Flexible Work Schedule Parameters

hrinfo

Our company has made the decision to entertain more creative work schedules in an environment where financial rewards made not be as feasible in the upcoming months. I am looking for any examples of guidelines that organizations have formally put in place to determine who may and may not qualify. I'd like to receive something beyond flextime guidelines, instead I'm looking for parameters which state what makes AND what may prevent an employee from being eligible to work part of the time from home.

Margaret Morford

This is not exactly what you asked for, but worked much better than an iron clad policy. We agreed to let certain employees (programmers) work at home on a trial basis. They signed an agreement that only ran a maximum of 90 days. The agreement set out what days they would be in the office. These times could not be move around once the agreement was signed. If they were to be in the office from 8 to noon on MWF, they were required to be there so that everyone in the organization would know for sure when they could see them face-to-face. They were required to attend any other meetings scheduled, even if the meetings took place in the afternoons or on TTH. They had to roll their phone to their home when they were working there and they had to submit a weekly activity report to their managers. The agreement also stated that the manager retained the ability to end the arrangement at anytime during the 90 days if in the manager's opinion the arrangement wasn't working. The manager's opinion was final. The agreement was re-signed every 90 days as long as the arrangement was working. This also had the psychological effect of preventing this priviledge from becoming an entitlement. Once we tested it, we were able to let other positions do this as well, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. Some jobs, of course, could not be done from home. I'd be glad to tell you more about the program if you like. Please feel free to call me.

Margaret Morford
theHRedge
615-371-8200

Gillian

Here are a couple of web sites which may be helpful. [url]www.workfamily.com[/url] and [url]www.bc.edu/cwf[/url] The latter is Boston College which has a Center for Work and Family. They have a research report called Measuring the Impact of Workplace Flexibility. When you see what works and what doesn't work then you can put a set of parameters together. You are ahead of me by a few months. I haven't put mine together yet.