Alternative Work Hours

In the past decade, large and small businesses throughout the country have sought ways to increase employee morale and job satisfaction. This can take a number of forms, such as company-paid education costs, subsidized employee cafeterias, on-site recreation or fitness facilities, and alternative work hours to name a few.

Alternative work schedules, such as staggered arrival and departure times, can pay benefits to not only the employees but also to the community where they work because traffic congestion is reduced on highways and local streets.

At Hacienda Business Park, the Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions, (CC&R's) of the Park call for tenants to use programs such as ridesharing, flex-time, staggered work hours, and to seek ways to promote use of public transportation whenever possible.

Companies with more than 50 employees will be asked to appoint a transportation coordinator to implement these and other plans aimed at reducing traffic on the road.

Dramatic proof of the impact this can have came recently when Fireman's Fund Insurance relocated its corporate headquarters from San Francisco to Marin County and canceled a staggered work hour plan that had previously been in effect.

When employees of the giant insurance company's Terra Linda building began to report to work at the same time, traffic jams soon developed at the Highway 101 - Lucas Valley Road interchange and on local streets.

The traffic congestion caused the Fireman's Fund employees to report late to work and also delayed arrivals for commuters reporting to work further south in Marin County or San Francisco. But when Fireman's Fund reinstated staggered work hours, the bottlenecks immediately disappeared.

In San Francisco, mayor Dianne Feinstein implemented a flex-time schedule for some city departments when MUNI transit lines became erratic and overcrowded due to maintenance problems with aging diesel buses.

Originally conceived as a way to get some city employees off buses during peak commute hours, it was also a demonstration project to encourage other businesses in San Francisco to adopt similar programs.

Some of the variations in alternative work plans are:

Staggered Hours : Groups of employees within a company are scheduled to begin work at different times. Spacing arrivals at specified intervals before and after conventional business hours allows workers to commute when traffic is less and more seats are available on public transit.

Some of the organizations using staggered work hours: Lockheed Missiles and Space Co., Marin County government offices and the Bechtel Group.

Flex-Time: With Flex-time, the length of the working day is extended to include early morning hours (from 7:00 am) and late afternoon hours (until 7:00 pm). There is a core time when everyone must be on the job. Beyond that, employees can set their own hours as long as departments are staffed, jobs get done and the required number of hours are worked in each pay period.

Flex-time is widely used throughout the insurance and banking industries. And in the high-tech industry, as many as 60% of all white collar workers are on the flex-time system. It has proliferated in Santa Clara County because of the highly competitive nature of the business, where all high-tech companies must offer similarly attractive benefits.

Hewlett-Packard was one of the first companies in the U.S, to try flex-time. Other companies in the Bay Area that are on flex-time systems are: Metropolitan Life, Crocker Bank, California State Automobile Association, Wells Fargo, and Standard Oil.

Compressed Work Weeks : There are several variations of compressed work weeks, such as working four, ten-hour days each week, and lengthening the work day slightly so employees have every other Friday off or every Friday afternoon off.

This system is in wide use in a lot of San Francisco advertising agencies such as Cunningham and Walsh; Dancer Fitzgerald Sample; and Foote Cone & Belding/Honig. Others using the compressed work week include Pepsico and the federal offices in San Francisco and Denver.

The compressed work week can have a major impact on commuting and traffic, since it alters commute times and keeps cars off the road for one day or at least part of the day each week.

Of these various plans, flex-time seems to be the most popular, because of the choices it gives employees in balancing work with personal time. Many flex-time systems began as staggered work hours.

Where flex-time is in effect, people generally choose much earlier work hours, and one half of them are usually on the job before 7:30 am.

When surveyed, 97% of the companies on a flex-time report an increase in employee morale, 70% show a decline in absences (employees who oversleep or don't feel well come in later in the day rather than call in sick for an entire day), and 50% report measured increases in productivity.

From a management standpoint, flex-time changes the way offices work. Managers have to plan better to accommodate the system, and better organization benefits the entire company.

At Hacienda Business Park, use of flex-time and other such systems, are an integral part of the Park's Master Plan and can benefit the community through a reduction in traffic.

To see a reproduction of the original article and edition of Pleasanton Pathways, visit: December 10, 1983 Pathways.

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