Alternative Work Schedules

HRMaiden

Our company currently has a summer buddy program. With this program, employees pair up. When employee A is the buddy, they work 9 hour days Monday through Thursday and 4 hours on Friday and employee B covers for him/her and works a normal 40 hour week. The following week, they switch roles.

This becomes a problem when not everyone wants to participate in the program and employees cannot find someone to buddy up with.

Therefore, we are looking for alternatives to this program. Does anyone out there have a creative way of handling summer work schedules? If so, how do you convince executive management that there is not a drop in productivity from implementing these schedules?

ritaanz

90% of our work force works a 10 hour, 4 day work week Monday through Thursday.
Our administrative personnel work 4 nine hour days and one 4 hour day on Friday. Out sales personnel work a regular 5 day, 40 hour week.

This is done year round. Before we implemented the new schedule, we had customer service, sales and purchasing advise our customers and vendors of the change. In additon, we have a special message on our telephone telling the caller that the Sales Department is available for any emergency calls.

Productivity is high as well as the moral of our people. The best part I think, is no one has to look for a "buddy" or worry about making arrangements.

JAM

One of the more creative alternative work schedules that I have heard of is allowing staff to work 9 hours Monday - Thursday and 8 hours on Friday, then the following week of that same payperiod, they would again work 9 hours Monday - Thursday, but be off on Friday. This way everyone had off every other Friday. And of course the staff would alternate Fridays, so there would be 50% of the staff working on any given Friday. The company avoided overtime by designating noon on Friday as the beginning of their workweek.