A recent article over on Discovery News that headlined that Employees With Flex Time Put In More Hours is a must-read. Consider the headline findings:
- working the usual nine to five may not be the ideal schedule for employees or employers
- workers with flexible hours are not only more satisfied with their jobs, they also work more intensely
- the findings also apply to remote workers and employees with reduced office hours
Basically, as those of us who work flex, or who have worked in flex environments know, it’s a boon to your business if you’re in a knowledge industry. And it has nothing to do with the quoted theory that the “intensified work effort given to employers is reciprocity for the relaxed schedule”. It has to do with the fact that not everything about life can be scheduled and, as a result, some days, nine-to-five will not be the best time for your employee to work.
Consider the following:
- your employee gets a 24-hour virus at 1:00 pm on Wednesday
- your employee’s toddler is ill and his partner is not available until noon on Thursday
- an accident Thursday morning shuts down the main highway between your employee’s house and your office and triples commute time
If your employee comes into work Thursday morning, how productive is your employee going to be if he comes in
- sick,
- worried, or
- stressed out from road rage
vs. waiting until Thursday afternoon when he’s well, not worried, and not stressed?
If you’ve hired the right employee, who likes his job and believes in the company as much as the company should believe in him, he wants to do a good job and will happily put in the time it needs to get the job done right, even if it means going (significantly) beyond 40 hours once in a while if it doesn’t (significantly) interfere with his life. Instead of 9-5 on Thursday, he’d probably happily do 1-10, or a few spare hours on the weekend. And if he can do it at home, and not have to waste an hour or two on an office commute, he’ll find it easy to find those hours. Most of what we do is not grunt work, it’s brain work, and that work gets done best when we are at are best and not distracted, plain and simple. And when your employees are allowed to control at least some of their schedules, you’ll find that they’ll organize said schedules so that you get their peak productivity times. So loosen up. You’ll be a better organization for it.