Flex Scheduling: Benefits to Employers & Employees

Firms or any other employment sector have got a tendency to offer a flexible schedule. This has been a target aiming to retain employees who are bringing a high-performance output. For employees to achieve the same, there must be flexibility at its topmost. Companies that offer the same also ensures additional obligation to its employees, for example, supplement employment. The same will provides that employees do not involve in a strict working duration. Flex scheduling has been beneficial to employees and on the same not is disadvantageous to various companies and can tamper with the success or even the goals put in place by different firms. Various firms have got standard hours and days for their employees, which is included among policies to be followed. Most often it is from Monday to Friday from seven in the morning to four in the evening. The working hours proceed for nine hours, which includes the recovery of a lunch hour break. The time entry for the job is either seven or ten; most employees will report at seven while others will maintain the time till ten in the morning. The three hours between the entry times is a consistent hour for employees. It is also wise enough that different employees should enter at various times throughout the week. However, employees always choose the flex time at the beginning of each quarter in the job structure. The same depends on the nature of the job.

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Every company has got its system of offering flex scheduling. Some firms work with a nine-eight schedule; that is to say, the employee will work nine hours every day starting from Monday to Thursday and work for eight hours every Friday. The plan is purportedly to occur for two consecutive weeks, and there it remains a cycle throughout the financial year. Similarly, some companies give employees a chance to choose their best five days in which they can comfortably work in a week for the entire quarter. The employees with the senior-most position are given priority in the selection of the schedule.

Concerning the same, some firm allows employees to work for at least ninety hours in two weeks. The same will be effective when they spend at least sixty hours in the office and the other thirty hours in the field. The baseline of this flex schedule is to maintain the particular time every employee chooses. Every firm has got a vision it is working towards, and the joy of the employers is to work in line with their companies' mission to achieve the set goals. That is why the schedule of the employees gets monitored closely to avoid the loss of the company. However, to make a profit out of every activity, they undertake.

There are types of flex scheduling in an organization. First, there is a flexible time where workers are required to come and leave the work at the time, which pleases them provided they accomplish the minimum working hours per day or week. It also captures when employees are available for specific events in line with their duty. These events include formal or informal occasions. An example is meetings, seminars, or conferences. A scenario to this type of flex schedule is that an employer may require workers to enter into the job from eight to two in the afternoon and concede working in the other shifts the way they want.

Another type of flex schedule is called telecommuting, which is also referred to as a work from home policy. This one allows employees to work from any place they are at that particular moment. It gets guaranteed so long as workers can access the internet and ensure daily operations that their duty requires. In line with the same, some employers will as well allow employees to work so little from home as others also need time on-premises. An example of this scenario is where workers are given a chance to work on Tuesday and Friday from office but spend the rest of the working days doing it remotely.

Moreover, part-time is also another type of flex schedule that most firms exercise. This type has allowed employees to source other talents they could not deliver accurately in their usual duty. They are then given time to report to work when they are free and able to offer. It follows an arrangement between employers and employees so that they can respond to other activities in various fields. Employers recommend this type of schedule when there are not too many jobs to keep an employer for a full-time commitment. In other circumstances, employers will look for other employees to replace the position for full-time duty and excuse the part-time workers.

Finally, this review discusses compressed workweek as the last type of flex schedule. In this case, employees will go for longer shifts to get some free working days. In most cases, the week gets compressed at the beginning, and workers go for offs on Friday, and they do not respond to any duty call. It is as well characterized by working for long hours, as more than ten hours per day. Employers may take advantage of this and offer it during the summer season when most workers are requesting vocation time (Knight & Taylor, 2020). The baseline of these flex schedules is that the time frame for engaging with duty still gets compensated for even when one is off-duty.

Flexible scheduling is different from shift one. Various organizations are not in support of standard hours for the business and sometimes ensure twenty-four hours operation. For instance, healthcare or public utilities, in the named institutions, a significant number of employees are hired to work on shifts. This review concentrate on the disadvantages causes by flex scheduling in the company organization. Before dwelling on the same, this flex scheduling also has got benefits that we can briefly highlight. They include ensuring employees' morale, increment in the number of working hours, an increase in balancing employees' time, and finally, elevated productivity.

The problem of Flex Scheduling

On the other hand, employee flex scheduling has resulted in a variety of problems in different organizations or companies. The disadvantages caused by flex scheduling have tampered with an array of the company's success or goals. First, a flexible schedule is not suitable for various employee roles. A significant number of workers find it difficult to cope up with the scheduling since the role they play does not match with the same. Customers to these workers in touch with these flex scheduling may miss their service and would not recommend these particular employees to adhere to the schedule. It will also give the receptionist a hard time since these clients will always ensure they engage the people in those positions into direct calls so that they can get served.

The next major challenge in flex scheduling is tissues arising in communication. There will always exist a problem in contact since one who is away from the office is not alert enough in terms of phone call response. Organizing meetings and even arranging for the prominent project in the office can be a problem as a result of flexible scheduling. It becomes risky for an organization since critical projects, and even opportunities cannot get achieved due to miscommunication. Finally, workers will always feel frustrated due to difficulty in communicating with employees who are not in the office within a given time.

The other prime challenge is a lack of accountability. Flex scheduling enhances unnecessary freedom to employees since they will rush for the schedule that best fits their plan and fail to recall the vision and interest of the company. During choosing the calendar, workers do not pay attention to the organization's policy and value their activities while not in touch with the office. Similarly, workers that enter the office and leaves at their pleasure gives supervisors had time to monitor the progress or achievements from their duty. It can result in a massive loss of the company or tamper with the morale of the workplace.

The next problem as a result of flex scheduling is liability and security concerns. It directly affects employees since those who report to work earlier or even late after their fellow has left feeling lonely as if they are working in an empty office. The same comes out as a liability problem to the employee since any risk like am accident can occur, but there is no one to help the present employees. Besides that, security can be an issue, especially those workers who are not the key holders and would work when the building is not much into security regulation.

Another major challenge affects the human resource managers experience burdens in coordinating the schedules. It is as well tiresome to human resource professionals to initial elaborate to workers how they should operate when to enter the office and even when to leave as well as their off periods. Similarly, human resource finds it quit involving engaging employees with the change of schedule concerning regular notifications. In any company where the human resource managers are well conversant with the flex time, it means that they have been asking it, again and again, such that they can comfortably share to the guest that the firm offers flexitimes.

Nevertheless, there is always a delay in job sharing, which comes as a result of flex scheduling (Petrovic, 2019). When some employees leave the office for others to take over, it comparatively takes time when they are accessing what their colleagues did in their absence and where they should begin. It causes much time wastage in between for the usual duty to commence. If compared to employees that just work subsequently, they will save a lot of time since no group is targeted to replace them.

Compressed weeks are disadvantageous to flex scheduling, especially in a poorly structured company. Workers will compress the week, making it overworking for ten hours in four days in a week just to have a long time weekend. During this compressed period, the work is that tiresome, and some employees tend to do shoddy work keeping in mind to ensure a long period during the weekend. Some information cannot get accounted for since employees do not have an easy time as the week starts. Employees who don't report to work on Fridays also give a hard time for others who do the same on that particular day.

There is as well a loss of office culture when employees engage in flex scheduling. It is ever apparent that employees report uniformly to work from Monday to Friday with a time frame of nine hours each day. The beginning of flex scheduling has tampered with this culture, and most employees do not recommend engaging with the company that does not offer the same. Besides that, some workers as well will not perform successfully since flex time is not doing better for them; the same will interfere with the general performance of the company.

Finally, there is a lack of engagement among employees due to flexible scheduling. Workers will no longer find themselves together, which will reduce interactions and even coordination to motivate each other for the achievements of the set goals. Every worker has his own time of planning how to operate; whether the planning is poor, colleagues will not get aware since the flex time is that fixed. There will be minimum time interaction between all employees with their bosses since the time for duty is never uniform.

Solutions to the Problems

Flex scheduling, to some extent, not been overwhelming in most companies, and it comes with different challenges, as discussed above. These problems are too sensitive to the company such that if they don't get handled immediately, different firms can come down, leading to an increase in joblessness citizens within the country. The question ringing in everyone's mind is how the problem can get solved and...