Work-Life Balance: Examples

Friday, December 10, 2010

A June 2004 Issue Brief released by the Center on an Aging Society at George Town University titled “Workers Affected by Chronic Conditions”, list a number of employer-based programs that could be adapted for work-life balance.

    • Flextime

    • Part Time

    • Compressed Work Weeks

    • Telecommuting

    • Job Sharing

    • Paid and Unpaid Leaves
    • Sabbaticals

While the George Town University article was directed at employees caring for elderly relatives as well as relatives with chronic medical conditions, these programs are also suitable for employees with new and young children as well as single and married employees desiring more flexibility in the work place.

Flextime: This is normally comprised of a core set of hours during which the employee must be on site or in the office. Employees may start prior to the earliest core hour and may work past the last core hour. As an example, typical Core hours might be 9AM to 3PM, Flex hours could be 6AM to 8AM and 4PM to 6PM. Employees could report to work as early as 6AM and leave as early as 3PM. During certain peak load periods, employees might be required to come earlier or stay later based on the needs of the organization.

Part Time: Employees would work less than a standard organization workweek. This could be 2 to 6 hours per day or less than say 30 hours per week. The employee might be required to work a full time schedule temporally to fill in for vacations, sick leaves or other absences as needed. The hours worked each day might be highly variable to meet the fluctuating demands of the business. There could even be periods of time when the employee would not work at all.

Compressed Work Weeks: examples of this are 3 12-hour days or 4 10-hour days while these arrangements have traditionally been used in medical care settings with nursing and direct care givers, they are finding their way into businesses. As with other schedules, there may be times when the employee is needed beyond their normal schedule.

Telecommuting: This may require the organization installing high-speed telecommunications lines, desktop, and docking stations, printing devices, and special telephone lines. Employees may be required to report to a central or satellite office periodically for meetings, trainings, and coaching. Employees may be required to meet certain productivity goals or complete work assignments within certain periods.  Depending on the work involved, the employee may have a high degree of flexibility as long as the work is completed per specification.

Job Sharing: This is really related to Part Time employment. The job may be shared between two or more employees, although it could be administrative difficult to have more than 3-4 employees sharing the same job. One employee might work Mon-Wed-Fri while the other works Tues-Thrus. Alternately, one employee might work mornings while the other works afternoons. There might be times when both employees are needed at the same time for a special project or during peak loads.

Paid and Unpaid Leaves: These might be used in conjunction with FMLA or not. This could also be related to some type of non-work related educational assignment or training. Alternately, this could be associated with voluntarily activities related to a natural disaster. Management of the timing of such leaves would be critical to maintaining normal organizational production.  Benefits might continue during these period s with the employee 100% of the cost of any employer provided benefits such as health care.

Sabbaticals: Sabbaticals are typically associated with educational facilities and organizations. However, there is no reason that an organization could not grant sabbaticals for an employee to complete some educational worked that would benefit the organization. An organization in the engineering, chemical processing or other technical filed could derive value from an employee completing a graduate or port-graduate degree.  Benefits might continue during these period s with the employee 100% of the cost of any employer provided benefits such as health care.

The key to such programs is the ability of the organization to be flexible in allowing them. Additionally, these programs have to fulfill and meet the business needs of the organization.