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.