Flextime - An Alternative Work Arrangement - Part 9 & 10
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By :
CD Mohatta
Submitted
2009-08-27 03:23:00 |
We discussed the following benefits in previous articles: Increased productivity, Higher employee morale & enthusiasm, Better balance between work-life & family-life, Lower traffic congestion during peak hours, Decrease in tardiness, Higher employee recruitment, Lower attrition rate and Reduced absenteeism. Lets see further.
Decrease in overtime expenses:
Flextime results in decreased overtime expenses. An employee, instead of working overtime could simply come early the next morning and complete his work. Or an employee A could handover the remaining work to a colleague B who may be working in office for 2-3 hours more after employee A has gone home.
Greater job satisfaction:
When employees work in a flextime environment, they tend to feel more responsibility and accountability towards their job. This leads to greater job satisfaction. Ellen Galinsky, president and co-founder of the Families and Work Institute, a New York City-based not-for-profit research organization, says that work-life initiatives such as flextime are one component of an effective modern workplace, one that is "highly correlated" with job satisfaction, loyalty, engagement, retention, and better mental health. She says well-run organizations listen to their employees and give them more control over flexibility, while at the same time make them more accountable for improved results (Paul Harris, T+D, 2007).
Benefits of flextime to entrepreneurial ventures:
Entrepreneurial ventures and small companies tend to offer more non-monetary benefits to employees. In the article 'In Box' in www.businessweek.com (2001), it is mentioned that "64% of small companies offer flextime, vs. 58% of all companies." According to Nichole Torres (2006, Entrepreneur), 43 of the 100 fastest growing entrepreneurial ventures of 2006 offered flexible work schedules (up from 34 companies in 2005 and 2004).
The last two benefits of flextime are discussed below.
Extended office hours for the organization:
This is a direct benefit to the organization. If a company always has some or the other employee working from 6:00 AM till 8:00 PM, it will project a positive image. The clients of the company could call at 7 in the morning or 7 in the evening and receive support or any other relevant information they desire immediately.
Sharing of physical resources:
When two employees work at the same desk and computer but at different times of the day, the company saves money as it does not have to allocate additional office space, furniture and hardware for two employees. Two years back, I used to work in a small Internet data-center. There, a team of fifteen employees shared five computers and desks. This was possible only because of flexible working hours. The employees worked in three shifts and hence the company could provide technical support for 24 hours with just five computers.
Flextime program as an alternative work arrangement has some potential drawbacks. These are reluctance from employees, flextime is not applicable to every job, supervision problems, inadequate staffing, coordination challenges, increased utility costs, etc. Let us discuss each of these problems or drawbacks of the flextime program.
Increased utility costs:
The organization experiences an increase in utility costs like electricity bills due to the extended working hours from 6:00 AM to around 7:00 PM. This adds to the overall expenses of the organization.
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Author Resource:-
The author likes to write text messages and advises for internet and social networking content like twitter backgrounds and myspace comments. He also writes quizzes on subjects like relationship, personality, etc.
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