Growing flexibility on work schedules

WORK-LIFE BALANCE: From left, Nicole Blais, senior project manager at Shawmut Design and Construction, Corine Andrade, project manager, and Gordon Zaniol, project manager, confer in the firm's Providence office. Shawmut provides its employees with flexible work schedules to accommodate other important life obligations. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO
WORK-LIFE BALANCE: From left, Nicole Blais, senior project manager at Shawmut Design and Construction, Corine Andrade, project manager, and Gordon Zaniol, project manager, confer in the firm's Providence office. Shawmut provides its employees with flexible work schedules to accommodate other important life obligations. / PBN PHOTO/ MICHAEL SALERNO

One employee wants to work early in the morning, leaving by 1 p.m. to care for her young children. Another wants to work four days a week for the next four months, working longer hours in that compressed week to save an extra day for his marathon training.

Which one gets the flexible schedule they want? At an increasing number of employers, both might hear a “yes” from management.

Flexible scheduling is becoming more commonplace among companies, including Rhode Island employers who are facing increased competition to attract and retain talented workers. And regardless of industry, human resources specialists say the shift will continue because workers in the millennial age group, who do not want rigid schedules, soon will become the largest share of the workforce.

Small and large companies alike have programs that encourage flexible hours or workweeks, but consultants and human resources agents say the programs have to be tailored to different occupations for employees to participate fully.

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Shawmut Design and Construction, which has offices in Providence and Boston, recently created a program encouraging flexible work schedules, which are available to all employees, whether they work in an office or at a construction site.

Depending on their work location, Shawmut employees get a menu of options. Choices include a compressed workweek, flexible hours, job-sharing and potentially telecommuting, according to Marianne Monte, chief people officer for Shawmut.

“There does need to be leadership on a job site,” Monte said. “We would never leave a site without a project superintendent.”

The idea of a flexible schedule is still somewhat unique in construction. But Shawmut is making the effort because its employees have said in surveys that they needed more flexible hours and schedules that allow a balance between work and home life.

With the help of a consultant, Illinois-based Life Meets Work Inc., company officials started re-evaluating what a workweek could be. “Could we think differently about people who are project managing the job, or estimating the job. Or even, superintendents that report to us,” Monte said.

Since the company launched the Shawmut Flex program, more than 100 employees have formally signed up.

At FM Global, a multinational company insurer with more than 1,100 local employees, the Johnston-based company created its first formal flexible benefits plan for employees in 2010, but the offerings are regularly updated to reflect changing needs, according to Tricia Fay, its North American benefits manager.

This month, the company announced it would expand its parental leave, providing four weeks of paid leave for adoptive parents, as well as parents of any gender. The company also extended its paid maternity leave, to 10 weeks, for new mothers.

The flexible schedules available to FM Global employees in North America include compressed workweeks and what the company calls its 9-80 schedule. Employees work nine-hour days and can take one extra day off within a two-week period.

The trend is not just one of large corporations. Small businesses generally have equal to better policies than larger firms, according to Kenneth Matos, vice president of research for Life Meets Work, citing the findings of a national survey of employers conducted for the Families and Work Institute.

Small employers may be willing to create flexible work options because they have employees who have broader roles within an organization, he said, and so want to reduce turnover.

“They have fewer people,” Matos said. “Losing someone who knows three-quarters of your business, because they have a child care issue, is … stupid.”

What his research has found, he said, is that most employers can make flexible work schedules work for the company within given workweeks. But where employers get antsy is with longer forms of flexibility – the lengthy sabbatical for example – which are far less common.

Adoption of flexible schedules takes a workplace culture that involves responsibility and mutual trust, according to Jennifer Sabatini Fraone, associate director of the Center for Work & Family at Boston College.

It can require managers to assess performance differently, not by time-in-seats but by metrics that reflect whether the work is completed on deadline, under budget and satisfactorily.

Employee surveys at Shawmut routinely reveal a trend of job engagement, according to Kara Cronin, the company’s director of Work Life Strategies. But people also indicate in those surveys that they feel the strain of working longer hours, and difficult commutes into office locations such as Boston or Providence.

Corine Andrade, a project manager, works four days a week and has been doing so for about three years since her son was born. She works longer hours four days a week, and sometimes in the evenings.

The flexibility has allowed her more time with family, without interfering with her work requirements. Andrade is now overseeing a project at Simmons College in Boston.

“It allows me the flexibility to work whenever I can, to get the job done,” she said. •

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