Is Allowing Flexible Hours For Your Employees A Good Idea?

It almost sounds like your employees are looking for permission to be lazy by asking for a flexible hours type of workplace. Not many people like getting up early to make it to work on time. Is that the reason they want to work when they want instead of on a set schedule that is the same for everybody?

There are some benefits to allowing a flexible schedule, however. And flexible scheduling doesn’t mean that your workers come and go as they please, either. There has to be some accountability of course.

Let’s suppose that the pluses are overwhelmingly positive for your workers. What does the company get out of it by allowing this. 

Well, ironically, the company can stand to benefit in a lot of ways, also. In this article, I will go over some of the benefits to allowing flexibility in the work schedule so you can decide if it is going to be right for your business or not.

How It Benefits the Company

Employee productivity soars when a flexible schedule system is implemented. One of the reasons is because people work better or worse during different times than others do. 

Some people are best early in the morning and then fade later in the day. Others are more likely to ramp up as the day goes on after a sluggish start in the morning. Having these two types of employees work the same schedule can end up losing the company money in the long run by the productivity lost. 

When people are allowed to work when they work best, it goes a long way to making sure that every man-hour worked is one that helps the bottom line.

Employees are happier when they are able to avoid sitting in traffic commuting every day. This helps them with life satisfaction that also ends up keeping them happier at work. This helps the company by avoiding turnover that costs the company a lot of money to retrain people and bring them on board.

Lastly, it is easier to attract the best talent to your office by making this a benefit for them. If they are torn between two options and yours is the one that offers a flexible schedule, then it may tip the scales in your favor.

How to Create Flexible Work Options

There are several ways that a flexible hours system can be implemented but one thing remains important no matter how it is done. Time tracking has to be on point and very accurate to make sure that metrics can be tracked. Remote employee time tracking is especially important if part of the program is to allow workers to work remotely. 

Once you have your tracking system in place then consider some of the following ways to set up a flexible schedule system:

Flex Hours

This is kind of the best of both worlds type of scenario for many. The system is that some employees are allowed to start work later and leave later and others can start earlier and leave earlier. The compromise is that there are some hours in which they have to be there. Say, from 10 am to 2 pm. That way there can be meetings scheduled and clients can be assured that the person they need to speak with will be in the office. 

Remote Work

Some employees really don’t need to be in the office at all. They don’t have client-facing positions and meetings can be done via VoIP software easily and effectively. These employees could be full time remote, or they could have a set day of the week in which they work from home.

Compressed Week

Also called the 4-day workweek, things are done in a more productive way in four days instead of five. This makes for longer hours during the workdays, up to 10 hours in fact, but gives employees a long weekend every weekend.

Whatever system you choose, you just have to make sure that you have a way to monitor productivity. These systems rely on very strong management that knows how to get the most out of their team. They have to be natural leaders that understand each of their employees and what makes them tick. 

Providing the right tools to your employees to be able to do their job effectively is also very important. Apps and software should be provided that allows them to cut out some of the interoffice bureaucracy to get the paperwork done efficiently. 

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