Uncommon sensical HR #2: Workday hours
The topic for uncommon sensical HR post number two on the surface is scheduled work hours. Below the surface, though, this is the first of two posts where the real issue is trust and flexibility.
There are some job duties in the association world that correlate to established starting or ending times. In member service, for example, you may want your phones covered from 9 am in the east to 4 pm in the west. But for most jobs, an official starting or ending time is artificial, meaning there’s no good reason for it. So don’t make people follow a rule when there’s no reason for it.
I realize people don’t work in a vacuum, they must work with each other to get things done. So maybe you establish a guideline where everybody is expected to generally be available from 10:30 to 3:30. All group meetings should respect the guidelines.
Of course I know that’s a rule that’s made to be broken, and it would be fine to break it from time to time and with good reason. But on the flip side, I’ve never heard anybody complain about not having spent enough time in meetings that day. Imagine if you could regularly count on a good chunk of either your morning or your afternoon being meeting free. Now that’s freedom!
To pull this off, you need trust in your employees. You have to trust that doing their job well is important to them. And when it comes right down to it, if you don’t trust your employees, why are they on your staff? (See yesterday’s post on hiring and firing.)
After all, everybody has job expectations. Isn’t the extent to which they are able to perform up to or beyond those expectations more important than whether they like to stay up late and get in a little late (or vice versa)?
I know that brings up the specter of performance reviews—but you’ll have to wait. That’s my topic for Thursday. Tomorrow, I’ll be making a lot of these same arguments in favor of redoing leave policies.
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Comments
Scott, thanks for the originality and initiative in this, the second article of your series. I look forward to the rest of the series.
Your thoughts about work hours and a professional approach to work raise important issues that deserve discussion. Trust is such an important issue. I hope others will jump in.
I just think it may be important to raise the point that associations, like all businesses, have many category of employees, including hourly non-exempt employees, for whom scheduled work hours are not only nice, but I believe may be required by federal labor law. Then, there's all sorts of other things that are hinged to scheduled work hours, such as overtime, benefits, yada yada.
But it is nice to think about what it might be like if we had a clean sheet of paper. It's even nicer to think about the important principles that should underlie what we do do. Thanks, Scott.
Posted by: Virgil Carter | April 1, 2008 2:25 PM
As always, sage words from Virgil. I just want to say that I think the idea still applies to nonexempt employees. My understanding of labor laws for nonminors is that there are regs around hours worked in a week (at least hours before overtime must be paid). I'm not sure if there are regs about a maximum daily number of hours, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing that says there must be a set work schedule.
All of that said, there are many legitimate reasons why an employee might have more regular or set hours. I touched on only one in the post. Carrying on the nonexempt idea, if there is someone whose job is to provide clerical support for a department, I think it has to be fine for that person to have more set hours. I'd still give them as much freedom as made sense (for example, he could start work anytime from 8:30 to 9:30).
You might say you can't have such a double standard, but I think people do actually understand logic, and can see the reasons behind things. Plus, if you're upfront in explaining the entire policy--that while the organization is pretty loose with starting times, this position is not--what reason would they have for being upset?
Posted by: Scott Briscoe | April 1, 2008 2:43 PM
Employees will work more hours - and more productive hours - when they can control their own work environment, and setting hours of work is key to that control.
Unfortunately, associations display a very strong bias for early morning work, even when it is not necessary. Why is it OK to have dinner with your family but it's not OK to take your kids to school in the morning.
Association executives (and mid-level supervisors) need to loosen up and let people work the hours most appropriate for their duties and their personal work styles. There is more room for flexibility than many people are willing to admit.
Posted by: David M. Patt, CAE | April 1, 2008 3:49 PM
Scott, I think an underlying premise of both your posts thus far (and I look forward to more of them) is an organizational culture that values results and accountability. If those ingredients are in place, how and when the work gets needs less prescription and the performance evaluation/termination issue you first wrote about also is handled differently. I had the joy of of my first association job being in such a culture. The accountability I felt was to the team and to our performance, not to any policy.
Posted by: Jeffrey Cufaude | April 1, 2008 6:45 PM
I think that's exactly right, Jeffrey. A culture that values results and accountability does so by celebrating honesty and trust of employees in its core set of beliefs.
Thank you for sharing!
Posted by: Scott Briscoe | April 2, 2008 11:07 AM