November 6, 2003
Flexing the schedule: Survey shows interest in alternative work hours
A recent survey of some UW staff members shows strong interest in alternative, or flexible, work schedules and a high rate of usage of such schedules.
The survey, which was jointly planned by SEIU Local 925 and the UW’s Work/Life and Labor Relations offices, was provided to the approximately 4,000 members of the union and drew a 25 percent response rate. It was administered online using Catalyst software.
“The survey was a negotiated item in the union’s 2002 contract with the University,” said Work/Life’s Randi Shapiro. “We were very pleased with the number of respondents, especially considering that members were sent a written notice of the survey’s URL and had to go to the site on their own.”
Shapiro said staffers could also request a hard copy of the survey if they didn’t have Web access.
According to bargaining team member Kayleen McGinley, who is office supervisor in the UW’s Counseling Center and served on the committee that prepared the survey, the union wanted the survey because they had no data on whether or not the flexible schedule program was working.
“The right to have flexible schedules when possible has been part of our contract since at least 1997,” McGinley said. “But we didn’t know how many people had requested such schedules or how many had received them.”
The survey results shed some light on that question. Almost half (49 percent) of the 1,018 survey respondents said they had at some point in their University careers requested alternate/flexible schedules and 82 percent of these requests had been approved. For purposes of the survey, “alternate/flexible” was defined as any deviation from standard working hours.
When respondents were asked to describe their alternate schedules, they reported a great variety of arrangements, from telecommuting one day a week to working four ten-hour days to taking a half-hour lunch in order to leave at 4:30 p.m.
The survey listed several common reasons for working alternate schedules and asked respondents to check if these applied. Most popular among these was quality of life, followed by transportation, child care, education, medical reasons and elder care. However, it was the “other” category that surprised Shapiro.
“Of the 139 people who listed other reasons, a third of them said they worked an alternate schedule because it met the needs of their department,” Shapiro said. “We often think that flex schedules are just employee initiated when in fact sometimes it’s a smart way to get work done.”
More troubling was the response of those who had been denied an alternate schedule. About half of them said the reason was “supervisory style.”
“The reality is that an alternative flexible schedule is not an entitlement. There are clearly some positions where it just doesn’t work. It really has to be up to the supervisor,” Shapiro said. “On the other hand, the University actually wants to encourage flexible schedules when it’s possible because from all the data we’re seeing nationally, flexibility is one of the most important benefits employees talk about.”
She said Training and Development’s Strategic Leadership Program includes discussions of flexible scheduling and how it impacts the manager’s job, and she sees those discussions as a springboard for a campus dialogue on the subject.
About two-thirds of the respondents — whether they worked alternative/flexible schedules or not — said they were interested in getting more information on the subject. Shapiro said that Work/Life plans to enhance the Web site that talks about flexible scheduling and that they are partnering with the Transportation Office to offer a flexible schedule workshop in January. The office already offers a session through Training and Development called Creating a Balanced Workplace that includes information on flexible scheduling.
McGinley said the union is pleased to know that so many people who request flexible schedules are able to obtain them. “But the survey also shows that a lot of people are interested in getting more information about this,” she said. “We’re glad that Work/Life is planning to do the workshop in January.”
Shapiro said she’s excited to have the information from the survey. “In these fiscally restrained times we need to keep thinking of ways we can retain our employees and recruit new ones,” she said. “Flexible scheduling is right at the top as a low-cost, no-cost benefit. We see our work in the next few years as expanding on these low-cost, no-cost benefits and this is right up there.”
