1. Introduction
2. Regular 8-5, M-F
3. Compressed Work Week
4. Flextime
5. Peak Time Pay
6. Job Sharing
7. Work From Home
8. Shift Work
9. Selecting the Right Work Schedule for Your Business

Introduction

When you are running your own business you need to make decisions that will create the best results for your efforts. These decisions will often include issues like what vendors provide the best service and products for the best price, what marketing strategies to use, and what business philosophies to use. While these may be common issues that business people face each day, business owners also need to make decisions about how personnel should be scheduled to produce the best results for both customer service and productivity.

When considering what employee scheduling system to use the employer needs to take many things into consideration. First they need to know what hours their business needs to be in operation. Do customers expect 24-hour service seven days a week, or does the company really only need personnel available during the daytime hours between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.? Next business owners need to consider how many employees need to be working at different times during the day. Should all of the employees be working during the entire time the company is operating, or should they be separated into shifts?

The third issue that business owners need to take into consideration when setting up a scheduling system is what system will produce the best results for the employees. This may mean taking into consideration when the best employees are available to work and for how long, how much flexibility in the employee should have when scheduling their work week, and what kinds of shifts are practical for both the company and for the employees.

In the next segment of this article, we will be looking at a variety of different work schedules and we will examine their pros and cons. This should help personnel managers, department managers, supervisors, and business owners determine what scheduling options will work the best for their company and for their employees.

Regular Shift (8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday – Friday)

The shift that most businesses operate on is the 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday shift. This shift provides employers and employees a consistent work schedule that runs in tandem to most cities’ public transportation system schedules, food vendors schedules, and other services. This schedule does not overwork an employee during the day, and it still allots them time in the early morning, evening, and on weekends to meet their personal needs like spending time with their family, shopping, running errands, and relaxing. It also allows time for regular shift employees to take a second job on the weekends, during the evening, or even during the late night hours.

The drawbacks to this schedule are minimal. The five day work week cuts out a lot of time that an employee can spend running errands or taking care of personal business that involves meeting with another professional such as a doctor, lawyer, or accountant as these people often work 8-5, or 9-5 as well. Participating in their children’s school activities also is hindered by this schedule, making helping with a class party or field trip difficult. Child care for young children is also impacted by this schedule. Day care for non-school and school aged children is needed during the hours that the parent is at work plus a half hour of travel time before and after the work day for five days a week. This adds five more hours per week that the parents are away from their children.

The Compressed Work Week

A compressed work week is a scheduling system that has employees work fewer days, but for a longer duration. For example instead of working five 8 hour days, the employee can work 4 ten hour days, or three 12 hour days.

The advantages of this scheduling system for the employee are obvious. They get more days off, it is easier for them to fit in a second or third job into their schedule, it reduces their childcare dependency, and it reduces the amount of money spent on commuting.

For employers, this work scheduling system also has some notable advantages. The employer has more hours of customer service covered, there is a reduction in absenteeism, employee job satisfaction increases, and there is an increase in productivity.

The disadvantages of this work schedule system are minor if used in reasonable moderation. The most apparent drawback is that the possibility of job fatigue developing will increase as the work day gets longer, especially if the work day is longer than 12 hours in duration. Studies have shown that 12 hours seems to be the longest work day that an employee can handle before the length of the shift starts to negatively influencing the employee’s productivity and fatigue level. Besides this drawback, compressed work weeks seem to be a great option for companies who need employees on site before and after the normal 8-5 schedule.

Flextime

Flextime is a scheduling system that allows employees to schedule their hours of work during various time slots during the week. This scheduling system allows employees to schedule their work week around personal commitments and responsibilities like meetings, appointments, school, and abilities to acquire child care.

The advantages of this type of work schedule are obvious, the flexibility factor improves job satisfaction, it allows employees to take care of personal responsibilities, and it allows employees the option to schedule their work around a second job.

For the employer, this scheduling system helps to meet their staffing needs when the qualified workforce is relatively small, it helps them meet transportation restriction set by their city’s government, it creates less absenteeism, it reduces overtime, it reduces role conflicts, and it improves employee productivity.

While this type of scheduling system has many advantages, it also has some drawbacks. First it really is only effective in small to moderate sized companies. Secondly it is not a practical scheduling system for every type of business. And finally, it could produce serious customer service issues if not properly managed.

For example, if a restaurant allowed its employee to utilize flextime scheduling, it is possible that without proper supervision of the employee scheduling process, that there may be periods of time when there are no employees working during the hours of operation of the business. This would negatively impact the restaurant, and it would reduce the restaurant’s ability to meet its customers’ needs and the business’s needs.

Peak Time Pay

Peak time pay is used in businesses that have extended periods of operation, but that are only busy during peak, or rush times. Again the restaurant industry can be examined. Here the hours of operation may be from 6 am to 1 am. While there are 19 hours that the business is open, they probably are only really busy during three rush period, the breakfast rush, the lunch rush, and the dinner rush. In order to meet the customer service needs during these rush periods more employees are scheduled to be working, however during the slow periods the staff is reduced to a minimum. This reduces the total operating costs for the day.

However, this means that some employees are only working for three hours a day. If these people were only making minimum wage, this job really wouldn’t be paying them enough to entice them to stay with the company, so in order to entice these people to stay, the business owner offers to pay these peak time employees a higher wage than the regular employee. This way they make a reasonable per day wage, but the total labor cost effect on the business is still less than having a minimum wage worker work an eight hour shift.

The advantages of this system are that it reduces employee turnover for peak time shift, and it reduces the cost of labor is the long run.

The disadvantages of this scheduling option are mostly for the employee. Peak time pay employees only are scheduled for three hours a day, however, the three hours are in the middle of other normal shifts so it makes it difficult to schedule other jobs around this type of work schedule. Also, even though peak time pay employees are making more than minimum age, this may still not be enough to meet their financial needs, and they will most likely need to work two or three jobs to meet their financial needs adding to their fatigue and dissatisfaction with their job.

Job Sharing

Job sharing is another scheduling option. In this situation two people share one position. They work out between themselves who will work what hours during the week. For example, this type of job scheduling has become popular with married couples who are in the same field like teaching. The wife may teach the morning classes and then the husband may come in in the afternoon to teach the afternoon classes.

This type of scheduling options benefits both the employee and the employer. For the employee, they have greater flexibility in when they are at work and for how long. This allows them to meet their personal needs and responsibilities and still meet their work responsibilities. For the employer the advantages include a reduction in employee absenteeism, improved quality of work, and it attracts high quality employees who other wise might not be available to work for their company.

While this type of scheduling system has many advantages it also has its disadvantages. First, one employee’s work does impact another’s work. For example if at the beginning of the week when employee A is working they prepare a spreadsheet for employee B to use later in the week, but makes a major mistake and inputs the data into the wrong fields, when employee B comes in for their part of the shift the may not notice the error and use faulty information in their tasks.

Continuity is another drawback to this scheduling system. The supervisor and/or other people in the department may get confused on what they can expect from the person who is working on a particular day, during a particular shift as each employee has a unique set of qualifications, strengths, and weaknesses. This continuity problem may affect how long it takes for a project to be completed as both people in the job will need to receive the instructions and learn how to perform the task, or the project will be limited to the days and times that one of the two people in the job share is available.

Work From Home

With the advancements in telecommunication devise and the Internet working from home offices is becoming more common. This particular scheduling option is very popular with new parents who want to stay home with their infant. However, this situation creates some problems for both the employee and the employer.

First, unless the employee is well disciplined, they may find it difficult to get their work done without being distracted by home-life. Constant interruptions caused by personal calls, babies crying or needing attention, children running around, and television may all hinder the employee’s ability to focus on their work and get it completed in a timely manner.

For the employer, the work-at-home situation may reduce overhead, and help them to keep valuable employees on payroll, but it also produces several obstacles that are difficult to overcome. First, they have no way to supervise the work that is being done, nor do they have a way of knowing how much time the employee actually spent working and how much time they spent tending to their personal needs. Time keeping, pay scales, and monitoring for safety are all issues that are difficult to manage in traditional ways for work-at-home employees.

Shift Work

Shift work is the last scheduling option that will be examined. In this situation there are several shifts during a 24-hour period that an employee can work. Often the employees rotate what shifts they work so that it doesn’t interfere too much with their natural sleep-wake cycles.

This particular type of work schedule is helpful for couples who both work and who have children. The various shifts makes it feasible for one parent or partner to be with the children while the other works.

The drawbacks to this type of work schedule are based around the effects late night shift working has on the body’s natural circadian rhythms. Prolonged exposure to late night shift work doesn’t reduce the negative side effects, but instead intensifies them leading to digestive, appetite, and sleeping problems. It can also affect the person’s social life, as when they are asleep most people are awake, and when they are awake most people are asleep. This hinders who they can socialize with and when. This could have a very bad impact on their family life.

Selecting the Right Work Schedule for Your Business

To decide which of the above work schedules is right for your company ask yourself the following questions:

1. When do my customers expect service?
2. How many employees do I need to be working? When? And for how long?
3. Do my employees need to work on-site? Or can they work off-site?
4. Does it matter when my employees are in the office? Or can they be reasonably flexible with their scheduling as long as they commit to X number of hours per week?