As recent reviews suggest, an employee (often a woman) who is teleworking is more likely to take on even more family demands and report greater work-life conflict. We are researchers who study how organizations of all types from professional services and IT firms to hospitals, retail stores, and manufacturing facilities manage flexibility. Top leaders can also recognize and reward supervisors who encourage their teams to get the work done without burning out. Maxiflex | Office of Human Resources Bandwidth the hours during which managers allow flexible scheduling(includes the core period). ), Compensatory Time Off in lieu of Overtime An agency may grant compensatory time off in lieu of overtime pay at the request of the employee under an FWS for regularly scheduled or irregular or occasional overtime hours of work. Both should remain flexible because both have an interest inmaking the arrangement work. Leaders soon realized that this pace was unsustainable for themselves and for employees and encouraged teams to develop guidelines to ensure both work and nonwork time (clear-cut shifts, daily breaks, and dedicated solo work hours, for example). The scheme allows employees to vary their start and finish times to suit their personal circumstances, therefore employees will be able, on a day-to-day basis and in From unlimited paid vacation to four-day working weeks, firms are embracing more flexible time-off policies. Reason: ____________________________________________________, Please file a copy of this document with the Human Resources Office, Requested Work Hours: _____________________, Supervisor Approval: ______________________________________________________. Typically companies initiate this to enhance productivity and enable their businesses to operate efficiently around the clock while saving money. Communicate and decide. All your hourly workforce data in one place, from onboarding to scheduling. Even companies that were early leaders in piloting extensive flexible working such as IBM and Bank of America began pulling back on those arrangements several years ago, because they felt their businesses werent benefiting. Flexi-time scheme | Human Resources | Loughborough University Employees reduce thenumber of commuting trips and often when they do commute, it is during non-peakhours. The employee can Studies report that employees who are satisfied with their workenvironment and supervisory relationship deliver better customer service,resulting in improved customer satisfaction. Whereas a traditional schedule is from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. per day, a flex-time schedule Accrued Paid Time Off (PTO) and Extended Illness Bank (EIB) for the period of temporary disability shall be used during this period, except that an employee may elect to reserve up to eighty (80) hours (prorated for part-time employees) of PTO. Night Pay Normally, night pay is payable for any regularly scheduled hours of work between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. (see 5 U.S.C. (See 5 U.S.C. Leave Flextime can result in greaterefficiency and quality of service, e.g., more continuous time to work with a4x10 schedule. Flex leave can be taken at either the beginning or end of a period of leave.. Flex leave is where an employee works less than their ordinary hours A full-time employee will receive holiday pay for 8 basic work requirement hours on the holiday during which no work is performed. One way to address this issue is to bake client expectations into flexible work plans for example, by staffing key accounts with several employees who can tag-team and then presenting that as a benefit to clients. In one large North American study, a manager who had supported implementing flexible work commented, Some clients are more (or less) empathetic than others.You know: Im not paying [the company] to help your people have a nice workload. Studies show that one of the top demands from todays workforce isflexibility to deal with personal and career needs. An employee must (1) account for missed core hours (if permitted) with leave, credit hours, or compensatory time off or (2) with agency approval, work the core hours at another time (within the same workday) or on another day within the pay period. Supervisors should communicate the flexibilities and work schedule(s) that are available to their employees, along with their expectations for employees electing to use any new flexibilities. Another example comes from a busy metropolitan police department: Officers, including supervisors, were able to use predetermined compressed workweeks to create more-predictable schedules and allow for recovery time. Core day/hours: Wednesdays, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. (excluding a 30-minute unpaid meal break). Is night pay authorized? It should be submitted well inadvance of the desired start date for the new schedule. What is flexitime (flexible work) and what Hybrid work models with set days in the office are falsely flexible, and not all parts of an in-person job need to be done in person. (Consider the unlimited vacation time that no one actually takes advantage of.) For example, meetings, visits and phone calls can be scheduledduring core hours. For more information see theattached documents or visit our Web site at (fill in address for your company): What is flextime? The maxiflex schedule will include core hours on Tuesday and Thursday from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and flexible time bands will be available from 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. on Monday through Friday. A leave request is a message in which you ask your employer or supervisor for time off work. I often resorted to mandatory Zoom meetings on Friday nights at 6 PM, because that was the only calendar opening for key staff members. If the Employer has filled the position permanently, pursuant to the above, the employee on leave of absence, upon returning to the job during the six (6) month health leave period, will be offered the first open position for which the employee is qualified. For example, do I have the self-discipline to manage attention and boundaries for telework or to maintain the energy and focus for a compressed workweek? Maternity leave will terminate on the date the doctor certifies the employee can return to work unless the employee is approved for an extended leave of absence. Don't miss out on the latest tactics and insights at the forefront of HR. About a Flexi Work Arrangement Health care organizations in particular, with their large female workforce, have been early adopters of self-scheduling. Flex time meaning refers to flexible time, that is a schedule without a fixed start or end time for an employee's workday. The result is better time management practices. It also facilitated communication across time zones and increased employee productivity and engagement. In an atmosphere of mutual trust and cooperation,managers can become more effective through improved relations, greater employeeparticipation in the management of the unit, increased productivity and qualityof service, etc. Note: If the agency chooses to make Sunday hours available under a maxiflex work schedule, an employee generally would be entitled to 25-percent Sunday premium pay for up to 8 hours of his or her basic work requirement based on electing to work flexible hours during a daily basic tour of duty that begins or ends on Sunday. Core Period the hours in a workday when all staff are needed, e.g., 9 a.m.to 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., when meetings are likely to be scheduled,customer contact is heaviest, etc. Flexible In the second case, employees are expected, explicitly or implicitly, to be available 24/7 to perform their jobs. As a result, most companies approach the task superficially. For example, the publishing output and productivity of talented STEM professional women decreased dramatically while women handled most of the childcare, eldercare, and schooling. It is a two-way effort, and hence the employees are required to reach the workplace on time. The authors, who have been studying workplace flexibility for years, advocate a more balanced approach that makes employer and employee needs equal. Earn badges to share on LinkedIn and your resume. All rights reserved. It may be helpful for managers to give employees a list of considerations to reflect on and address. Fidelity Investments. Updated February 3, 2023. Communicate with all employees about the possibilities for flexible work and aim to achieve equality. For many employees,primary values have switched from compensation to flexibility in support ofwork-life balance. An Executive Order also establishes the states employer policy onwork-related family issues. Leaders have typically managed flexibility in one of two ways: as an accommodation around individual work-life events such as illness or childcare, which companies use to attract and retain employees; or as boundaryless working, which many leaders used to transition their organizations to widespread remote work during Covid-19. Only the employee with an identified, documentedperformance problem should not be offered this option. Additional filters are available in search. WebWorkers at German start-up Mambu, for example, get Fridays off during the summer months. An agency is permitting its employees to work a maxiflex work schedule in response to COVID-19. Official websites use .gov Organizations benefit when they develop clear written frameworks with principles that can guide decision-making about and expectations for flexibility. 5543(a)(2) and 5 CFR 550.114(c).). Name: ________________________ Date:____________________, Division: ___________________Exempt: ________ Non-Exempt: ________, Supervisor Approval: ______________________. It alsohelps retain valuable employees because they can adjust their hours to meetpersonal needs instead of having to use leave or resign. Flexible Flexible Work Schedules At many employers, initial flexwork programs mean employees work from the office from 9 a.m. to 5 A full-time employee may not accumulate more than 24 credit hours for carryover from a biweekly pay period to a succeeding biweekly pay period. How These 4 Companies Are Embracing Flexible Work and Annual Leave (a) An employee may elect with the consent of the employer, subject to the Annual Xxxxxxxx Xxx 0000, to take annual leave not exceeding five days in single day periods or part thereof, in any calendar year at a time or times agreed by the parties. Division Directors (or designees) signature________________, Employees signature _________________________________. The agency cancels core hours that fall on a holiday. Those limits may include daily or weekly basic work requirements. We find that as a company becomes more comfortable with allowing and managing flexibility, leaders tend to move to a boundaryless approach, whereby employees work anywhere, anytime. The maxiflex schedule will have core hours each Thursday from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. (excluding a 30-minute unpaid lunch break) and flexible time bands starting at 6:00 a.m. and running until 10:00 p.m. available Monday through Friday. This increase in work-nonwork multitasking while teleworking has become visible during the Covid-19 crisis, culminating in a global shecession. Even for dual-career couples, traditional gender roles persisted at home, aggravated by pandemic disruptions. Submit a written request. An agency allows employees to elect to work a maxiflex work schedule and to telework. For example, when teleworking is framed as an initiative to improve work-family balance, it often becomes a gendered phenomenon, leading men to assume they cant take advantage of it or to conceal that theyre doing it for work-life reasons to avoid being stigmatized. If an employee is late, time can bemade up sometime during the workweek. Health Leave In order to provide job protection for employees who are not covered by FMLA, after one (1) year of continuous employment with an FTE, one (1) durational leave of absence per rolling calendar year will be granted to employees who are not eligible for FMLA leave for a personal illness or injury, or disability because of pregnancy or childbirth without loss of accrued benefits. FLEXI LEAVE Sample Clauses | Law Insider Because of the absence of core hours on one of the normal workdays, an employee may work fewer than 10 days in a biweekly pay period. In what ways can any negative impact be mitigated? Any employee is eligible; however, not every job lends itself to flextime. Flexitour Employees select starting and stopping (or arrival and departure) times subject to agency approval. Evidence indicates that when women use flexibility more than men do, they face lower pay, stalled careers, and backlash. An employee, teleworking full-time due to COVID-19, participates in the maxiflex work schedule. Employees Core day/hours: Thursdays, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. (excluding a 30-minute unpaid lunch break). How can managers cultivate this kind of environment and roll out flexible policies fairly? Normal Flexible Hours: Monday through Friday, 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. What reasonable measurements would you propose for you and your manager toconstructively monitor the flextime schedule and assess how your performance(e.g., productivity and service) is meeting or exceeding expectations? (See 5 U.S.C. Less use of paid leave. (See 5 U.S.C. Further, many employers have trouble deciding or are ambivalent about whether and how to sustain flexible working accommodations, which are rarely implemented in ways that support cultural consistency or career advancement. Note: The agency bars employees covered by the maxiflex work schedule from performing work on a holiday without approval. ____Request is approved and effective on: ______________________, Division Director (or delegated authority)_________________________. 6121(6).) To help agencies better understand the current options available under this work schedule in responding to COVID-19, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is providing this fact sheet. Agencies may designate the number of core hours each week to meet their mission needs and are not required to have core hours on every workday. Core Hours Core hours are the designated periods of the day when all employees must be working. If an agency allows an FWS employee to elect to complete basic work requirement hours by working on Sunday, the employee generally would be entitled to Sunday premium paya 25 percent premium for up to 8 hours in a daily tour that includes Sunday hours. The employee does not have an opportunity to complete his/her 8-hour workday during non-nighttime hours as the 11:00 am to 6:00 p.m. period (including a 30-minute unpaid lunch break) will only account for 6.5 hours of work, not the required 8 hours. Productivity is more validly judged bymeasuring results or contributions vs. watching time clocks. To do that, leaders must first assess their current culture. (After a backlash, the company adjusted that policy to avoid penalizing mothers.). Is night pay authorized? Name: __________________________________ Date:______________, Class title: _______________________________, Division: _____________Work unit/section: ____________________. (This results in a fixed schedule until the next selection period, as determined by the agency.) (See 5 U.S.C. Fidelity Investments. Thus leaders must understand how each type of flexibility schedule, place, continuity, workload, and mode aligns with the job at hand, their employees, and policies. Here is a range of typical responses: I accommodate employee needs for time to go to the gym during lunch or take a class by allowing a special arrangement with respect to the work schedule. Accelerate your career with Harvard ManageMentor. Use clear metrics to evaluate employees on the, What are fair criteria for how the team sets. Thisarrangement may require the redefinition of a workweek for employees who areeligible for overtime (two 40-hour weeks). This is for three key reasons: First, businesses believe that the 24/7 remote-work form of flexibility can be leveraged to support productivity. Flexible time off is a perk that more and more companies are offering their employees. Agencies may designate the number of core hours each week to meet their mission needs and are not required to have core hours on every workday. We believe that women and those with health or family-care needs would be the most disadvantaged. Access more than 40 courses trusted by Fortune 500 companies. New Season Prophetic Prayers and Declarations [NSPPD] || 6th What policies has it embraced, and for which jobs? In this type of flex day schedule, some employees arrive and Get real-time feedback, identify issues, and take action. By offering flexible start and end times for the workday, you accommodate your employees' personal needs. For example, the employee may take two hours to attend parent-teacherconferences and then make up the time during the same workweek. Improved productivity. Have I talked with my manager and clients to ensure that my part-time job is designed and scoped realistically so that I can perform it effectively within my reduced hours? Overview As Federal agencies develop reconstitution plans and return to regular operations, managers seeking to adapt work arrangements to the COVID-19 Failure to return to work upon termination of maternity or extended leave shall be regarded as a resignation. That allowed its teams to function well during the pandemic, when workers had to care for children during school closures or take care of other personal needs. Instead they should facilitate conversations with workers to unpack all the ways in which people interpret flexibility from where one works to the construction of ones work schedule. Sample Flextime Policy | Workforce.com An employee may use credit hours during future basic work requirement hours, subject to supervisory approval and any agency policies that bar use in the same week or pay period. When a holiday occurs, a full-time employee on a flexible work schedule (including a maxiflex schedule) is entitled to 8 hours of pay on a holiday when the employee does not work. Study Leave 4.8.1 Any teacher who applies for and is awarded one of the 75 full-time equivalent Study Awards, available nationally each year to all primary teachers and principals, shall be granted leave on pay for the period of the study. In this event, the notice given should be the maximum possible under the circumstances. Another example comes from Nike, which cut pay for star athletes who went on maternity leave. Holiday Policies Offer The Flexibility Employees Employees As the exhibit A Flexibility Primer shows, various combinations of flexible arrangements may have bundling synergies. Core hours are the designated period of the day when all employees must be at work. Compressed workweek a flexible schedule where a full workweek is completedin fewer than five days by increasing the number of hours worked per day. The work place can be improved at no cost. Policies that enable employees to take vacation when desired or sick leave when needed even when that time off is unlimited on paper are often accompanied by disincentives for using them. Thats not a good thing. Some ideas include possiblebenefits to the organization, potential drawbacks, requests by others in thework unit, duties of the job and if they can be effectively performed with thenew schedule, the level of staffing and supervision needed at various times, thelevel of service that would be provided to customers, the schedules of otheremployees outside the work unit with whom the job must coordinate, etc. In addition, in this particular biweekly pay period, there is a Federal holiday. Agencies may order mandatory compensatory time off, in lieu of overtime pay for irregular or occasional overtime work, only for those employees who are FLSA-exempt and whose rate of basic pay exceeds the rate for GS-10, step 10. Request for flextime is ____declined. Typically, companies follow a nine-to-five workday where employees arrive at nine in the morning and leave around five in the evening. Only one and a half days or equivalent (ie 3 half days) flexi-leave may be taken in any accounting period providing that:- 1. When choosing to implement or change an FWS, agencies must review any applicable collective bargaining agreements or satisfy appropriate collective bargaining obligations. But what does flexibility at work look like in practice? A full-time employee must have 40 basic work requirement hours each week. (Division Director or designee completes this section. Flexibility policies will not work if they are difficult to understand, if employees or managers dont know how to use them, or if they vary greatly in approach. Yet boundaryless work can hurt employers in the long run, even if they dont realize it. In one of our studies, a lawyer who was working reduced hours won an Employee of the Year award by discovering a way to save the firm a great deal of money. The first focuses on special arrangements for nonwork activities. One way is to develop a team charter, as the financial services firm Northern Trust did for units migrating to a flexible work mode. See the returns youll get from an automated and more efficient hourly workforce. Employees may also vary the length of the workday and the workweek. Workflow and scheduling must be carefullyplanned to fit the workforce to the workload. 5546(b) and 5 CFR 550.131-550.132.) An agency may choose to not establish flexible time bands on certain days, such as Sundays and holidays. A variation is staggered work hours whereemployees begin and end at individually based, fixed times that do not changedaily but may periodically change on specific dates. Sunday Premium Pay An employee is entitled to Sunday premium pay for up to 8 hours of his or her basic work requirement based on electing to work flexible hours during a basic tour of duty that begins or ends on Sunday. Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) covered (nonexempt) employees on FWS may not earn overtime pay as a result of suffered or permitted hours (under the FLSA) as hours of work. Variable Week Employees may vary starting and stopping (or arrival and departure) times on a daily basis during the established flexible hours. In other words, the company provides the scaffolding flexibility options, equipment, and supportive performance-management systems and individual employees and teams decide how to organize their work within it. What is an equitable way to set limits on employees availability, and what are norms for respecting time off? For example, recent news reports indicate that despite highly lucrative pay, investment banking jobs are now less popular with young professionals because of the long hours, lack of work-life balance, and work-anytime culture. Flex Time Meaning. As organizations tentatively plan how to get work done amid the uncertainty of the coronavirus, both leaders and employees are touting the benefits of flexibility. New Season Prophetic Prayers and Declarations [NSPPD] || 6th Some examples are the Australian governments tips for working out of the office, Salesforces guidelines prior to a leave of absence, and Tettras onboarding tips for remote workers. True flexibility that meets business and personal needs is unlikely to succeed without support from the top. An employee may work less than 10 workdays biweekly because of the absence of core hours on one of the normal workdays. The agency limits employees to no more than 10 basic work requirement hours on any workday. Remember, evening cases where there is no abuse, the arrangementmay be discontinued at any time. Rather than making supervisors pivotal in managing the everyday implementation of flexibility, some industries are setting up employee self-management processes that give workers greater control over their schedules and hours without penalty. Employeeinvolvement in the planning, implementation, and evaluation is stronglyencouraged as it can lead to better business decisions for the work unit. Flexible Hours: Monday through Friday: 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Agencies must establish flexible and core hours and the employee must work during core hours. Within agency-established flexible time zones or bands, an employee may vary arrival and departure times (i.e., starting and stopping work times) on a daily basis during the established flexible hours. A full-time employee under a maxiflex schedule must have a basic work requirement of 80 hours in a biweekly pay period. Flexible How do they define flexibility? The key to success is mutual trust and respect.The employee and manager should meet to discuss any concerns, jointly resolvedifferences, and reach an understanding on the terms of the arrangement. Employees choose flexible working that suits their needs while communicating with their managers and colleagues to ensure that team, client, and customer requirements are met. Core hours are the designated periods of the day when all employees must be working. The employee may not receive holiday paid time off for more than 8 hours even if the number of hours the employee might typically have worked on a day that is designated as a holiday exceed 8 hours. But there is a better way. Expert advice on making the best decisions for your company. Fintech firm Mambu, for example, has a summer four Flexible Hours the hours an employee chooses to work. Dont assume that flexibility is the main reason that work isnt getting done. Such request should be submitted to the appropriate department head at least six (6) weeks prior to the start of the expected disability period, unless the doctor certifies the existence of extenuating circumstances. Use of Sick Leave: An employee, other than a casual employee, with responsibilities in relation to a class of person set out in subclause (iv)(b) below who needs the employee's care and support shall be entitled to use, in accordance with this subclause, any current or accrued sick leave entitlement, provided for at Clause 25 Part A, Sick Leave of this Agreement, for absences to provide care and support for such persons when they are ill.