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Career Strategies - Flexi time
- Flexi time
is one of the most popular and most widely known career development
interventions.
- Flexi time
gives employees the opportunity to balance their work and personal lives by
restructuring the typical workday to accommodate individual employee schedules.
- Employers
who offer flexi time often report decreased use of paid leave, decreased
tardiness and increased productivity.
- Other
benefits for the employer include a low-cost method of providing personal time
off and extending service hours without overtime pay.
- This career
development intervention is popular with employees who have extended families
or young children, who may be facing “burn-out”, and those seeking further
education or pursuing second careers.
- Flexi time
allows employees to set their own schedules, within limitations set by
management.
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For example, workers may adjust their starting and ending
times, but are required to be at the office during management specified core or
peak hours. Flexi time may also be combined with other interventions, such as
job sharing, job rotation, and phased retirement.
For example, Sheetal a receptionist recently returned to
school to complete her Master's degree. She had full support and encouragement
from her employer, who agreed on the flexi time schedule Sheetal proposed.
Because the location of the school required an hour commute, Sheetal needed to
leave work at 3.00 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday to attend a 4.00 p.m. class. To
complete the 40-hour week, she arranged to start work one hour early on Tuesday
and Thursday and to work one hour later on Monday and Wednesday.
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Job enlargement
Job enlargement is defined as increasing the number of tasks
a worker performs, with all of the tasks at the same level of responsibility,
and is also sometimes referred to as “horizontal job loading”
One such instance involves Varuna, a data entry person in
the accounts payable department, who learns quickly and completes the majority
of her tasks early. She often seemed bored, and even mentioned to her supervisor
that she wished she had a little more variety in the job. After reviewing her
work, to be sure it was accurate as well as fast, her supervisor assigned Varuna
to help with the customer billing, a function that had much more volume and
seemed to always be behind. The intervention helped Varuna gain more skills and
make better use of her time. The department benefited also when the customer
billing was sent out in a timely manner, reducing overtime and improving cash
flow.
Job enlargement and job enrichment can both be used with
plateaued workers or workers who are experiencing burnout, and with especially
high achievers. These two interventions may be used in conjunction with each
other, or with other career development interventions such as job rotation and
temporary assignments. Both interventions provide the employee with increased
skills, making him or her more valuable to the company, or more marketable in
the job search.
