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What Are Advantages/Disavantages To Flex Time? 219

Posted by Cliff from the your-answers-to-common-questions dept.
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.
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Are there Benefits to Flex Time? More

Are there Benefits to Flex Time?

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  • We are all different! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

  • Re:Didn't find it practical (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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

  • Results-oriented management (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I used to run a small company which developed software under contract to Microsoft and other companies. What we had was extreme flextime... basically, you had to be onsite for the core hours of 2 pm to 6 pm, but other than that, you could work whenever you wanted, as long as you met your deadlines. HOWEVER, we had very clearly-defined milestones, which each team member agreed to, with the consequence that missing two major milestones (without giving enough advance notice so someone else could pick up the work) would result in termination from the group.

    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 prefer complete freedom (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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!)

  • what do you do? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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 :)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • 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.
  • I rarely use my alarm clock. Infernal machine! This makes me happier, healthier.

    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.

  • ...or has /. been recycling user numbers?

    t_t_b
    --
    I think not; therefore I ain't®

  • 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

    I've never yet seen a flexitime scheme that prevented people working 9-5 if they so wished...

  • 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.

  • When I started my company, I thought flextime would be a great way to go. Unfortunately, in any company with more than one employee, they do have to meet. The bigger you get, the more people have to have meetings to get in sync and discuss things. Flex time was hampering that ability. People just weren't around when you needed them, and it was frustrating. We eliminated Flex Time, and I think it helped productivity, communication, and so forth.
    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 :-)

  • 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 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.
  • I'm on flexitime over in the UK and have been for a while, these are the key benefits and costs of flexitime from mine and the companies point of view:

    Pro's

    • I don't wake up before 10 regardless of whether my eyes are open or I'm at work. If I'm in the office, it's dead time.
    • On those nights I'm don't have things planned I like working into the night, as opposed to going home and crashing in front of the tv (or whatever).
    • For those nights I do have things planned, I can take off because I've made up the hours on the other nights.
    • I'm happier
    • On those nights I do go out, I don't have to worry about getting home early because I have to get to work in the morning.
    • It's warm and sunny when I get up
    • The tubes have fewer people in them (no rush hour traffic etc.).
    • I work longer and harder and I have more fun.
    • No bathroom rush.

    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).
  • 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.

    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..
  • 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 :-)

    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.

  • 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
  • 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.

  • One of the great things about my schedule is that I get to have the lab to myself for a couple of hours every morning. I work from 7-4 and most of my coworkers come in at 10am, so I get to use the lab conflict-free in the morning and I'm more willing to share in the afternoon.

    Ergo, flex-time make better use of company resources!


    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
  • i am not able to function normally before 11am.

    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 /. until 11. then i would start to work.

    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.

  • 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.

  • Not to belittle excellent points, however:

    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.

  • 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.
  • 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
  • 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)
  • I have been on a 9/80 flextime schedule for the past year - 80 hours in 9 working days instead of 10. Then the 10th day is 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."

  • 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...
  • 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...
    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 /. 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.]

    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.


  • 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.

  • 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.
  • Six months ago I was working for a company which required that I work conventional hours. They weren't real strict or anything about it (if I worked 10-6 instead of 9-5 that was okay). But even so, I was tired a lot. I tried to get to bed earlier, but .. going to bed before I'm tired is not something I'm good at.

    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.
  • 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
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • This *is* Silicon Valley, after all. OK, I'm not currently working at a startup, but many of my friends are, and sometimes I've got hot projects. If you've got a professional job, you get your work done when you need to get it done, and you make yourself available to the people you need to be available to. If the project requires concentrated grinding away, like coding, often that's mostly solitary work; if it's more interactive, you need to spend more time communicating, but that doesn't mean you need to sit at a desk from 9-5, it means you need email and cell phones and pagers and similar tools.

    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.

  • 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.

  • 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<--
  • Flex time allows people to more easily integrate work with the rest of their lives. Examples:

    - 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

  • Flexible time is often just a way for a company to make it's people work more hours without any extra pay (in practice they're reducing the per-hour salary).

    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.
  • knowing when people will be in allows for better schedualing of meetings.

    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 ???
  • or even worse, such as in my case. I never take real vacation so I have weeks upon weeks stored up. Thus anytime I have a personal errand 'updating my driver's licences, dentist appointment) anything everyone else usually does with half a day off, I take the full day. Flex Time would eliminate my doing that. I only do it because I hate having to track hours on my timesheet.
  • You raise some very good points. The childcare issue being prime. Many people I work with beg, borrow, and steal to leave just five minutes early to be able to pick their child up on time. If they are late they have to pay something like $5/minute. Flex time, even a modicum of flex time (come in between 8:00 and 9:00 and work 8 hours with or without lunch) would save these folks a lot of money.

  • 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.

  • 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.

    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.

  • Could possibly the flextime and ultimate support of the individual rather then the group or "team" be the demise of the dot coms?

    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.

  • 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.

  • My attitude is that I'm here to manage what's important...

    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...

  • 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.

  • Flex time = Happy workers
    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.

    --------------------------------

  • Flex time has given me... (Score:3)

    by talks_to_birds ( 2488 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @06:10AM (#625652) Homepage Journal
    ...a life with my daughter.

    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
    --
    I think not; therefore I ain't®

  • Employee satisfaction (Score:3)

    by Tet ( 2721 ) <slashdot@a s t r a d y n e . c o.uk> on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @02:39AM (#625653) Homepage Journal
    Employees, on the whole, prefer flexitime. It gives them more control over their lives, and if they have to do something out of the ordinary one day, it's not a problem -- they can just make up the time elsewhere.

    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.

  • We're closer to a traditional company, but (Score:3)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @03:01AM (#625654) Homepage Journal
    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

  • Fixed time is for anal-retentive micro-managers (Score:3)

    by crovira ( 10242 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @05:49AM (#625655) Homepage
    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.

  • 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.

  • From my experience (Score:3)

    by Badgerman ( 19207 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @03:45AM (#625657)
    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.

  • Flextime doesn't run a business. Seriously! (Score:3)

    by cybrthng ( 22291 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @04:49AM (#625658) Homepage Journal
    While I would *love* to have flextime myself, it just doesn't cut it in my opinion.

    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.

  • An un-obvious reason (Score:3)

    by goliard ( 46585 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @08:06AM (#625659)


    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:

    "I can come in at 8am" (or whatever) "if you really want. But you should understand I have very, very strong circadian rhythms. That side of my brain doesn't really wake up until 10am. I will come in at 8am, clutch spasmodically at my coffee cup, rock back and forth, and read email until my brain thaws two hours later -- while you pay by the hour -- if you want. I'll then leave a 5pm or so, which is unfortunate, as my best time of the day for coding is the late afternoon."

    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.

  • Flextime advantages (Score:3)

    by Markee ( 72201 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @02:49AM (#625660)
    My company is offering full flex time too. Right now, we register our arrival and departure time, and we are getting paid for overtime. The higher management, however, wants to get rid of time registration completely. They are trying to sell this to the employees as total freedom of work and a sign of trust they have in us (the employees). The true rationale, however, is that once the time registration is gone, you won't get paid for overtime work, so the development plans can be even more rigid without the company having to pay overtime rates. From a management point of view, getting rid of the time registration process can save huge amounts of money. Ask your manager how he would like this one. But ask yourself first how you would like this... Of course, my fear is full flex time without time registration is a modern slavery.

  • Why I use flex time (Score:3)

    by dsplat ( 73054 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @04:52AM (#625661)
    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.

  • Re:Main benefit flex-time (Score:3)

    by LHOOQtius_ov_Borg ( 73817 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @04:31AM (#625662)
    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...

  • Re:People are different... (Score:3)

    by techwatcher ( 112759 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @03:42AM (#625663)

    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.

  • Re:Some obvious reasons (Score:3)

    by testpoint ( 176998 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @04:56AM (#625664)
    "Reduced micro management."

    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.

  • It's all about management (Score:3)

    by jbrooks ( 244189 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @05:01AM (#625665)
    I've read these stories before, and the common thread that I always see running through them is management. And the most common of that thread that I see is management's inability to either:
    • 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.

  • Comment removed (Score:4)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @02:51AM (#625666)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Hmm, pros and cons... (Score:4)

    by rongen ( 103161 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @02:48AM (#625667) Homepage

    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<--

  • Didn't find it practical (Score:4)

    by PhotoGuy ( 189467 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @03:02AM (#625668) Homepage
    When I started my company, I thought flextime would be a great way to go. Unfortunately, in any company with more than one employee, they do have to meet. The bigger you get, the more people have to have meetings to get in sync and discuss things. Flex time was hampering that ability. People just weren't around when you needed them, and it was frustrating. We eliminated Flex Time, and I think it helped productivity, communication, and so forth.

    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

  • Main benefit flex-time (Score:4)

    by onion2k ( 203094 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @02:49AM (#625669) Homepage
    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.

  • 80 hour flex period (Score:5)

    by afniv ( 10789 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @06:05AM (#625670) Homepage
    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"

  • Small Web Design Firm on Flex Time (Score:5)

    by Silas ( 35023 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @04:42AM (#625671) Homepage
    A few years ago, I co-founded a small web design firm with a friend.

    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.

  • Some obvious reasons (Score:5)

    by tsetem ( 59788 ) <tsetemNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @02:44AM (#625672)
    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.

  • People are different... (Score:5)

    by Mike Connell ( 81274 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @02:42AM (#625673) Homepage
    #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.

  • My reasons (Score:5)

    by Docrates ( 148350 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2000 @05:13AM (#625674) Homepage
    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.

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