Many managers frown on use of flexible work options

Flextime and other alternative work schedules improve worker productivity, but employers haven?t gotten the message.

By Rebecca A. Clay

When New York Times metropolitan editor Joyce Purnick revealed what she really thought about her staff?s use of flexible work schedules, her remarks resulted in a newsroom uproar.

'If I had left the Times to have children, and then come back to work a four-day week the way some women reporters on my staff now do, or I had taken long vacations and leaves to be with my family, or left the office at 6 o?clock instead of 8 or 9?I wouldn?t be the metro editor,' she told Barnard College?s graduating class in May.

The implied equation between using alternative work schedules and committing career suicide shocked many on Purnick?s staff. But for psychologists who study such arrangements, attitudes like Purnick?s come as little surprise. Like Purnick, many supervisors, colleagues and employees themselves believe that taking advantage of flexible work options means people aren?t serious about their careers. As a result, many organizations institute alternative work arrangements but watch them go unused.

An underused resource

Of course, some jobs don?t lend themselves to alternative arrangements. An assembly line worker can?t work at home; a security guard can?t come in at 9 a.m. some days and 10 a.m. others. Yet even employees who could take advantage of alternative arrangements often don?t.

The federal government?s experience is typical, say experts. Eager to reduce energy consumption, lower facility operating costs and enhance employees? quality of life, the government has been encouraging its 1.8 million employees to take advantage of telecommuting since the option was introduced in 1990. Almost a decade later, only 1 percent telecommute.

Research psychologist Wendell Joice, PhD, of the U.S. General Services Administration?s Office of Government-wide Policies, believes that managers? resistance lies behind the low numbers.

'Management culture is out of step,' he says. 'Some managers may not trust their employees to do their work. Some may just be lonely. Some may not like change.'

Research by Tammy D. Allen, PhD, confirms Joice?s suspicions. Allen, a psychology professor at the University of Florida in Tampa, found that organizations don?t always 'walk the talk' of family-friendly policies.

'Even though a lot of companies have implemented flexible scheduling options, often the company?s culture doesn?t change,' she explains. According to a recent Gallop poll, she notes, although 72 percent of large companies have family-friendly policies, 41 percent of their employees believe that using the benefits would harm their careers.

In a study of 301 female workers, Allen examined the connection between work-family conflict and employees? perceptions of their employers? commitment to work/family balance. She found that employees whose employers seemed to put work first had more work-family conflict, no matter how many family-friendly benefits, such as flexible scheduling or dependent care, were offered.

But it?s not just supervisors? attitudes that have an effect on workers? willingness to take advantage of flexible scheduling options, says psychologist Ellen Ernst Kossek, PhD, an associate professor in the School of Labor and Industrial Relations at Michigan State University in East Lansing.

In fact, Kossek coined the term 'the power of peers' to describe the phenomenon she discovered in a study of 1,300 professionals in a Midwestern telecommunications company. Individuals, she found, are more likely to use alternative work schedules if others in their workgroups already use them.

Customers? perceptions also contribute to underutilization, says Kossek. When she asked a banker if he would assign a big client to two job-sharing employees, he explained that doing so would signal that the client wasn?t valued. In reality, says Kossek, research shows that job-sharers actually outperform individuals.

Advantages

As that research suggests, alternative work arrangements may have an impact on the bottom line.

To find out what effect alternative arrangements has on employee attitudes and behaviors, Lori M. Berman, PhD, studied 502 federal employees who used flextime, compressed workweeks, telecommuting and part-time work options. Not surprisingly, such arrangements reduced absenteeism.

'Flextime allows you to rearrange your schedule to take care of nonwork responsibilities without having to call in sick,' she explains.

Berman found that other outcomes were mediated by two variables?employees? ratings of their actual schedule flexibility and the extent to which their jobs fulfilled their psychological needs. The higher employees scored on these two variables, the more likely their supervisors were to give them higher scores for performance, sense of obligation toward the organization and organizational citizenship.

'Companies today want to know that alternative arrangements have a direct impact on the bottom line,' explains Berman, an associate consultant at the Hay Group in Arlington, Va. 'Changing just one thing in a huge company may not affect performance directly, but it still affects performance indirectly through mediating variables.'

Employees also benefitted from alternative work schedules, says Berman. Although 19 percent of the employees in her study claimed that using alternative arrangements had hindered their advancement, a surprising 29 percent felt their schedules had enhanced their careers. One person used flextime to come in early enough to get computer access, for instance. Another worked a compressed work week and used the free day to get additional job training.

Research by Louis C. Buffardi, PhD, and his colleagues at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., has confirmed that alternative arrangements give workers? attitudes a boost.

Working with an Office of Management and Budget database, the team looked at the effect of two alternative work arrangements on 27,000 federal employees? feelings about their jobs. They found that flextime and compressed workweeks had a small but significant positive effect on outcomes like employees? perceptions of organizational support, work-family balance and job satisfaction.

The effects would have been greater if the options hadn?t been around long enough to be taken for granted, says Buffardi. While people generally respond positively to innovations, he explains, their enthusiasm tapers off as the innovation becomes an expected part of people?s environment.

'I would hazard a guess that if you took these options away from people and made them go back to traditional schedules, there would be a great hue and cry,' says Buffardi, an associate professor of psychology. 'People seek out control over their lives. The more control you have, the better off you are in terms of how you approach your work and in terms of your mental health.'

Recent research by the Families and Work Institute in New York bolsters these arguments. The institute?s '1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce' challenges the common belief that encouraging employees to use family-friendly policies will weaken their commitment and loyalty.

Based on surveys of 2,877 employees across the country, the study found that support from employers?things like sympathetic supervisors, flexibility and family-friendly policies?was the number-one factor in job satisfaction. But while most employers offer competitive wages and benefits, the amount of support they offer varies widely. Those variations have a big impact on the bottom line, says James T. Bond, the institute?s vice president of research.

The study found that the more support employees received at work the more productive they were and the less likely they were to quit. In short, says Bond, they were willing to go the extra mile for their employers.

Given these advantages, how can organizations get employees to use the options available to them?

Use company publications to highlight success stories of people who do good work even though they leave early to take care of their kids, say Kossek and other researchers. Make it clear that alternative arrangements are for everyone, not just working mothers. Replace the macho work ethic with a celebration of employees who successfully balance work and family.

Most importantly, says Kossek, learn to focus less on how employees get their jobs done and more on what they actually produce. 'The traditional notion that time at work equals productivity still prevails,' she explains. 'That has got to change.'

Rebecca A. Clay is a writer in Washington, D.C.