[...] doesn’t encourage a healthy work-life balance. Sure, there are some jobs that allow for flextime or telecommuting, but especially during a recession, most people are reluctant to push their luck [...]

[...] for each open position, they can likely find that person. After all, rates of everything from flextime to telecommuting have plunged in the past few years, as companies have found they don’t need to meet the needs [...]

I work at a company that allows flextime and it’s sort of a mixed blessing. It’s great on a personal level when I can take an afternoon off and make it up in the evening when I need to, but at the same time it means half the time I can’t find the person I need when I need them because *they’re* taking the afternoon off and planning to make it up that evening. It makes life with kids a little easier but I can see why employers wouldn’t like it, it makes things less efficient.

I worked for a company that allowed for a sort of flex-time among all employees, but it was arranged thus: You could come to work at anytime between 6:00am and 9:00am, and your day ended nine hours after that as long as overtime was not required (determined on an “as needed” basis). The reality of it was that the majority of the 350+ people employed there (and I used to do internal audits of policy, so I’m not just guessing here) came to work at 6:00am, because leaving at 3:00 was freaking awesome :) It was somewhere around 80% – which left the remaining workforce a bit challenged between 3:00pm and 6:00pm, because oftentimes, entire departments were already gone for the day. I worked there for five years, and about halfway through, the policy was tweaked to exclude certain key employees. Department heads, shipping/receiving, and reception were excluded, for example. It wasn’t “true” flex time, but it did turn out to be a fairly workable way of letting people choose the most convenient time (within certain limits) to be at work. As a mildly interesting note, the flex occurred almost exclusively along gender lines. The women who were mothers almost universally chose to come in at 9:00am, after they had gotten their kids up and ready for the day. The men who were fathers almost universally wanted to be in as early as they could so they could be with their families for as long as possible after work. It was a male-dominated field, which accounted for the 80% rate of people using the earliest slot. We had a few married couples who worked there together, and every one arranged it so dad would come in in the early slot, and mom stayed home to get the kids to school/daycare, coming in to work as late as possible.

Yes, I am a telecommuter and my organization supports it for a number of employees. I think the smart employers who can embrace their workforce and see that flextime is an important part of retaining and recruiting employees are the winners in this economy. I understand the argument that in a down economy, competition is fierce and the strongest survive, but I don’t believe that has to mean face time in the office only. I think if employees produce excellent work, they can demonstrate their value despite being in the office every day or at least 8 hours a day. It’s interesting to take a moment also and observe how many people are still commuting to work in their car, alone. Another issue we are waking up to globally is the diminishing resources we have, and so the arduous commutes are not only stress producing for employees but actually aren’t doing much for moving beyond our addiction to fossil fuels. Change is hard, and sometimes it’s a slow moving ship, but this ship has left dock and I see telecommuting and flextime something that will only gain momentum in the future, albeit with some fits and starts. – Emily @ http://www.flextimeglobal.com