Flextime Innovations, Impacts, and Challenges

Who Has Access to Flex Options?

In the financial services companies questioned, professional-level and non-exempt staff usually have access to the same array of both regular flexible work arrangements (including flextime, telework, compressed workweeks, and part time) and occasional flexibility (shifting work hours on a daily basis or just occasionally, occasional work at home, or taking time off in part-day increments).

Telework, in particular, is not feasible for certain positions. Usage is typically higher in administrative and logistical functions than it is in retail branch banking or on the revenue side in investment banks.

Some innovative uses of flexibility include:

• Compressed workweeks or voluntary part time to expand coverage
• Enabling professionals with long hours to have one half day per month to take care of personal matters
• Remote work to attract key talent from other geographic areas
• Telework and open space work environments to reduce real estate costs

Impacts of Flex

Companies’ process measures, financial analyses, employee surveys, and HRIS metrics indicate that workplace flexibility has positive impacts on recruitment, retention and engagement, and neutral or positive impacts on productivity, profitability, and customer satisfaction.

Impacts include:

• Improved productivity from:
• Increased focus and efficiency
• Expanded coverage
• Time saved on commuting
• Higher employee engagement and satisfaction
• Recruitment success
• Lower turnover
• Favorable financial return on investment in IT and real estate reconfiguration
• Positive effects on green metrics of
• Paper consumption
• Gas consumption
• Traffic congestion

HR 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.

Success Factors for Implementation

Companies participating in the focus groups have found that successful implementation of flexibility in financial services firms depends upon:

• Leadership support in words and action
• Manager training
• Having the right technology and tools
• Maintaining a results orientation
• Openness to new ways of working
• Measurement and linkage to business metrics
• Ongoing support and coaching from HR
• Communication
• Alignment with business objectives

What Challenges Arise?

The report mentions several universal challenges that financial organizations face in implementing flex policies:

• Managers’ attitudes. Without adequate training and tools, concerns about performance management and loss of control persist.
• Highly regulated nature of the industry. This necessitates a high level of technology infrastructure to support remote work or telework.
• Trading floor. The nature of work on the trading floor means that certain types of flexibility may not be possible.
• Advancement. Employees and managers question whether using flexibility may jeopardize advancement opportunities or job security.

Implementing flextime—just one more daily challenge. In HR, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. Like FMLA intermittent leave, overtime hassles, ADA accommodation, and then on top of that 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 e-mail, excerpted from a sample policy on the website:

Privacy. The director of information services can override any individual password and thus has access to all e-mail messages in order to ensure compliance with company policy. This means that employees do not have an expectation of privacy in their company e-mail or any other information stored or accessed on company computers.

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.

E-mail review. All e-mail is subject to review by management. Your use of the e-mail system grants consent to the review of any of the messages to or from you in the system in printed form or in any other medium.

Solicitation. In line with our general policy, e-mail must not be used to solicit for outside business ventures, personal parties, social meetings, charities, membership in any organization, political causes, religious causes, or other matters not connected to the company’s business.

We should point out that this is just one of hundreds of sample policies on the site. (You’ll also find analysis of laws and issues, job descriptions, and complete training materials for hundreds of HR topics.)

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.