The 3 Flavors of Flex

Fellows, founder and president of WorkLife Performance, Inc. divides flex/telecommuting into three “flavors.” She offered her tips at a recent webinar sponsored by BLR and HR Hero.

Flavor #1—Flexible Hours

This is the opportunity to begin and end each workday at an approved time outside the standard (or “core”) working hours while still completing the minimum required workday. Variations:

• Set start/end hours each day
• Start/end each day, within a specific “window” (usually 1 hour)
• Start/end each day according to the specific day (or week, or cycle of time)

This time flexibility gives employees the opportunity to manage life-stages—parenting, retiring, etc.

Typically the business benefits also, for example by having longer hours for customers in different time zones.

Make sure that you are fair and business-based, says Fellows. If you have hours where you need people on the job, you have to make that inflexible.

Flavor #2—Compressed Work Schedules
(aka “Alternate Work Schedule” or “AWS”)

Compressed work schedules offer the opportunity to work longer hours on certain days in order to complete the work in fewer days and have “earned time off” on other days. Variations:

• 9 longer days at work, then 1 day off*
• 4 longer days on, 1 day off each week
• 8 9-hour days, 1 8-hour day, 1 day off each pay period*
• 4.5 days or 9.5 days on, half-day off*
•  “Any 80” (any 80 hours in a two-week period)*
• 4 10 hour days per week

* with any of these systems be wary of overtime which must be calculated on 40-hour weeks.

Budget cuts? Let us help. HR.BLR.com® is your one-stop solution for all your HR compliance and training needs. Take a no-cost, no-obligation trial and get a complimentary copy of our special report Critical HR Recordkeeping—From Hiring to Termination. It’s yours—no matter what you decide.

Flavor #3—Telework or Telecommuting

Telecommuting offers employees the opportunity to complete regular job responsibilities on certain days from an approved alternate work site.  Make sure that your definition isn’t “working at home,” says Fellows. It’s “doing your job at an alternate worksite.” Variations:

• Regular: Teleworking the same scheduled day(s) each pay period
• Ad hoc/situational/intermittent: Teleworking as needed, based on work or workplace circumstances For example, says Fellows, certain tasks demand that you be in the office, (for example, if you need to use certain equipment) but other tasks, like writing or research, might be better accomplished off-site.
• Medical: With physician’s approval, temporary full-or part-time at-home work may be appropriate during medical situation where the employee can’t travel to the office but can work at home. But this is not a substitute for sick leave, warns Fellows. No teleworking before the employee is ready to return to work.
• Unscheduled: In response to weather or network outages or other circumstances that impact the workplace, it may be appropriate to ask people to work offsite. For example, if there’s snow or hurricane—stay home and keep the railroad running.

Setting up your organization’s flex policy? Worrying about internal equity? New ranges? Pay-for-performance? Wage and hour compliance?—challenges abound for every compensation manager. Every day brings new problem from within the organization and on top of that pile on whatever the agencies and courts throw in your way.

You need a go-to resource, and our editors recommend the “everything-HR-in-one website,” HR.BLR.com. As an example of what you will find, here are some policy recommendations concerning red-circle rates, excerpted from the website:

Red-circle rates are another story. Obviously, cutting the pay of an employee will not do much to gain acceptance for the new wage program, so alternatives have to be considered.

• One alternative is to “grandfather” the employee; this means allowing the employee to stay above the maximum until the person is promoted, terminated, or retired.
• Another approach is to freeze the employee at that red-circle rate until adjustments to the rate range finally capture the employee’s rate back into the structure.
• Still another approach is to increase the employee’s wage by only half of the adjustments made to the range, again, until the rate is captured.

A similar problem occurs with employees who are under- or overpaid in relation to actual performance. As defined, the minimum, midpoint, and maximum rates are each definitions of pay for specific levels of performance. So an employee performing 80 percent of the job duties at 80 percent efficiency under normal supervision and who is paid above the midpoint may have a pay rate similar to a red-circle rate except that it is within the rate range.

 In this case, counseling and performance evaluation feedback are needed to bring performance in line with pay.

We should point out that this is just one of hundreds of analyses, checklists, training materials, job descriptions, and sample policies on the site.

Find out what the buzz is all about. Take a no-cost look at HR.BLR.com, solve your top problem, and get a complimentary gift.

You can examine the entire HR.BLR.com program free of any cost or commitment. It’s quite remarkable—30 years of accumulated HR knowledge, tools, and skills gathered in one place and accessible at the click of a mouse.

What’s more, we’ll supply a free downloadable copy of our special report, Critical HR Recordkeeping—From Hiring to Termination, just for looking at HR.BLR.com. If you’d like to try it at absolutely no cost or obligation to continue (and get the special report, no matter what you decide), go here.