For as long as many of us can remember, the 40-hour workweek has been a staple of full-time employment. Getting up at the crack of dawn and spending the next eight or nine hours sitting behind a desk is a seemingly unavoidable fact of life for many members of the workforce. However, in recent years, a number of prominent companies have found success with flexible scheduling. Instead of enforcing predetermined daily work hours, these enterprises have given individual employees greater control over their own schedules. As you’ll find, such flexibility is not only a boon to workers, it can also help your business’s financial bottom line.
Reduced Boredom
It isn’t hard to see why boredom is so prevalent in many workplaces. Although full-time employees are required to be physically present for 40 hours each week, many of them don’t have nearly enough work to occupy that much time. As a result, people frequently spend large chunks of the workday twiddling their thumbs and waiting for quitting time. Allowing employees to leave work once their daily quotas have been met can effectively increase productivity and result in a significant decrease in workplace boredom. Additionally, employee appreciation gifts make the perfect complement to an uptick in productivity. While certain positions may require a person’s physical presence for eight to nine hours a day, a sizable percentage of full-time jobs do not.
A Better-Rested Workforce
Few people relish getting up early for work. The earlier you’re required to report to your job, the worse your general attitude toward that job is likely to be. Unsurprisingly, a lack of sufficient rest can result in a host of on-the-job errors. Allowing team members to set their own hours – provided individual deadlines are meticulously met – can have a profound effect on employee attitudes and outlooks and improve the overall atmosphere of your workplace. A well-rested worker is a happy worker – and a happy worker is a diligent worker.
Increased Employee Retention
Flexible scheduling is also a great way to retain top talent. For example, even if a competitor is offering one of your employees a more competitive wage, he or she is likely to turn them down if they adhere to traditional full-time scheduling. Barring an enormous increase in pay, employees who have grown comfortable setting their own hours are unlikely to desire a return to the old way of doing things. So if your enterprise is frequently set upon by corporate poachers, flexible scheduling can help turn the tide in your favor.
The longer a tradition has been in place, the less receptive people will be to breaking it. For the longest time, full-time employment that didn’t require one’s physical presence for 40 hours per week was the stuff of legend. However, over the last decade, a growing number of employers have discovered the benefits of easing up on archaic schedule restraints. For many enterprises, granting team members more control over their work schedules is highly beneficial to both individual employees and companies as a whole.