demand. Writer's (or coder's) block simply cannot be overcome on demand. Unfortunately, not all managers understand this, and this can lead to ill-will within the work environment. With flex-time, this could be avoided.
I'm a programmer, and what I do takes *concentration*. If I'm in a noisy environment, then that disrupts my concentration, and my productivity goes downhill. If I can work after hours when there aren't so many people around, then I can actually be more productive.
I read in a paper that on average, it takes about 15 minutes for a programmer to sit down and get into "the zone" where code is flowing from his/her fingers. If s/he is interrupted by anything (a coworker asking a question, loud talking, etc.), s/he breaks out of "the zone", and must spend another 15 minutes to get back into "the zone". I don't know if this applies to everyone, but it seems fitting most of the time.
I'm allowed to set my own schedule (within reason -- must work at least 8 hrs a day), then I can avoid the "noisy" times, and aim for the "quiet" times. Mornings and late afternoons are the worst, so I don't even bother to try to work during those times. If I'm forced to work regardless... well... you're just going to end up with a lot of crappy and sloppy code from me.
Getting back to my original point -- yes, flex-time is a good thing... only for those who actually really needs it. Managers, secretaries, marketing people, etc. don't. Designers (of whatever type) do. Run your business accordingly.
(slightly off-topic)
And for god's sake, SCHEDULE your meetings well ahead of time. Flex-time or not, I can be there for a scheduled meeting. If you or your managers run the business on sudden meetings, then it's time to look long and hard at how the business's run.
I have flex time and like it. I like to be done by 4 in the afternoon and be able to do business elsware in the city. However there are some advantages to shifts, the big one I can think of is if you are at a point where you need to get some go ahead or help from someone else you don't have to wait 3 hours until they come in. Also I think knowing when people will be in allows for better schedualing of meetings.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
Where I work, we don't officially have flex-time. The employee handbook says it's 8:30am - 5:30pm with an hour for lunch. I don't think many know it's there, and it's not SOP.
SOP here is your here for the core hours of 10 -2, and you work a regular day. (i.e. same hours all the time) I'm generally a 6:30am sort, but another lady in my department just can't get here before 10. (kids and she's not an early riser)
In thinking about running my project I don't want to sit there with a stop watch keeping track of folks. When you get here you leave 8ish hours later. I want to know when to find you (okay it's 9. Sheri's not here for another hour...). Beyond that I really don't give a shit, no offense but I've got better things to do for the company... if you want useless paper and procedure go talk to the union boys down on the floor. (you should see the crap they've got procedures for!)
I feel the same way about dress. Don't really much care what you wear so long as it meets decency standards (no odd parts hanging out). For the lady's this also means that it doesn't create a distraction for the guys (backless sundresses, micro skirts...are a distracting thing). For the guys it means about the same (save the muscle shirts for elsewhere). Most of the folk in my department sit at a computer for a large part of their work days... It's just common decency to allow them to be comfortable as they do that. But the catch is if your offsite or dealing with a customer you will be business casual at a minimum. I suffer through long pants others can too!
Beyond that... my attitude is my job is to get the project done, and your free to do what you need to do to make yourself productive. If what your doing is making you or others unproductive then we will talk. I'm hired to be a project lead, a mother.
Flex time = Happy workers
Shift time = Unhappy workers
Flex time= Happy workers that have to be capable/responsible enough to produce an efficient schedule that works for everybody
Shift time = Better for some people...
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Flex Time is an important reason why rush hour traffic in the Washington DC area, as bad as it is, is not 10 times worse.
The US Federal Gov't is one of the largest examples of employers who use Flex Time. You pick an 8-hour day in blocks that vary by regular intervals. (My dad worked 7:15-3:45, including a half hour lunch)
Traffic has been lighter over greater lengths of the morning/afternoon than it would be if it were bunched into gotta-get-there-by-9 and bird's-tail-pulled-yabba-dabba-doo-it's-5 clumps.
The regular blocks of official hours made it very easy for folks to take transit instead of their own vehicle. They could easily choose a bus/rail combo that got them to work in time for their shifted-shift and one for the home trip where they didn't have to wait around long at a stop in the cold.
As bad as DC traffic is, I can only imagine how much worse it would be now without the gov't (and so many gov't contractors) having adopted flex time.
In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.
Shift time = Unhappy workers
Seriously, as simple as that sounds the old adage of a happy worker is a productive worker applies to this discussion.
I mean, when i'm happilly doing my work (which happens to be on flextime btw) whether it is configuring some machine with Apache, qmail etc for a webserver or setting up Samba for the company network.
When i'm in a good mood i tend to just fly through it without problems, but when i'm in a bad mood i just don't care about it and tend to make mistakes.
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The man from Mars, he say urkle.
I'm a single parent and I work flex: four 9's one week and four 9's and an 8 the next; I alternate two-day and three day weekends; she lives with me four days out of every two weeks when I have the three day weekend..
So the time that she lives with me I have three days off, one of which is a school day, and the fourth is also a school day and I work a branch office 10 mins from home, so it's like I'm at home anyway.
We've been doing this for twelve years and it's worked out pretty well.
One other deal: a flex schedule gives you an earlier start and/or a later stop time, which can *really* make a difference in the traffic volumes for at least part of your commute.
I work 7:00am to 4:30pm; my morning drives are a breeze because I'm an hour earlier than most people.
t_t_b
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I think not; therefore I ain't®
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
As any good management team should know, employee morale is the single most important factor affecting productivity. Flexitime boosts morale, and hence is inherrently a good thing. Note, however, that completely flexible hours can actually lower productivity when team members don't choose overlapping hours, and thus don't communicate with each other as effectively. This is management's main argument against flexitime, but it's misguided. You can work around it by enforcing core hours (say 11:00 - 15:00) for a few (or for the paranoid, all) days a week.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Our regular business hours are 8AM-4PM, but we have room to vary that as needed. Also, our vacation time can be used in increments as small as 15 min. if need be. And we have a couple of telecommuters, too, in our claims department.
The way we handle flex time is on a department-by-department basis. As long as you have adequate coverage during the 8-4 timeframe (in the network group I define it as having at least two of my four staffers present during that time) when the bulk of the company works, you can work out other scheduled with your supervisor. But for my company, the typical flex shift is more like 7-3 or 9-5, though we do have people coming in to other areas of the company as early as 6AM.
Whether flex time works depends on the nature of the company. A software company or engineering shop will probably do better with flex time than an insurance company like mine does - but at the software company, for instance, the customer support reps need to work a fixed schedule - they need to be there when the customers normally call. So flex time doesn't work for everybody, all the time.
I do prefer the flexible schedule to what I had for scheduling at my old (and otherwise wonderful) company. At my job now I wale up at 6:30, go into work at around 7:30 and I usually work until 4-4:30 or so. It's no big deal since I live close by. At my old company I woke up at 5:30, hit the road by 7, and would get to work by 8:30. That sounds OK, except we had a culture there that drove people to stay until the last person finished the last job (it was a company that produced retail ads daily), so I usually left around 6-7PM. Or later. Even if I had no work to do. And I stayed because everyone else did too - it was a particularly harsh example of groupthink.
The insurance world is very easygoing by comparison.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Get used to it (or fill out your resume.) The less people understand what their staff is doing, the more they like to micro-manage.
I've run into micro-managers on both sides of the Atlantic in English, French and Spanish cultures. The Japanese are notorious followers and come from a risk averse culture given to intuitive leaps of genius about as often as glaciers.
Your environment is entering into a business stage called ossification. They will now focus on maintenance for lower cost with obsessive fixation. A few incompetent middle managers later and you will find it impossible to acquire tools you need to complete work which has to be done.
At some point, probably soon, they will have stripped themselves of the inventive people that would have helped them weather change.
Of course change is inevitable and you will be looking for work from the weaker bargining position of someone who is unemployed.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
If governments really did value the value of taxpayer's dollars, they would only allow companies to demand fixed-schedules only in exceptional circumstances. For example, teams that ABSOLUTELY need to be together to do their jobs, like assembly-line work.
But less and less work is assembly line work, and more and more intellectual work.
Having everybody coming to work and leaving at the same time puts an extraordinary burden on the transportation infrastructure, the more so if the type of infrastructure is environmentally wasteful (such as cars). Roads have to be designed for their peak usage, peaks that only happen twice a day for a few hours, where their users waste their time stranded in traffic. Likewise, public transit users are crowded in vehicles that are always insufficient in numbers. I have seen bus and train systems where some vehicles make exactly a grand total of TWO trips a day. At $120,000 a bus or $2,000,000 an engine and $1,000,000 a car (10 car train = $12M), the bill gets kinda expensive pretty soon.
Some commuter railroads (LIRR) and bus operators (NJT) even employ ordinary people (who are specially trained to meet regulations) to drive buses and run trains to their "ordinary" work, because it is senseless to have drivers and engineers and conductors sit idle through the day, while the trains and buses crowd downtown terminals (or are expensively deadheaded back to suburbia, thus choking even more roads and rails).
Having people going/coming to work at different time would spread out the peak traffic throughout the day, allowing a much more efficient use of transportation infrastructure and facilities.
The oft-used argument that "presence is necessary for proper communication" is total bunk. It means that the companies are poorly organized, and the management is unable to communicate effectively. Physical meetings should be a last-resort solution, where e-mail, voice-mail, messaging and bulletin-board discussions have failed.
In fact, physical meetings are the hallmark of poor organizers, of people who don't have better to do with their time.
--
Americans are bred for stupidity.
I've worked with flex time and telecommuting, and had to make cases for both.
The advantages of flex time, I have found are:
1) Adaptability. One can work around various events, crises, etc. in a smoother manner.
2) Less Bureaucracy. Having to constantly clear things with supervisors, fill out forms, etc. wastes time.
3) More productive. Able to integrate all of one's life better, work is usually more productive - being able to take that extra two hours when you're on a roll, OR leave an hour early when there's nothing to do (and make it up when there is) makes your work time DO more.
4) Loyalty. Simply, flex time is something people appreciate.
5) Less sick time. I've found if people can adapt their hours, they can work around illness easier.
6) Less stress. This is always a good thing.
Well, that's what I've found.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
1. Infrastrucure - 8-6 Hours
2. Sales - 8-5 Hours
3. Support - 8-6 Hours
4. Community Support - 8-5 Hours
In a "Non Silicon Valley Community" The above "Rules" still apply.
1. If your having problems with building maintenance, phone lines, networking, water pipes anything related to your busienss infrastructure you cant get support if your employees are coming in late or super early. Business's do have after hours, but if your relying on After hours, its costing you more then what flextime is worth!
2. Sales. No mattwer WHAT business you are in your selling something. There is no way to function sales outside of 8-5 mon-fri. Infact most sales are probably form 9-3 because the decision makers are busy before and after that time. Again, flextimt with 9-3 as required core hours could work, but not what slashdotters think is the normal flextime
3. Support - Going back to infrastructure. Business support, lawyers, legal departments, city officials, record keeps, anything that keeps your business going are only open during this finite window.
4. Community Support - Kind of covers everything. Most places only support businesses from 8-5, alot of places are zoned for one way or another, buses only work during peak hours in most towns, public transportation doesn't exist after 6 pm, whatever it is, most communities can't support a work day outside of 8-6.
That is just my opinion. I would *LOVE* flextime, but basically i work 96 hours a week myself so it doesn't matter anyhow. I'm off onsite Mon-Thursday and my flextime is friday and saturday and then back at the airport on Sunday.
Being a Consultnat flextime ticks me off since i have to show up for the early birds and stay through the late ones often sitting at the office for 12-14 hours before i even get to go to my hotel to work on reports, timecards and expenses.
Could possibly the flextime and ultimate support of the individual rather then the group or "team" be the demise of the dot coms? Every .com i've been at supported a team atmosphere from an outside point of view, but inside it was a dog eat dog world moreso then any typical corporate/established company with eastablish rules/policies and schedules.
I'm a contractor who specialized in short- to medium- term contracts, and despite having had many different clients, I've gotten flexi-hours at all my jobs in the last... um... four? jeez, I've lost count... lots of years.
In my case, "flexi hours" means I have a regular schedule, but it's not 9-5, and if I won't be in on my regular schedule I give some warning. My big thing is never, ever having to regularly be on a client site before 10am. I have a couple of reasons for wanting this -- I hate rush hour commutes, for one -- but I am very able to give my clients a big reason for them to want me to have flexi hours:
Funny, but they all are completely enthusiastic about my working 10am-6+pm.
I'm always surprized that other people don't have as strong a sense of time-of-day (independent of light) as I do. Surely I'm not the only person whose productivity varies on a strict schedule. I would think that any company would be eager to make sure the hours of employee time they get always fall in each employees most productive periods.
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
Yes, you are right there. -- Another glass of champagne?
My wife and I have arranged our schedules so that she drops our son at the bus stop in the morning and I pick him up in the afternoon. We don't have to have him in wrap-around daycare. That saves us thousands of dollars a year. Needless to say, working somewhere where I couldn't do that would effectively be a pay cut.
Because our company allows flex time, but requires a manager's approval, it gives those of us using it a strong incentive to demonstrate that it isn't impacting our work. Several years ago, I was the team leader for a team that included one employee on flex time and another who was telecommuting. After we started that arrangement, our team communication improved. We made extensive use of e-mail to keep each other informed. That e-mail was a better record of important communication than any notes we might have taken in meetings.
I can't speak for the rest of that team, but I started treating e-mail as an immeadiate priority. Before that, I had occasionally decided that some e-mail late in the day could be left until the following day. But when I knew that two of my coworkers would see my replies either later that evening or early the following morning because of there work hours, I started extended them the consideration of being sure that I sent my replies right away.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
As a manager, I'll give my management perspective :->
In our organization communcation is actually enhanced through the use of flex-time. We have offices in NY, California, Brazil, New Zealand, and Australia, and clients in the US and Europe. With all these timezones, it is to our great benefit to allow people to come in to their office at odd hours when they are working with people in another office - and since the people who work with each other can change depending on the project being done and thus what groups need to interact, it isn't the case that we can just have different shifts to handle this.
We also have part-time telecommuting privledges, which not only gives people some time to work quietly and alone on difficult technical problems, but also people who live far away can spend some commute time each week on work, and also in the office we can share desks between people who come in 2-3 days a week on different days (important to us because we're in NY city where space is hard to find and rents are high once you find it).
However, the argument onion2k makes about "doing what you like when you like to do it" is also pretty compelling - at least in our organization where about 80% or more of the staff really like their jobs a lot. People are genuinely more productive at their personal peak hours of the day, and we have people who do their best work when they come in at 6am, and others who would rather show up at 11am and work until past midnight. We just require that people who work on the same project overlap in work times at least 4 hours each day. Those employees who are not as in love with their jobs, or who have displayed less of an ability to work well alone, or who have to meet with clients - they do get some time restrictions placed on them, but even then, with some flexibility (say, come in between 8:30am and 10:30am, except if meetings dictate otherwise, and stay at least 8 hours, and no telecommuting unless working over 40 hours in the week... as an example)
Managing people on flexible schedules, even ones that minimally overlap with your own, is not so bad if they actually respond to e-mails and produce measurable results in their work. As a software engineering organization our company has a pretty easy time telling whether or not projects are being completed and people are being productive, especially since our managers are technical and can distinguish an employee who is not really working from one who has run up against an unforseen technical difficulty.
So, if your managers are up to it both emotionally and in terms of knowledge of their work to allow for judging performance fairly, then flex-time (and part-time telecommuting) can be really great...
o/~ we are pissed, we are pissed, we have to resist... o/~ - ec8or
I agree -- I'm another who's most productive early in the morning, but by around 3-4pm, I usually just barely manage to stay awake (if I have to). A second point is, flextime tends to mean (intrapersonally) "stay until the job is done, or this part of it; or until nothing more CAN be done on it," whereas inflexible scheduling tends to lead to clockwatching.
I used to tell a very low-level, barely trained, young clerical worker who served as librarian in my documentation department that he could leave early if all the work was done. He never misused that permission; sometimes, he would ask if he could leave early on a specific day although he was waiting to file papers he knew would arrive later, but he always said he'd be in early the next morning to do it.
Before this young man began to work for me, he had been in danger of being fired in the messenger department, where he was the clerk also. He turned into an exemplary employee, I believe, because I gave him every opportunity to feel he was in complete control over how he worked. He even took the initiative in setting up useful control systems, learning to use the PC's (which were new then), and making suggestions to benefit the documentation department or programmers.
My point is, flextime is just one of the many options managers can offer to encourage employees to take responsibility and initiative for their own work. "Core hours" which everyone puts in together, on certain days (weekly or as needed), or every day, should take care of any problems scheduling meetings, training, etc.
I've seen flextime from the perspective of a worker bee and a manager. I believe there is nothing more demeaning or less productive to a manager or an employee than having to play the roles of school teacher and tardy student. If the company sets hard time rules, a manager is expected to enforce them and it can create all kinds of relationship problems, second guessing and bitterness. Flextime lowers everyones stress level.
Disadvantages? There aren't any. Once flextime is instituted, people very quickly sort themselves into early and late arrivers with a few in between. We're creatures of habit and once the commuting patterns are set, individuals come in at about the same time everyday, so it's easy to adapt.
- A)understand what their employees do to the point that they trust them to do it without supervision, and
- B)the ability of the office to "survive" without a "techie" around.
The success of flex time really depends on the competency of the manager, which in turn is affected by the programmer/techie/person on flex time. If the programmer is really forthcoming with explanations and ideas, updates and information, than flex time stops being a problem. To wit, the information flows both ways --"I'm not in till 11 tommorow"
"Well hang on, I have a meeting at 9, can you give me 10 minutes before you leave today?"
Flex time will work, but only if information flows from both sides, I realize that some managers are worse than others and that there are whole companies whose management needs to be revamped altogether, but the fact remains, the road to flex time is a slippery slope, and you're not going to get very far charging up it without planning.
It's all about trust, and you can't develop trust through an "us vs. them" mentality. Your manager may be a moron, but you're not. Explain in painful detail what you're doing. And always have a partner in crime to fill in for "panic" situations. Flex time is not a right, and I get the general sense that that's the popular opinion. In the same way that people must be coached through new technologies being adapted into the work place (intranets anyone?) so must people be coached into a new system of the "business day." There are a lot of 9-5'ers who have done it that way for years. This one isn't just going to get handed to ya.
---------- You are not the contents of your sig.:-p
The programmers here (and some other staff) are on a policy that basically says "as long as you're doing your work, we don't care if you come in".
:)
I'll tell you first hand - when I work at home, I get twice as much work done, I've been known to work at home for >70hrs a week. (and really, actually working
They're trying to abolish it (due to a new union getting it's fingers in the mix), but, it's not going to happen. If any argument, the fact taht I just stated above about my work ethic and the others' similar ethics will definately invalidate anything.
The best places that I've worked for have policies like this... Now that I'm starting to gather enough experience to where I can start having a little more impact on where I'm employed, I don't think I'll accept a job that doesn't have a policy like this.
I had a job where I was on a fixed schedule about a year ago, I eventually ended up quitting on the spot because I was tired of having to get up every morning at 6am to sit on my ass for 4 hours doing nothing (and more often than not falling asleep out of boredom). I don't have a problem with this schedule normally, but not when I'm in a chair 8 hours a day. I had no problem working hours like this when I worked at a convenience store some years ago.
I can show up at 3pm at my current job and no argument. I'm pretty sure upper management doesn't like it (mainly because they have to come in early), but they deal with it, because I bust my ass.
The other option is salary, which is great as long as it doesn't come with a "you still gotta be here from this time to that time" order.
To put it best, your programmers work best when they're comfortable. Make your thinkers comfortable and they will think more for you.
Generally, if you have good staff, your programmers are also better at managing themselves than anyone in upper management can do.
'Good' programmers have the drive to code and learn regardless of someone telling them how to do it. A good manager (like mine, and the one at my last job, which, obviously, are both programmers as well) knows that I'm going to do it my way regardless of what he says and stays the fuck out of my way.
He also knows, that he's going to get a higher quality of work out of me for doing that.
I would explain to your whomever that you are simply more productive when you are able to modify your own hours, and generally hint at a relocation in employment if he's not interested in listening.
Talk to the other employees about it, and get a petition signed. This has worked in our office, as none of us are quiet about opinions in the workplace -- this works very well with the right management.
The wrong management, IMHO, shoudln't be signing your checks. If you can't find a place that accomodates your needs, the tech world is too big now to waste away your life busting your ass for someone who really lets it know they don't give a shit about you.
I would take a 10k-20k salary hit for a better work environment, but that's just me.
-Erik-
Pro: you get to take a day off occasionally.
Con: that day is usually coincident with a day another co-worker needs your: help, expertise, advice, signature, presence in a meeting/etc.
I guess we are all living in a high-tech world where you don't need to be anywhere physically to get work done. Unfortunately, that is something that often only works in theory. When you are working with a group of other people you need to be there to work with (or for) them. I realize that there are jobs that can largely be done independently and only require group meetings when certain milestones are achieved, but many jobs involve working in groups, and consulting with people in those groups.
How many people have been at a meeting that went nowhere because "someone" was "taking thier day". Don't get me wrong. I am all in favour of flexible work schedules and in a well organized operation this would probably lead to happier and more productive employees, but this freedom has to be tempered with responsibility. It would be nice if flex-days were not taken on days when inter-departmental meetings were taking place, or during times when that person is a central figure on a project. It is important to realize that when you are gone, everyone who needs you is screwed (unless you spend the day answering email and phone calls, which defeats the purpose of taking the day off).
My suggestion (or feeling anyway) is that a four day week (every two weeks) is a good idea but that everyone should take thier flex-day at the same time (so a particular workgroup might agree to take every second Friday off when possible).
--8<--
--8<--
Flex time wasn't helping morale, as people would be frustrated and resentful at someone who wasn't around when they needed them.
Possibly in a less interactive, modular, environment, where programmers can go off and code in a vacuum for a week, it would work. For anything which requires a lot of team interaction, and changes in direction to meet the market on a regular basis, it's dangerous, IMO...
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Better known as flexi-time here in the UK where I work, flex-time's key benefit is allowing workers to do what they like when they like doing it. I'm an early office person. I do some of my best work before 9am when the hordes arrive.
The main arguement against flex-time is that of communication. You can't exactly talk to someone at 5:15pm if they clock off at 5:00pm on the dot everyday. It depends on your job. If you have to talk to people all day long then theres a real arguement for keeping you in the office at times you're going to be needed. Difficult to argue against common sense. But, conversely, if you're someone that is able to get on with your job on your own without the distractions of things like late meetings, then its a preferable situation to have you doing your very best work at the time you prefer to be doing it.
As with everything I suppose, look at it from the managers perspective too, once you can grasp their view its much easier to argue against it.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
My compeny has an 80 hour flex period. I don't know how common it is, but I think it's great.
Pairs of weeks are identified (a Week 1 and a Week 2). You can work extra in Week 1 and carry those hours over to Week 2 and take that time off. You can also take hours off in Week 1 and then work those extra hours in Week 2. Essentially, I charge hours over 40 to the 80 hour flex account and credit myself hours when under 40 hours. After the two weeks, the balnace must be zero.
Flex time can also be done within a week as typically done. [strong]tsetem[/strong] lists good reasons. It's hard for me to get overtime, so this is helpful if I'm meeting a deadline, I can take that time off the following week.
It makes it easier to spend time with family, run errands, doctor's appointments, etc.
There is a problem as well. If I work extra the first week, and then have to meet a deadline, I lose those extra hours.
In addition, if you are approved for overtime, you can't use the 80 hour flex time (only within the same week). That's becuase I have to donate 5 hours each week before being paid overtime.
I think flex time is great. It improves moral, and improves business since employees and be flexible with their work hours.
I have to add that I work in an engineering firm, so there isn't consistent customer contact. Some departments elect to not approve flex time, giving managers some say in what works best for their department.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
We started out on total flex time, which basically meant that we both worked whenever we could, but with no particular stipulation about the hours. This worked out pretty well because A) it was just the two of us and B) there was a lot of work to be done that we both had a personal investment in. Sometimes we would fall into these cycles where one week, every day would be 9-6ish, the next week would be 11-8ish, the next week would be 1(PM) to 10ish, and so on - sometimes we went all the way around the clock back to 9-6!
As we got more clients and had to do more client interaction, we found it wasn't feasible to make come in the office at 1 PM and expect to be able to make all the needed calls, run all the needed errands, etc. before other businesses closed, and still be professional about it. So we set some loosely defined hours of 9ish to 5ish that we both pretty much followed. That was also a happy time.
We recently hired an employee, and that changes everything. Unless employees are extremely self directed and have a significant investment in what they're doing, I think the need to have someone around to answer questions and provide some guidance when appropriate. It wouldn't work at all to have a 3 (or 4, or 5, or more) person company where everyone comes in at their leisure and just hopes that the tasks that require 2 or more people to be present at one time would get done. So now we have pretty standard 9-5 hours, with a policy that it's fine if you're out of the office for a while or if you want to vary those hours, just make sure to give some notice, and make sure to make up any lost time somehow.
I agree with other posters that the hours should depend on what kind of company it is, what kind of people are working there, and what the needs for interaction with the outside world require.
Our company is on Flex time with mandatory core hours from 9-3. This basically means you must be in the plant between 9am & 3pm, but you can arrive at 6:30 & leave at 3, or show up at 9am & leave at 5:30. But those 6 hours you must be in plant so meetings can be held, & business can be done
*) Reduced use in PTO (personal time off). You can have a Dr. appointment early in the morning or late in the afternoon & not use that time off
*) Don't have to be stressed over making it in at a given time. You don't have to cuss over traffic being bad & showing up at 9:10, while your boss is bitching that you showed up late
*) Reduced micro-management. Managers don't have to stand around and see when you come in & go just to make sure that you show up by 9am
*) Good for early risers/late risers. I'm usually into work by 6:30 so I can get out while there is still sunlight. Ok, during the summer there is sunlight, but still. It's nice to go for bike rides & do something outside after work to blow off steam.
*) Can increase support coverage. I work in IT as well, and people in my department work from as early as 5:30 in the morning (don't know how) to as late as 5:30-6pm in the evening. So by having flextime, employees can come & go as they need or want, and can stagger the coverage in a department or area.
*) Employee moral/perks. In this day and age where Tech workers are hard to come by, they should be treated more like gold. If they do decide to take away flex-time, quit & work for someplace that does have flex-time unless you really really really like what you are doing. I wouldn't give up flex-time, I won't give up the option of wearing blue jeans. If my company takes that away, there are at least 5 other companies in the are that still offer these perks and are hiring. Your company should also be concerned about keeping their employees happy. I seriously doubt you are the only one that would consider walking if flex-time disappears.
Those are some of the big reasons I see for flex time. It doesn't just help the employees but the company as well. It helps keep the company competitive, by offering a perk that really won't cost the company much if anything.
#include "std_disclaimer.h"
I can get more work done between 8am and 10am some days than I can get done in the *entire* rest of the day. I realise some people here will be saying "Oh my god! How can you even get up before 6pm? I can only code at night, etc etc.", and that's rather my point - I'm not one of those people, and if I was, I'd be working different hours. If I couldn't start work until 9 (hey, if I dont get to go home until 5.30 I'm *not* starting early, except for special events of course) - then I've lost a lot of productive time. By the afternoon, I've had lunch, some days I might as well just take a nap, because I can't get anything clever done. Afternoon is when I surf the web, patch up documentation, and play with new software.
I can "work" all day - I can sit at my desk and do stuff, but when it comes to those insightful rushes of productive time, when the ideas are flowing, and code is pouring from my fingertips - those times I can't just decide to produce "on demand". If my employer wants them (and of course they do), they better be letting me work so that I'm here when the muse visits. Otherwise I'm just another drone, plodding along...
my 0.02,
Mike.
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
As the general manager of a medium sized ecommerce company in my country, i wouldn't accept anything BUT flex time. my reasons:
1- not everyone is productive during the same hours of the day, and noone is productive all day long. basically by giving employees the ability to choose their schedule, productivity tends to go up.
2- by basing work requirements on deliverables, instead of hours, individual tend to take more responsibility for their job thus resulting in much more creative solutions and higher quality results
3- we do not meet. if we need to comunicate, we chat, email, call or leave post-it notes on each other desks. once you have an automated system where you can assign and retreive tasks, the need to meet is reduced to a few occasious where you can usually just conference call the parties and discuss, wherever they are.
4- higher employee retention and overall satisfaction
there is a downside for flex time though, employees tend to work much more due to the fact that management usually assumes that flextime means you're ther 24/7.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.