Flexitime: Where, When, and How?

flexitime:
where, when, and how?

PAM SILVERSTEIN
JOZETTA H. SRB
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KEY ISSUES SERIES - NO. 24
FLEXITIME: WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW?
by
Pam Silverstein
and
Jozetta H. Srb
1979
New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations
A Statutory College of the State University
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
Trsnf Unlvwc&'f
c
_J
Copyright (c) 1979 by Cornell University
Library of Congress Card Number: 79-88670

ISSN:0070-0815
ISBN:0-87546-074-7
Price: $3.50
ORDER FROM:
Publications Division, NYSSILR

Cornell University
Box 1000
Ithaca, New York 14853
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION. 1
I. HISTORY OF FLEXITIME. 4^
European Overview. 5
U. S. Overview. 9^
II. EXAMPLES OF PILOT FLEXITIME PROGRAMS IN THE U. S. 12
Private Industry. 12
Federal Government. 18
III. HOW TO SET UP A FLEXITIME PROGRAM. 23
Feasibility Study. 23
Planning Flexible Hours. 25
Implementing the Program. 27
Relieving Managerial Fears. 28
IV. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS IN PLANNING FLEXITIME. 30
Labor Laws and Flexitime. 30

Unions and Flexitime. 33
V. WHAT TO EXPECT FROM FLEXITIME. 38
Advantages and Disadvantages. 38

Public Policy and the Future of Flexible Work Time. 41
Conclusion. 44
APPENDIX A: INSTRUCTIONS FOR FLEXIBLE WORK HOURS

PARTICIPANTS AT THE SINGER COMPANY, LINK
DIVISION, BINGHAMTON, NEW YORK. 46
APPENDIX B: EFFECT OF FLEXITIME PILOT PROGRAM ON

EMPLOYEE ATTITUDES IN THE OFFICE OF ACCOUNTING,
OASAM, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR. 50
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 53
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors express their appreciation to Frank

Underwood of The Singer Company, Link Division,
and to Marizetta Scott, U. S. Department of Labor,
Office of Systems Management, for providing the
information on the implementation and evaluation
of the pilot programs in their organizations. In
addition, the authors thank Jerome Abarbanel, of
the Education and Training Division, National
Association of Mutual Savings Banks, for his very
helpful critique and valuable suggestions.
INTRODUCTION
While most workers do not appear to be fundamentally

alienated from work, the great majority is alienated
from the way in which work is regulated in relation
to time (Bernstein, 1973:130).
Despite the fact that in 1977 only about 42 percent of all

Americans in the employed labor force worked an average of forty hours a
week (31 percent worked fewer hours, 27 percent worked more), the idea
of a forty-hour workweek has become the accepted norm in the United
States. Along with this norm is the general assumption that for most
workers the forty hours are divided among five days of the week. Even
more strongly associated with the idea is the standard system of fixed
working hours. In this system the times for both starting and stopping
work each day are fixed. Each employee is expected to be at the
workplace at the appointed hours. Individuals are rarely allowed to
start or finish at times different from those set for other workers.
Time clocks, attendance registers, or personal observation by
supervisors control punctuality. Deductions may be made from the
paychecks of workers who are late. Although the five-day, forty-hour
week is the standard in the United States, there are other forms of
fixed working hours, including the compact workweek—best illustrated by
the four-day, forty-hour week, shift work, and staggered hours—starting
times staggered for different groups of employees usually at intervals
of one-quarter to one-half hour.
The concept of flexible working hours is relatively simple. The

number of hours that must be worked remain constant, but the usual fixed
hours are replaced by a flexible schedule. In most organizations now
using flexitime, the schedule includes a core time, when everyone must
be present, and flexible periods at the beginning and end of each day,
when employees can arrive and leave according to their personal needs.
There are many variations on this theme. Those following are described
in order of increasing complexity:
1. Flexibility within the working day. The employee may choose

arrival time within the morning flexible period, work the standard
number of required hours, and leave. The starting time governs the
quitting time. Flexibility is restricted to the day, with no carry-over
of hours to the next day. In some cases the lunch period is not
flexible; for example:
Flexible hours 7:00 to 9:00 a.m.

Core hours (including lunch) 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Flexible hours 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.
1
2
In other cases the employee has additional flexibility in relation to

both time and length of the lunch period; for example:

Core hours 9:00 to 11:30 a.m.
Flexible lunch period 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m
Core hours 1:30 to 4:00 p.m.
2. Flexibility within the workweek. The employee can choose

starting and quitting times each day and can vary the total standard
daily hours. Core time is still mandatory, but quitting time is no
longer governed by starting time. The only requirement is that the
stipulated number of hours are worked each week.
3. Flexibility within the working month. The employee must work

the number of hours required for the month, but may work only the core
time for several days and make up the required hours during the
remainder of the month. In a more liberal version of the flexible
month, the employee is permitted to carry forward time (usually ten
hours) to use in adjusting work hours during the following month. In
some schemes, a deficit must be made up within the flexible band times
and time off cannot be taken during core time to use a credit balance,
while even more liberal schemes permit carry-forward and core time off.
In these cases, an employee may take time off (usually a limited time)
during core time if arrangements are made with the supervisor or
department head so that the work flow will not be interrupted (Bolton,
1971).
In addition to the restraints already mentioned, certain

requirements may be imposed in the interests of health. For example,
some employers stipulate that at least forty-five minutes be taken as a
lunch break and that an employee cannot work more than ten hours a day.
Except in the more liberal systems, which are more common in Europe than
in the United States, the employee is held to the conventional forty
hours a week (Owen, 1977:153).
The variations just described are only a few of the basic elements
that have been incorporated into alternative work hour schedules. Each
variation may also be applied in several different ways: The
determination of schedules, for example, may be made by individuals in a
work group with each person deciding his or her own schedule; or the
system may require that alternative work hours be decided on by the
group, with the members of the work unit agreeing to and keeping the
same schedule. The alternative hours chosen may be binding on the
individual or the group for a given period of time, with limited degrees
of freedom for the individual to deviate from it—in some cases only
with prior permission from the supervisor. There are, of course, many
other ways to design flexible time systems. In fact, a flexible working
hours program of a given organization may be structured to include
3
different alternative patterns of work for various groups within the

same organization. Control Data Corporation, for example, in 1972
established a pilot program, in its Aerospace and Microcircuit units,
using four variations of flexible working time (Gomez-Mejia, Hopp, and
Sommerstad, 1978:40).
Chapter 1 of this Key Issues report provides a brief history of the

origin and dissemination of the idea of flexitime in Europe and in the
United States. Chapter 2 describes some of the pilot programs in
operation in private industry and in the federal government agencies;
evaluations of these programs are also reviewed. Chapter 3 focuses on
how an organization should go about the planning and implementation of
flexitime. Chapter 4 looks at the effects of trade union issues and
labor laws on the development of alternative work hour schedules.
Chapter 3 summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of flexitime as
seen by employees, employers, and public policy makers; this concluding
chapter also briefly reviews the need for further experimentation and
analysis of alternative work hour arrangements in order to more
carefully assess their role in improving the quality of work life in
America.
I
HISTORY OF FLEXITIME
According to Dornberg (1977), the idea of flexible working hours

first emerged in West Germany in the middle 1960s when the country was
still experiencing the effects of the Wirtshaftswunder or "economic
miracle" of the previous decade. The period was one of severe worker
shortages, and even with an estimated two million foreign workers in the
country, there were as many as three jobs for each person able to work.
Christel Kaemmerer, a political economist and management consultant from
the town of Koeningswinter-on-the-Rhine, became aware of a major
untapped source of labor, the housewife and mother. In an attempt to
attract them into the labor force, she wrote an article outlining a new
concept that she called Gleitende Arbeitszeit ("gliding work time"),
which she explained as follows: There would be a core period throughout
most of the day when the employees were expected to be present, and
there would be flexible periods before core time in the morning and
after it in the afternoon. During the flexible periods the employees
could come and go as they wished, without their supervisors’ approval,
provided they worked the standard number of hours per day. She
suggested that this flexibility in the morning and evening would aid the
housewife and mother in coping with her household chores and child-
rearing duties. In addition to these advantages, such a plan also could
(1) alleviate early morning and late afternoon rush hour traffic jams,
(2) appeal to those who disliked working early morning hours, (3)
eliminate time wasted waiting for the workday to begin, (4) give
employees a sense of responsibility and trustworthiness at being able to
choose working hours. These changes, Kaemmerer believed, would
contribute to better employee morale. This was the beginning of what
has come to be called, in the United States, flexitime.
By 1967 several municipal administrations, the power plant for the

city of Kassel, a dozen or so small factories, and wholesalers and
retailers in a variety of fields, had adopted various schemes for
flexible hours. Messerschmidt-Boelkow-Blohm, an aerospace firm
employing twenty-five hundred workers, who had hired Kaemmerer to study
their staffing problems, was the first to experiment with flexitime.
With only one access road leading to the plant, flexitime offered a
possible solution to its severe traffic jams, the major contributing
factor to employee tardiness. The system was introduced into one
department on a trial basis in May of 1967 and by September was extended
to all employees. The expected decline in tardiness did occur, and the
employees reacted favorably to the new program. The only negative
responses were from seventy-nine employees who felt it reduced time for
communicating with fellow workers and supervisors (Dornberg, 1977).
Nevertheless, the company considered the program a general success. Not
4
5
only were the traffic jams eliminated, but "absenteeism declined by

about 40 percent, overtime dropped by 50 percent, employee turnover was
reduced, tardiness disappeared..." (Swart, 1978:63). And Kaemmerer's
idea did indeed lead to improved employee morale, which more than
anything else persuaded other European firms to adopt the new scheduling
system.
European Overview
The basic concept of flexible working time rapidly became

integrated into the evolving movement for improving the quality of work
life. In 1973, at the second European regional conference of the
International Labour Organisation, the director general commented:
Life has become too regimented, too impersonal, too

monotonous, too frenzied and altogether too limiting
and too restrictive for the present generation of
Europeans....How can we reintroduce into European
societies a greater measure of freedom, a greater
respect for human dignity, and a fuller measure of
personal responsibility, without doing away with the
minimum of discipline and order that are essential
for continued stability and prosperity? (In Evans,
1977:30.)
Switzerland
Despite the fact that the origin of flexitime appears to have been
in Germany, it was most rapidly adopted and expanded in Switzerland
where the flexitime workday appears to have been extended from the
workday to the workweek. Heinz Allenspach, in Flexible Working Hours
(1975), discussed some of the reasons for the popularity of flexitime
among Swiss enterprises. According to Allenspach, Swiss employers are
willing to give workers a choice about working hours as long as workers
show a sense of responsibility toward the organization, its particular
needs, and the needs of coworkers. For the most part, Swiss workers on
flexible work hour schedules have a minimum number of hours they can
work each day; the maximum number of working hours per day is limited by
law to ten and one-half. Within these limits, flexible working hours
give certain advantages to the worker that previously were attached only
to higher level positions. Among the advantages Allenspach lists is the
time and energy saved when the worker can choose more convenient and
less crowded hours for transportation, shopping, and personal business.
Worker productivity and job satisfaction may also increase as workers
are able to begin work in accordance with individual habits, thus
reaching full productive capacity more quickly. Eliminating the
necessity to stop or interrupt a task at closing time may make it
possible to complete a given operation on the same day and avoid
6
restarting, reexamining a file, or reassembling the necessary papers the

next day.
In 1975 Allenspach wrote that there were special problems with

flexible working hours in regard to interdependence of functions,
external communications, activities in which particularity is essential,
services organizations, assembly lines, and shift work. He believes,
however, there are solutions to most special problems and that although
the system does not suit every undertaking and occupation, it should not
be discounted completely for that reason (Allenspach, 1975:60). Within
two years of Allenspach's article, an estimated 40 percent of all Swiss
workers and as many as 70 percent of the workers in the Zurich-Winterthes
industrial and commercial area were on some form of gliding time (Evans,
1977:34; and Swart, 1978:63).
Germany
Similar figures have been reported for other European countries.

For example, the Federal Republic of Germany reported in 1975 that the
flexible workweek was used in one out of three companies and in six
federal agencies out of ten. The estimated number of workers involved
was 2.5 million. By 1977, Dun’s Review reported that twenty thousand
West German companies had some version of the flexible working day. Most
of these companies were in the insurance business and banking and in the
trade and service sectors, however, some 350 manufacturing firms had also
adopted flexitime (Evans, 1977:34; and Dornberg, 1977:62).
The German Union of Administrative Employees has followed the

development of flexible working hours very closely and has maintained
contact with all companies who have introduced the system. It has
published an official brochure, Gleitende Arbeitszeit fur Angestellte
und Beamte, which outlines the advantages and disadvantages to
employees. The brochure is used primarily to give union members a basic
understanding of the system to help them prepare for discussions with
management about the introduction of flexitime (Bolton, 1971:47-48).
France
According to Evans (1977:34), in France seven hundred thousand

persons were working under flexible time schedules in 1975; sixteen
hundred establishments in the Paris area alone used some form of
flexitime. In 1975 France’s prime minister, by letter to all ministers
and secretaries of state, invited all branches of the government to
experiment with variable schedules. He stated that the heads of the
units concerned were responsible for the implementation in the work
schedules of the public services. The scheme by 1976 covered only 2
percent of the public servants to whom it was potentially applicable.
The establishments involved, however, include some thirty out of
7
ninety-five offices representing the central government in the various

geographical departments. Swart (1978:63) estimates that in 1977 over
20 percent of the French work force was on flexitime.
Great Britain
Compared to other European countries, Great Britain was late in

adopting flexitime, and the number of workers under such systems in 1977
was estimated to be only about 10 percent of the work force (Swart,
1978:64). According to a market survey conducted in 1976 by Hengstler
Gleitzeit, consultants and makers of an electronic meter system often
used in flexitime, nearly 75 percent of the 250 personnel managers
surveyed were not familiar with "flexible working hours" (Hesmondhalgh,
1977:31). They confused them with such other alternatives as the
ten-hour day/four-day week, staggered working hours, and shift systems.
There were also particular circumstances under which employers were
reluctant to introduce flexible working hours: instances where
production work was involved—because of the complexities of dealing with
several sets of hours where companies employed both production and
administrative staff, and where the size of the company was too large or
too small. In relation to the size factor, however, some examples in
England prove that size is no barrier. Organizations as massive as DHSS
Central Office in Newcastle, where twelve thousand employees maintain
national insurance records and pensions for 37 million people, as well
factories employing only five people were using flexible hours
successfully.
One of the first trial programs was in Britain's largest insurance

company. Prudential Assurance, which began to look into flexible
working hours for its six thousand employees in 1972. Prudential was a
logical organization for trying out flexitime for two reasons: its
offices were usually located in highly populated and congested areas,
and the work involved a high level of repetitive clerical tasks. The
trial program was introduced in 1973 for 950 employees in London and
Leeds.
The most quantifiable advantage noted after Prudential's six-month

trial period was the savings in overtime. There was a small decrease in
the time off for minor illness as well as some improvement in staff
efficiency. A general boost to morale was apparent. Definite problems,
however, emerged: the department managers' workloads increased because
of minimum staffing during flexible hours and because of a need for more
thorough and advance planning. Communications between departments
deteriorated to a small degree, and different supervisors handled
situations in different ways causing resentments. Where it was essential
Described in detail in European Industrial Relations Review

(cited hereafter as EIRR), 1974b:9-ll.
8
for a group of employees to carry out a certain task, freedom to choose

working times was limited. Although some employees and supervisors had
reservations about the feasibility of flexible working hours in their
particular departments, Prudential found that 90 to 95 percent of the
staff on flexitime preferred it to fixed hours.
In 1974, after experimentation and detailed evaluation in nine

offices, the British Civil Service offered flexible working hours to
sixty-five thousand civil servants in one department. The evaluations
were interesting: employees spoke of little change, yet what change
there was tended to be beneficial; they felt a greater sense of freedom
in now being responsible for their own timekeeping; their output was not
noticeably increased or decreased; the most common reason for liking
flexible working hours was freedom from time constraints (see Walker,
Fletcher, and McLeod, 1975:216-222).
Approximately six years after flexible working hours had been

introduced into the United Kingdom, claims for increased productivity
and lower absenteeism remained questionable. There was, however, a
reduction in overtime and an almost total elimination of tardiness.
Perhaps the most important finding was that, once implemented, a
flexible scheme is not given up easily by the work force (Hesmondhalgh,
1977:33).
Italy
In 1972 Fridan in Milan (part of the Singer Group) was the first
company to introduce flexitime. Two food companies, Perugina and
Plasmon; a publishing company, Mondadori and Pirelli; and the
engineering firm Italsider soon followed. Within a year and a half,
there were one hundred firms operating with some form of flexible
working hours, primarily for white-collar workers.
Some employees on flexitime schedules expressed dissatisfaction

about lost benefits, for instance, the need to make up time when
unavoidably late, which had not been true under fixed schedules, and the
reduction of overtime. In addition, many employees felt that flexitime
would be used by the government as an excuse for not building more
nurseries and schools, which were badly needed. The consensus of those
who experimented with flexible hours, however, appeared to be favorable.
According to a study in 1977, there were also approximately twenty-

five thousand administrative and technical workers at Fiat on flexible
work schedules (Evans, 1977:34; see also EIRR, 1974:5-6).
Summary
The literature on flexitime is replete with references to its
success in several European countries. According to Evans (1977:42),
9
the development is symbolic of the new approach to improving the quality

of life and enabling European workers to be freer of constraints. This
ideological view, however, is balanced by a list of pragmatic and
economic reasons for the introduction and spread of flexible work
schedules in Europe. These reasons, given by Evans (1977:35), can be
generally categorized as follows: (1) Acute labor shortages, especially
in Germany, had required something new to attract and keep workers and
to bring people in the reserve labor force (specifically, housewives and
students) into jobs. (2) One of the ways to solve problems in
transportation to and from work in a practical way was to reduce peak
hour loads. (3) Lost work time could be reduced if jobs started one day
could be finished the same day. (4) It was thought that employee
demands for costlier changes (for instance, shorter workweeks) might be
forestalled by the less expensive rescheduling of work hours. (5)
Employees who heard about it wanted it; employees who had it did not
want to give it up.
U. S. Overview
Although the Walsh-Healey Act (1936) and the Fair Labor Standards
Act (1938) fixed the forty-hour week standard for workers in firms
engaged in interstate commerce by mandating overtime pay for hours in
excess of that number, the standard itself is the historical result of a
long-term trend toward an eight-hour day. Most of today's workers are
relatively unaware of earlier standards and stricter interpretations of
the "protestant" (work) ethic. For example, in 1860 standard workweeks
were seventy-two hours long, and by 1900 that number had dropped only to
sixty hours; during the next forty years the decrease was more rapid.
The forces behind the movement for a fairer division between work
and nonwork hours were varied. As early as the mid-1800s, proponents of
shorter work time argued that a people with new freedoms needed time
away from work to be educated and to practice citizenship. At a later
period the debate centered around improving the health and family life
of workers as well as their education and citizenship. And, as history
records, some far-sighted employers supported the move for economic
reasons. Henry Ford, for example, "adopted the five-day work week in
1926 to give the worker time to be a consumer" (Greenbaum, 1963:1-2).
More recent arguments for shorter working time have also included
references to its potential for "spreading the work” to reduce
unemployment (see Levitan and Belous, 1977).
The Compact Workweek
Employers, more recently, have incorporated some of the past

rationale for the shorter workweek in their attempts to improve
productivity and profits while improving employee morale and relieving
10
boredom, or otherwise improving the quality of work life. To accomplish

these and other objectives, management has frequently experimented with
innovations in personnel management, among them changes in working
schedules. One innovation, the four—day, forty—hour workweek, became
prominent on the American industrial scene about 1970. Expectations ran
high that the compact workweek would decrease the rising amount of
tardiness and absenteeism and help to increase productivity. An
estimated two thousand companies employing over one million people
quickly began scheduling four-day workweeks.
In 1975 an article in the Wall Street Journal (June 24:1), however,

suggested that "industry's love affair with the 'four-forty' had clearly
cooled." Company executives were not pleased with the results of their
programs. In each case absenteeism dropped initially, but rose swiftly
to previous levels. One company reported that tardiness doubled;
another said his firm experienced "a net drop in productivity." One
management consultant said that the four-day week could still prove
beneficial to small companies that could easily adjust their production
schedules, however, larger companies should maintain the five-day
workweek.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published a bulletin the same

year—The Revised Workweek: Results of a Pilot Study of 16 Firms
(Swerdloff, 1975) evaluating the experience of industries that had been
on a four-day week for over a year. The BLS concluded that the
objectives of decreasing overtime wages, reducing absenteeism, and
improving efficiency were generally achieved in these firms. But, not
all results were positive, and in some cases tardiness increased and
scheduling had become difficult. Fatigue, and its effect on output, was
seen as the major negative factor although its seriousness in the
long term could not yet be adequately determined.
Harriet Goldberg Weinstein (1975:172-174) compared three types of

alternative work schedules and also found that the popularity of the
compact workweek had passed by 1975. She implied that in some of the
firms she studied, the compact schedule had not necessarily failed for
the reasons usually given. Descriptions of why the four-forty had not
survived in a number of firms could be generally summarized as the
system's failure to live up to the expectations of employees as well as
those of management.
Flexitime: An Emerging Idea
In 1972, interest in new patterns for working time led the

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to sponsor
a conference in Paris "to promote diversification and variability in the
regulation and allocation of time for work, study, and leisure, under
the highest possible freedom of individual choice" (OECD, 1972:23). The
delegates to the conference included representatives from government,
11
workers, and employers from the twenty-three member countries, including

the United States. While some United States delegates spoke of limited
success and accompanying problems with the four—forty schedule, many
European company executives spoke of successful implementation and
equally successful results with flexible working hours. The United
States delegation, which included experts from the Department of Labor,
were impressed by the reported results of flexitime in contrast to the
difficulties that were becoming apparent with the compressed week.
A year later, at a conference in New York City (March 1973) on the

changing work ethic (sponsored by the Urban Research Corporation of
Chicago), the view was often expressed that the current trend was toward
flexible hours and that this would halt further consideration of the
compressed workweek as the primary alternative to the five-day week.
In September 1973, Bernard Keppler, president of Flextime

Corporation, the New York-based subsidiary of Hengstler Gleitzeit,
which produced time-recording devices for use with flexible schedules,
reported that during the first four months of operation in New York, his
company had installed equipment in twenty-four organizations. These
included banks, insurance companies, government offices, engineering
firms, a meter manufacturer, a library, and a technical institute.
Collectively, these firms employed five thousand persons (Elbing, Gadon,
and Gordon, 1974:18-20). According to a Newsweek article, September 10,
1973, flexible hours were gaining favor with United States domestic
companies as well as foreign subsidiaries in the United States.
Conclusion
Flexitime use in the United States has increased rapidly since

1974, according to most writers on the subject, and it is likely to
continue to grow. But, estimates on the number of employees on
formalized flexible schedules are hard to make. The most reasonable
estimate is one by Nollen and Martin (1978) based on projections from
their studies. They estimated that approximately 13 percent of
nongovernment organizations with fifty or more employees had flexible
work hour schedules in 1977. This figure was translated into 2.5 to 3.5
million workers. It did not include government employees nor the
self-employed, professional, managerial, and sales persons "who have
long set their own hours," but have not called their schedules
"flexitime." Nollen and Martin have estimated the percentage of
employees on flexitime in those types of organizations in which it is
most frequently found as follows: in finance and insurance, 19.3
percent; in transportation, communications, and utilities, 17.1 percent;
in wholesale and retail trades and in service industries, 14.4 percent
(Nollen and Martin, 1978:6). The U. S. comptroller general (1977:27)
reported at least 141,083 federal employees on some type of flexitime in
1977.
II
EXAMPLES OF PILOT FLEXITIME PROGRAMS IN THE U. S.
Survey materials such as those we have just reviewed can only begin
to provide practitioners with an understanding of how flexitime may be
applied to and may affect their own situations. The following cases,
drawn from a variety of sources, provide more concrete examples. The
first set deals with experiences of several firms in the private sector,
the second with the use of the technique by the federal government.
Private Industry
Hewlett-Packard Corporation
The first Hewlett-Packard division to go on to flexitime was the

Medical Electronics Division in Waltham, Massachusetts, in June 1972.
In March of 1973 the Colorado Springs Division adopted the system.
Eighty-five percent of the two thousand Colorado Springs employees (with
the exception of those working in areas of continuous operation) were
put on flexible working hours in an attempt to improve traffic
conditions caused by a single access road to the company.
The Hewlett-Packard model includes the following flexible and fixed

times:

Core hours 8:30 to 11:00 a.m.
Flexible hours 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
(minimum of thirty minutes for lunch)
Employees are expected to work the specified number of hours in their

workday, varying only their starting and quitting time. No carry-over
of debit or credit hours is allowed, and since there is no mechanical
recording device used, employees are on the honor system in reporting
hours worked. Buffer stocks between stations on the line make it
possible for production workers on assembly lines to use the system.
*
Described in detail in Zawicki and Johnson, 1976.
12
13
Hewlett-Packard has regularly monitored the system and collected

information on the effects of flexitime on the attitudes and work habits
of the employees. In a 1974 survey, employees were asked to comment on
the program. Almost all of them (93 percent) said that the traffic
conditions had improved. Among other typical comments were the
following (Zawicki and Johnson, 1977:17):
I get more done when I'm alone—no one bothers me."

It's hard to be late when you have a two-hour leeway."
A happy contented employee tends to be more alert, more careful."
It [flexitime] treats employees as responsible adults."
It [flexitime] reinforces the H-P philosophy that people are
people and not numbers."
A follow-up survey was used in 1975 to check the validity of the

1974 survey and determine if it still reflected the overall attitude of
the employees. Ninety-seven percent of the persons surveyed considered
the program a success. The employees felt that Hewlett-Packard, in
responding to the needs of its employees, had gained increased employee
satisfaction, commitment to organizational goals, and productivity. In
1977, approximately twenty thousand of the company's twenty-five
thousand employees in the United States were on flexible working hour
schedules (National Council for Alternative Work Patterns [hereafter
NCAWP], 1978:12, also 20, 74, and 126).
Control Data Corporation
Control Data Corporation was one of the first companies in the

United States to introduce flexitime. According to Carl Sommerstad,
marketing manager, the program was a result of a study by top management
on the quality of work life. A pilot program begun in April 1972
involved thirteen hundred employees representing a cross section of
functions, including manufacturing, research and development, marketing
services, insurance, data centers, maintenance, and financial planning.
Individual employees, or groups of employees, could vary arrival and
departure times as long as the normal workday remained the same as
before and the work flow was not disrupted. The standard lengths of the
workweek, workday, and lunch breaks were not changed by the new plan,
and normal company policies and established working conditions were not
affected.
The policy of each division was set by the division's general

manager and secondarily by each manager in the division. First-line
For a detailed description on which this summary is based, see U. S.

Congress, Senate, (hereafter cited as U. S. Senate) 1976:191-199; see
also Gomez-Mejia, Hopp, and Sommerstad, 1978.
14
managers made scheduling decisions for the operations in their units and
were responsible for approving each employee's preferences in work hours
and ensuring that there would be no losses in productivity.
Results of the pilot program were "improved attitude, morale, and

productivity, less traffic congestion and tardiness, and more leisure
time." Other less emphatic improvements included "reduced absenteeism,
better communications between shifts and departments, less sick leave
utilization, greater managerial flexibility" and greater job
attractiveness. No negative results were observed.
In July 1973, Control Data expanded flexitime to include its

worldwide operations. In 1977 the company estimated that twenty-three
thousand of its employees in the United States were using flexitime.
The overall conclusion was that the program was favorably received and
had improved the employees' work life without decreasing their
productivity (NCAWP, 1978:42).
Nestle Company
Russell W. Boekenheide, Vice President of Personnel, described

Nestle's flexible hours program at the 1976 Senate hearings, Changing
Patterns of Work in America (U. S. Senate, 1976:205-213). The company
became familiar with the concept early in 1972 and decided to look into
the feasibility of flexible work hours for their headquarters in White
Plains, New York, which had 650 exempt and nonexempt salaried employees.
Since no production or maintenance activities took place in this
location, the persons on flexitime would be primarily in professional,
management, or clerical positions.
The personnel department developed a proposal and reviewed it with

the supervisors, keeping the plan as simple as possible. The company
believed that more flexible scheduling could increase productivity and
at worst it would not decrease productivity. The objective of the plan
was to recognize the individual needs of the employees and to help
Nestle "better attract, retain, and motivate qualified employees."
Before implementing the new plan, the company discussed its objectives
and how the program would work with managers and supervisors and then
with each employee.
The pilot program began in the summer of 1972. One schedule was
kept Monday through Thursday:

Core hours 10:00 a.m. to 12:00
15
with a slight change Friday afternoon:

Each employee was responsible for his or her own weekly schedule
sheet, to be prepared each Thursday for the following week. Supervisors
reviewed the schedules and adjusted them in accordance with departmental
needs. Time sheets were set up for all employees, and each employee
recorded starting, quitting, and lunch times.
A survey during the trial period showed favorable reactions from

managers, supervisors, and employees. In 1974, however, certain
problems emerged, including some instances of improper reporting of time
and some cases in which prescheduling procedures were not followed.
There were also problems where quick internal and external
communications were essential. A task force that reviewed the program
recommended that the program be continued because the increase in
employee morale outweighed the problems. Among the changes the task
force recommended were stronger enforcement of the prescheduling
requirements and a change in fixed and flexible hours. The system was
revised and made operational in 1975 for over seven hundred salaried
employees (Swart, 1978:131).
Link Division of the Singer Company
The Link Division of the Singer Company, located in Kirkwood, New

York, employs approximately twenty-four hundred people and does contract
work for both private industry and the federal government. Frank
Underwood, division manager in charge of compensation and benefits,
reported that the division had been attracted to flexible working hours
primarily for two reasons: (1) A flexible working hours program would
accommodate to the problems of the professional engineers, who felt that
strict working hours were not compatible with their work objectives, but
whose hours of work nevertheless had to be accounted for by the company
because of federal contracts. (2) Flexible working hours would minimize
the loss of time and wages for employees on hourly rates, who could not
take time during the working day for such things as medical appointments
without losing pay.
In 1975, a model program for the division was designed and

implemented with the assistance of Participative Time Management
Associates, Inc., consultants for flexible working hours programs. The
The following description is based on an interview with Mr. Frank

Underwood by Pam Silverstein in 1978 and follow-up correspondence in
1979 between Underwood and Jozetta H. Srb.
16
model plan included participative action committees (PACs) made up of

employee representatives from all levels within the groups chosen to
test the proposed model. According to Underwood, the PACs served as
continuous channels of communication between their

peer group and management throughout the design
phase, creating an open environment in which the
concerns of both could be more readily explored.
Also by sharing the responsibility for developing
the working guidelines for the experiment with all
levels within the group, the PAC concept reinforced
the mutual ownership of the program and helped
generate a higher level of commitment toward its
success.
The first trial period began March 31, 1975, and ended June 27,
1975. One hundred and ninety-two employees were in the various test
groups. The system planned for recording work hours was an Interflex
256 with a master data-input terminal linked to three remote access
terminals throughout the test area. The cost was approximately $14,250.
Employees would log in by inserting an identification badge and
depressing the appropriate button. The system, however, did not arrive
until the last month of the trial period, by which time the employees
were accustomed to the write-in register sheets, and a smooth transition
to automatic recording was never made.
During the trial period, 42 percent fewer hours were lost because
of personal business than were lost in a comparable three-month period
before the trial. Although there was no adequate way to measure
productivity, the reduction of lost hours was believed to be equivalent
to an increase in overall capacity. Supervisors agreed that there were
no problems with adequate coverage in the units during flexible periods,
nor were there any negative effects on internal communication. Overtime
was not affected, but tardiness and short absences decreased. Although
the majority of employees observed no change in their work patterns, a
significant number reported greater motivation and a higher level of
satisfaction within their work group since the trial period began,
improvements in both communication and cooperation, and a more relaxed
relationship between supervisors and themselves.
Only one of the test groups was generally averse to the new
program. During the feasibility study employees in this unit were
identified as already having flexible working hours on a discretionary
basis without a standard of accountability. Thus, the flexible working
hours program provided no real advantages to this group beyond those
already enjoyed and, through a universal standard of time
accountability, imposed an apparent constraint. The supervisor of the
group, however, reported improvements in tardiness and short absences as
well as in morale. He favored continuation of the program and
17
recommended deletion of the core time on Fridays to make the program

more palatable.
The experiment was considered successful. Slight changes resulted

from employee surveys and PAC and management observations. By June 1,
1976, thirteen hundred of Singer's twenty-four hundred employees were on
flexible working hours. The model used was as follows:

Core hours 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
(thirty minutes for lunch)
An employee survey, finished in December 1976, generated sufficient

information to prove the program a success. Ninety-three percent of the
employees and 86 percent of the supervisors preferred the new hours.
Employee morale had noticeably increased; interdepartmental
communication had not suffered; work loads were being met, and there was
adequate coverage during the flexible periods.
The PACs continue to monitor the program and recommend changes when
necessary. And, although the manual recording system was still in use
in 1978, Underwood hoped to introduce an electronic system in a way that
would be acceptable to the employees and thus make a more complex
flexitime program possible. Other ideas for the future included
shortening the core period for all employees, terminating core time on
Fridays, and implementing greater flexibility within the lunch hour.
Summary
The consensus is that flexitime models so far have changed little.

Nollen and Martin (1978:33), for example, report that a subsample of
their survey of 196 flexitime users consisted of 21 companies who had
flexible work hours programs studied by Martin in 1974 and that
flexitime users in this subsample had made few changes in the original
scheduling; changes that did occur were in the direction of more
flexibility. Most organizations continued to require eight hours a day,
a few permitted more or fewer hours a day but required forty hours a
week, and still fewer users allowed crediting or debiting of hours from
one week to another. The trend toward greater flexibility was in the
reduction of fixed, or core, times.
Nollen and Martin (1978:30) found that most of the positive effects
of flexitime endured over this period and in some cases increased. They
also concluded that the problems mentioned in 1974 were about the same
as those reported in 1977. The disadvantages most frequently mentioned
related to the problems of maintaining adequate supervisory coverage and
good internal communications during flexible periods.
18
Federal Government
Bureau of Indian Affairs
According to an article in Worklife (1975:5), the first experiments

with flexitime in the federal government were in the Bureau of Indian
Affairs in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1972. The New Mexico program was
a limited form of flexitime that worked within the legislative and
regulatory provisions that existed at the time. Nevertheless, the
results were reported as a "new independence enjoyed by all. Three
thousand employees of the Bureau of Indian Affairs were reported to be
on flexible working hour schedules in 1977 (U. S. Comptroller General,
1977:27) .
Social Security Administration
The Social Security Administration was the first large government

agency to experiment with flexible working hours and by 1975 had trial
programs for over twenty-five hundred employees in eight of its units
(described in Swart, 1978:175-181). One of the units, the Bureau of
Data Processing, introduced its program in two locations in Baltimore in
April 1974. The flexible model used was as follows:

(with thirty-minute lunch break)
Employees could begin work anytime during flexible morning hours and
quit eight and one-half hours later, including the thirty-minute lunch
break. Supervisors’ work schedules were arranged to provide supervision
for the entire period from 6:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. With a supervisor's
permission an employee could work up to three hours overtime if it was
put in before 7:15 p.m.
Program evaluations from all eight bureaus indicated that most

employees and supervisors supported the new systems. Job satisfaction
and employee morale increased, workers reported having more time for
family and other outside activities, and tardiness—in some bureaus—
fell to an "irreducible minimum." Swart (1978:179-180) points out that
objective measurements of productivity, for example, did not show
dramatic improvement, but productivity as measured by "subjective
feelings and opinions...generally yielded findings of a positive
nature." In other words, many employees felt their work had improved in
either quality or quantity or both under flexitime. Relations with
supervisors, already good, improved, and requests for transfers
decreased.
19
By 1978, the Social Security Administration had expanded flexible

working hours to cover some eighteen thousand employees, including
managers, first-line supervisors, clerical, professional and technical
personnel..." (NCAWP, 1978:159).
U. S. Geological Survey
In May 1975, the U. S. Geological Survey, Department of the

Interior, began a pilot program for three thousand employees in the
metropolitan area of Washington, D. C.* All employees included in the
flexitime experiment received printed materials fully explaining the
program, the philosophy behind it, its daily requirements, and other
information pertaining to the new schedule. The flexible model used
was:

(with thirty-minute lunch break)
Employees had to work the six core hours plus two hours within the
flexible periods. Overtime policies and procedures remained the same as
before and the supervisor's approval was required for any working time
beyond eight hours in one day. Eighty-five percent of the employees
could vary schedules from day to day without advance approval; the other
15 percent could vary their hours somewhat but had to coordinate with
coworkers. All employees were required to take at least thirty minutes
for lunch.
In 1976, the federal government published a detailed and favorable

report on flexitime at Geological Survey. Although some of the
improvements mentioned were the result of changes other than the
introduction of flexible working hours, the program was considered
successful for a number of reasons that could be measured: (1) The quit
rate was the lowest in five years. (2) Sick leave use decreased by 7
percent and annual leave uses by 1 percent. (3) Where quantity of work
could be measured, positive increases in number of maps, vouchers, and
reports were found. The increased productivity in these areas varied
from 6 percent in one unit to 14 percent in another (Swart, 1978:188).
(4) Cost for maintenance and services did not increase significantly
despite the additional time the offices were open.
*
The full report on flexitime at the Geological Survey can be
obtained from the U. S. Department of the Interior, U. S. Geological
Survey, Reston, Virginia 22092. The following description is based
primarily on Mueller and Cole, 1977:71-74; see also Swart,
1978:185-191.
20
The responses on questionnaires sent to employees, supervisors, and

managers presented more subjective but fairly strong recommendations for
continuing flexible work schedules. Among these were the following:
(1) Few respondents felt that flexitime had had a deleterious effect on
quality of work, abuses of hours, or overtime usage. While most
repondents saw little change in these areas, a significant number of
them felt there had been improvement. (2) Supervisors and employees in
large numbers reported substantial increases in employee morale and job
satisfaction. (3) Sixty-five percent of first-line supervisors felt
that under flexitime their employees had assumed more responsibility for
their own performance and for the work of the office than they had taken
before. (4) A significant number of supervisors, 22 percent, reported
improvement in their own planning and management skills; only 6 percent
felt their skills had deteriorated.
Most supervisors and employees felt that the experiment had been
successful and wished to continue with the program. Interestingly
enough, first-line supervisors were generally more satisfied with the
results of flexitime than were higher level managers.
U. S. Department of Labor
The first Department of Labor (DOL) flexitime pilot project was

started in the Office of Accounting (0A), Office of the Assistant
Secretary for Administration and Management (OASAM), on August 16,
£
1976. The Office of Management Systems collaborated in the planning
and developing the data gathering and in analyzing the results. The OA
is responsible for the implementation and operation of centralized DOL
accounting systems and the design of subsystems that serve the financial
management needs of the department. It also provides central payroll,
and voucher audit and certification, as well as voucher and other
payment functions; accounting services for cost, property, and working
capital fund and grant activities. Because of the repetitive nature of
its work, the office provided an ideal situation for measuring output
under varying conditions.
The initial planning was done by a steering committee that included

supervisory, employee, and union representatives. The flexible model
chosen was:

Core hours 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m
The following description is based on "An Analysis of the Pilot

Flexitime Project in the Office of Accounting," Office of Management
Systems, OASAM, October 1977, (mimeo.) and on an interview with
Marizetta Scott, Office of Management Systems, by Jozetta H. Srb.
21
The core period includes two thirty-minute lunch periods, to ensure that
approximately 50 percent of the employees are on duty at all times, and
two fifteen-minute breaks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.
Employees can choose arrival and departure times within the flexible
periods on a daily basis; the only requirement is that they must account
for an eight-hour day.
Time is monitored on a time accumulator machine, which does not

record arrival and departure times, but only counts hours and minutes
worked. This system does not violate Washington, D. C., or federal
requirements. The backup system, in case of mechanical failure, is the
traditional signing in and out procedure.
At the end of the first eight months, the flexible work schedule
was evaluated. Information for the review was based on interviews with
supervisors; statistics on the number of vouchers, checks, and bonds
processed; information from leave records; computations of the error
rates of accounting transactions; and answers to questionnaires
distributed both before and during the experiment. All statistical
information was compared with the same information for a comparable
eight-month period before flexible work schedules went into effect.
The following are some of the outstanding details from the

evaluation of the first eight months of the experiment: (1) The cost of
the time accumulator was considered worthwhile; there were no other
substantial costs. (2) Long-range planning was not affected. Operating
efficiency was maintained through carefully planned modifications in
hierarchical and leadership patterns; managers relied on subordinates to
act when supervisors were off duty. Supervisors, however, apparently
felt it necessary to continue to document the comings and goings of
employees, thus duplicating the work of the time accumulator. (3)
Tardiness, formerly a serious problem, was reduced to "the average
percentages expected in normal work environment," and the number of
confrontations between supervisors and employees (about tardiness and
excessive use of leave) was reduced. (4) The number of short leaves was
reduced; vacation time and long-term leave usage remained the same as in
the preflexitime period; average leave appeared to remain essentially
the same. (5) Productivity showed a slight improvement (up 3 percent);
quality of work, as measured by error rate, also improved. When
analyzed in relation to leave usage, the productivity increase was found
to be an actual one, rather than a result of reduced short leaves. (6)
Because of the need for cross-training, the OA now has an enlarged pool
of experience and skills. (7) Employee reactions to flexitime were more
often favorable than negative although there was evidence of some
deterioration in employee attitudes toward each other and their
perceptions of supervisors. (For a more detailed discussion of this
point see Appendix B.)
Based on the review of the first eight months of the flexible work
hours experiment in the Office of Accounting, it was recommended that
22
the experiment be continued. A follow-up evaluation was scheduled for

the following year. More pilot programs of this nature were being
planned in the Department of Labor and will go into effect in 1979.
Summary
In a summary of the effects of flexitime in government agencies,

Barbara L. Fiss, Civil Service Commission project manager for flexible
work hours, reviewed the reports submitted by such diverse groups as the
Army Tank Automotive Command, the Social Security Administration, and
units of the Environmental Protection Agency. She noted that all the
groups reported essentially the same positive effects including a 2 to 5
percent increase in productivity and a substantial decrease in short¬
term use of sick leave. Fiss saw the gain in productivity as partially
caused by the use of "quiet time," the period during the early and late
hours of work when noise, phone calls, and other distractions are at a
minimum. She also predicted that the decrease in short-term use of sick
leave will increase the number of hours on the job and have a positive
effect on productivity (Worklife, 1977:5).
In 1977 the Government Accounting Office (GAO) confirmed Fiss's

findings, basing its report on reports of thirty-one federal
organizations with 133,000 employees. The GAO found, however, that "As
with industries and non-Federal Government units, there were
difficulties in scheduling meetings and insuring proper workflow when
key employees worked different schedules" (U. S. Comptroller General,
1977 : iii).
Ill
HOW TO SET UP A FLEXITIME PROGRAM
For organizations considering adopting flexitime programs, Milford

E. Jacobson, vice president in charge of personnel at Northwestern
Mutual Life Insurance Company, had the following advice:
Just don't decide that next week in your Company or

government office you'll install some sort of
flexible hours program. Before embarking on such a
program you must first: Determine if you have a
suitable environment in your organization; second:
Involve your total organization; not selected
departments; and third: Make your Supervisors
accountable for making variable hours work. (U. S.
Senate, 1976: 201.)
Jacobson's advice, based on several years experience with a

flexible hours program, reflects some of the basic principles advocated
by other specialists and practitioners in personnel management. The
U. S. Civil Service Commission, for example, published Barbara Fiss's
Flexitime—A Guide (1975) to acquaint employers and employees with the
concept of flexible hours and to offer guidance in planning,
implementing, and evaluating a flexitime program. Fiss emphasizes that
flexitime does not solve all management problems but may be a useful,
productive tool if management (1) determines the feasibility of such a
program by analyzing the work flow and special problems of the
organization and its units; (2) plans the program with care; (3)
includes the work force in the planning and implementation phases
through good communication and education efforts; and (4) monitors the
program carefully enough to evaluate the results, detect problems, and
improve the system. The following suggestions are a brief summary of
the procedures Fiss recommends. (Any organization considering flexible
working hour programs will want to read Fiss's guide in its entirety.)
Feasibility Study
Fiss suggests that a committee be set up to study the feasibility

of flexitime for the organization. A good working committee would
consist of three to five persons who can compile an overall picture of
the organization's work patterns and manning requirements. This
committee can help set the objectives for a flexible hours program and
identify personnel and work load problems that must be taken into
account. To gather the information necessary to determine feasibility,
the committee should proceed as follows:
23
1
24
1. Analyze the work force in numerical terms: number of

employees, supervisors, and the number and kinds of jobs they perform.
2. Survey the employees, using a questionnaire on work patterns

and attitudes. The questionnaire should be accompanied by an
explanation of both flexitime and the feasibility study. If there is a
union involved, consult with its representatives on the preparation of
the survey. The format of the questionnaire should be as simple as
possible in order to provide for easy tabulation of results; use
multiple choice or yes-no questions, and, if the sample is large enough,
investigate coding for key punch. This survey will provide useful
information on work flow and potential obstacles to flexible hours in
each unit.
3. For each unit of the organization, plot the work flow and the
times when contact with people outside the organization is most
frequent. Establish whether these patterns occur daily or over longer
periods.
4. Determine how special work groups may be particularly affected

by the flexible working hours of others in the organization: for
example, shift personnel and the staff of such units as health,
cafeteria, and cleaning and maintenance. It is important to know the
number of employees and supervisors in each of these units, as well as
their present work hours in order to determine the degree of flexibility
possible in other parts of the organization.
5. Contact all groups concerned, including unions, and get their

reactions to the proposed changes.
Information from these sources will help determine if the size of

the staff and the work load are suitable for flexitime. If it appears
that flexitime could be beneficial, the committee will then need to find
out if there are positions for which flexible hours do not appear to be
feasible.
Flexible schedules can be introduced with relative ease in

situations where employees work in isolation from each other or where
interaction with other workers is minimal. If workers need to spend
only a part of the day in contact with others, this contact can be
confined to the core hours. If, however, one person's output becomes
another person's input, then one worker can be idled by the absence of a
coworker. This applies to clerical tasks as well as assembly line jobs.
Production jobs, particularly those in operations involving continuous
processing, multiple shifts, or assembly lines present the greatest
difficulties. But if the number of workers who are doing or who are
able to do the work is large enough, flexibility can be tried in limited
fashion.
25
Flexible working hours can also present difficulties in the cases

of services that have to be maintained on a fixed basis or enterprises
where punctuality is essential. The work load of some employees, for
instance, those who work in the cafeteria, maintenance, switchboard
operation, or supplies, depends upon how many of the organization's
other employees are at work. Consequently, these services will have
lighter work during periods when flexible hours are in effect and the
staff of these services can be decreased at those times. Even in the
cases of public transportation, security, and ambulance services, where
punctuality is essential, close scrutiny of the job families that make
up the services may show that some flexibility is possible.
Planning Flexible Hours
If the feasibility study recommends a pilot flexitime program, the

committee should be aware that a system of flexible work hours must be
tailored to the needs of the particular organization. To appraise these
needs, the committee will need to expand to include line supervisors and
union representatives in planning the pilot program. The enlarged
committee will decide on the core and flexible hours, ensure the
program's compliance with pertinent laws and regulations and existing
union contracts, establish criteria for evaluation of program results,
and set a target date for implementation.
Core and Flexible Hours
The number and scheduling of those hours of the day when the entire
staff of a given unit must be present may vary across the divisions of
the organization. The longer the core time is, the fewer hours left to
employee choice—and vice versa. The variables that will influence the
scheduling of core hours for each unit and the questions to be answered
about them are:
1. Work load. Does the work flow peak in a daily, weekly, or

monthly pattern? What are the minimum requirements during peak load?
2. Contact with the public. Is telephone contact with the public

crucial? Do the units that attend to incoming or outgoing mail have
requirements that may restrict the number of hours left to employee
choice?
3. Transportation. Does the work force depend heavily on public

transportation or car pools? Will present transportation arrangements
easily accommodate flexitime? Is the work force large enough to affect
transportation company scheduling? traffic flow? Is it necessary to
discuss flexitime plans with representatives of transportation companies
or city traffic officials?
26
4. Physical plant operations. How will flexible hours affect the

work flow of the cafeteria, maintenance, and housekeeping staffs? Will
it be necessary to reschedule the work of these units? Will flexitime
cause additional expense in their operation?
5. Restricted positions. Each supervisor should specify those

positions that should be restricted from participation and give the
planning committee reasons for the restriction. Are there ways to
reschedule work flow, reorganize duties, or reassign personnel so that a
position can be included in the program? Do employees who may be
eventually excluded from participation have a clear understanding of the
reasons for their status?
Legal Compliance
An organization instituting flexible working hours needs to be sure

that its proposed program complies with the letter and intent of their
union contracts and of the regulations pertaining to conditions of
employment, holidays and holiday pay, leave programs, and premium pay
and compensatory time. For example, a number of labor laws, both state
and federal, restrict the design of flexitime programs by mandating the
payment of overtime for hours worked in excess of forty a week or eight
a day—or by other restrictions on the distribution of work time
(discussed further in Chapter 4).
Record Keeping
Having determined the scheduling system, the planning committee

will suggest a method of recording employee work time that is adapted to
the new program. Under flexible hours, the function of an automatic
time clock—if the organization owns one—is to record the number of
hours worked rather than to police employee punctuality. If the
organization does not have an automatic system, it is not advisable to
install one until the proposed program has had extensive trial and the
matter has been discussed with a union representative. A sign-in sheet
will probably be adequate for the trial phase of the program. Employees
can be required to use a register that is made available at key
locations by filling in the times of arrival and departure rather than
verifying printed times with their signatures.
Evaluation Criteria
To assess the economic results of the program as well as worker

response to it, the criteria that will be used to evaluate the trial
program should be established during the planning phase. Evaluation
criteria are best selected on the basis of their validity as measures of
performance and their quantifiability.
27
The economic factors to be accounted for include division

productivity as measured by total production output, labor cost per unit
of production, labor efficiency variance, and plant capacity use.
Quality of work can be gauged by waste and rework, machine downtime, and
customer complaints. Although it may be more difficult to assess
productivity in research and service positions, program planners can try
to isolate for later measurement as many of the duties entailed in these
jobs as possible.
To get a clear impression of employee reactions to the new

scheduling, and be aware of changes in employee attitudes, the
organization will want to do a follow-up survey at the close of the
trial period (see Appendix B for an example). Employee responses to the
program can also be measured by quantifiable economic consequences.
Trends to be monitored carefully include tardiness, absenteeism, injury,
and illness; employee turnover, transfer, promotion, and acquisition;
and training and development costs. In evaluating these trends for any
group, consideration should be given to the organizational climate and
structure as well as the group’s characteristic demography and
interpersonal relationships.
A valid comparison of conditions under fixed hours with those under

flexitime can be made if the organization collects or reconstructs
information for the evaluation criteria for a specified period before
the flexitime trial. Staff and computer time, if a computer is
available, can be used for compiling this information. Data from
several comparable units in the organization that are not on flexitime
can be used as control measures since these units will be affected by
most of the same environmental conditions that affect the units on
flexitime. If no control units exist within the organization,
information from another organization of the same type will be helpful
although the eventual comparison is not likely to be as accurate as that
with units in the same organization. Fiss emphasizes that thorough
analysis is required before any change in existing trends can be
attributed to flexitime.
Implementing the Program
If a flexitime program has been well planned, effective

coordination and communication are the only remaining requirements for
smooth implementation. For effective coordination, the planning
committee will want to allocate specific responsibilities to each of its
members and then assign employees from throughout the organization to
help carry out the tasks involved. Communication and coordination are
inseparable from this point on. Among the procedures that Fiss
recommends (in more detail) are the following:
1. Hold meetings for supervisors to prepare them for implementing

the program. If these group meetings are kept small, the supervisors
28
will feel freer to ask questions. Each supervisor will need prepared
instructions about his or her role in implementation, the name of the
person who can answer questions, and all materials that have been
prepared and will be distributed to employees.
2. Consult with a union representative to help determine the most

effective ways to communicate the program to employees.
3. Prepare and distribute information on the new method of

scheduling to all employees (for an example, see Appendix A). Include
clear statements of what flexitime is and how the program will work. If
there is an employee newspaper, it can be used to carry information
about the program.
Once the pilot program is under way, Fiss recommends that

management "conduct periodic samplings and discussions with supervisors
and the individual designated to answer questions," keep up to date with
analyses and evaluations, and meet regularly with key personnel as the
trial period progresses (Fiss, 1975:17).
Relieving Managerial Fears
Articles on the implementation and operation of flexitime programs

in several corporations note that "managerial resistance to change" is
frequently a major problem (see Morgan, 1977:85). Actual case studies,
however, are more specific about the reasons for resistance to flexible
schedules by first-line managers and supervisors. Their concerns
frequently relate to problems they have good cause to believe may result
from loss of control over scheduling and reduced employee supervision
during noncore work hours. In addition to scheduling problems, many
managers and supervisors foresee the possibility of added hours to their
workday, reduced employee cooperation and production, communication
problems, and "increased employee abuses." Most of the organizations
that have implemented flexitime have attempted to deal with managerial
fears in one way or another during the critical planning and
implementation stages of the program.
According to Morgan (ibid.), Berol Corporation (1) used senior line

managers and the head of the personnel department to carry out the
preliminary communications about the program to assure all personnel of
top management's commitment to the program; (2) acknowledged the
potential difficulties (as well as advantages) of flexitime schedules
and discussed the problems along with possible solutions to assure a
"two-sided presentation"; (3) stated in writing "the ground rules, the
policies for handling vacations, holidays and absences, as well as the
procedures for dealing with specific problems relating to abuse of the
system" to provide a set of dependable norms; and (4) put each phase of
the program into effect on a trial basis before making it permanently
29
operative in order to reduce the risk of freezing into the system

problems that might arise.
Control Data Corporation, in which authority for schedule planning

was delegated to division heads and first-line managers, also provided
general guidelines for "authority delegation, handling infractions,
control measures, monitoring devices," and so on (see Gomez-Mejia, Hopp,
and Sommerstad, 1978:40-41). In addition, each division and line
manager received "an implementation check list" suggesting the
advantages of (1) less flexibility and more controls at the outset and
further liberalization later as experience warranted it; (2) allowing
time for planning, anticipating the effects of revised work hours, and
getting employee feedback before putting the program into effect—in
order to "eliminate unnecessary future administrative changes and
increase the program's acceptability"; and (3) careful consideration
before excluding any group of employees from the program, since "this
can lead to feelings of inequality and jealousy." Managerial personnel
were further advised not to expect the program to be a cure-all and not
to expect 100 percent acceptance.
IV
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS IN PLANNING FLEXITIME
Among the issues with which organizations must deal in setting up

flexitime are the limits on flexibility imposed by existing wage and
hour laws and collective bargaining agreements. These limits, referred
to by Swart (1978:83) as sources of "flexitime's growing pains in
America," are becoming a significant part of recent discussions about
variable working hour schedules. Where labor laws are concerned,
legislation in 1978 mandated an experimental program in federal agencies
to help determine the effectiveness of work schedules that, by
temporarily relaxing some regulations, provide for more flexibility in
scheduling hours of work. Where collective bargaining is concerned,
unions are increasingly concerned with who benefits most from flexible
working hours and what the terms of such arrangements should be for
their members.
Labor Laws and Flexitime
A number of labor laws, both state and federal, have restricted the
design of flexible work hour programs by mandating the payment of
overtime for hours worked in excess of forty hours a week or eight hours
a day—or by other restrictions on the distribution of work time. The
federal laws that have affected the design of flexible work hour
schedules are the Fair Labor Standards, Walsh-Healey, Contract Work
Hours and Safety Standards, and Federal Pay (U. S. Code, Title 5) Acts.
Laws Affecting Wages and Hours of Work
Fair Labor Standards Act (1938). The forty-hour week standard is

reflected in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which covers employees
of private firms and organizations engaged in interstate commerce; it
applies also to employees of the federal government. The act requires
that time and a half be paid for all hours of work over forty a week
except to those persons employed in certain executive, administrative,
and professional positions. Persons in these categories are referred to
as exempt employees and are usually on monthly or yearly salaries. A
nonexempt employee, who is usually paid on the basis of so much per
hour, must record hours worked, receive overtime payments for excess
hours, and cannot take equivalent hours off in another week in lieu of
those payments. This provision restricts a flexible work hour system
that would provide for debiting or crediting hours from one week to
another.
30
31
Walsh-Healey Act (1936). Firms and organizations having contracts

with the federal government of over $10,000 or contracts to furnish or
manufacture supplies to the federal government are covered by the Walsh-
Healey Act. Nonexempt employees of these organizations must receive one
and one-half the basic hourly rate for all hours worked over eight a day
or forty a week.
Contract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act (1962). The Contract
Work Hours and Safety Standards Act applies to employees working under
U. S. government construction contracts of more than $2,000 (service) or
$2,500 (supplies) but under $10,000. The act requires time and a half
premium pay for hours over eight a day or forty a week.
Federal Pay Act (U. S. Code, Title 5). All federal government
employees are covered by the FLSA since the FLSA was amended in 1974.
They are also covered by the Federal Pay Act, which specified a forty-
hour week for full-time employees, to be divided among five consecutive
days of Monday through Friday where possible. Premium pay is required
for any day over eight hours. For employees whose classification is
under GS-10 minimum, overtime pay is one and one-half basic pay; for all
other employees, the overtime rate is one and one-half the GS-10 mini mum
amount. Title 5 also precludes breaks of more than one hour in the
basic working day, a provision that has further restricted the design of
alternative work hour schedules for federal government employees.
Effects of Wage and Hour Laws on Hours of Work
For employers wanting to try out flexitime programs, the key issue
in labor law has been the overtime pay requirements, despite the
exemption of professional, technical, and other exempt employees. Swart
(1978:97) notes that, for example, in 1977 over 50 percent of the
work force were nonexempt; they were covered by the premium pay
requirements of either the FLSA, the Walsh-Healey Act, or the Contract
Work Hours and Safety Standards Act or some combination of these. In
addition, almost all of the approximately three million federal
employees are covered by the Federal Pay Act.
The federal government, however, has been active in promoting

flexible work hour schedules for its own employees and in working to
achieve some relaxation of the premium pay and other provisions that
hamper experimentation. For example, the comptroller general, as early
as 1974, recommended passage of legislation to permit the government to
experiment more freely with different forms of alternative work
schedules. A number of bills designed to achieve this objective were
introduced in both the House and the Senate over the next four years.
In October 1978, President Carter signed the Federal Employees Flexible
and Compressed Work Schedules Act into law. At the same time, he signed
the Civil Service Reform Act, which also provides for experimentation
with alternative work hour arrangements among government agencies.
32
Employers in the private sector are not affected by these laws.

Nevertheless, the legislation implementing the experimental program for
federal employees has broader public policy implications since it stems
from the role of the federal government "as a model as well as a major
employer" (U. S. Senate, 1976:9).*
Federal Employees Flexible and Compressed Work Schedules Act (1978)
According to the Federal Employees Flexible and Compressed Work

Schedules Act of 1978, the Civil Service Commission is required to set
up a program to provide for experiments in flexible work hours and
compressed workweek schedules in the various government agencies.
The program will include enough positions and a wide enough range of
work alternatives to make it possible to evaluate the effect of such
schedules on (1) operating efficiency of the agency, (2) mass transit
and traffic, (3) energy consumption, (4) service to the public, (5)
opportunities for full- and part-time employment, and (6) the individual
and family life.
Federal agencies can be exempted from carrying out experiments

planned by the commission by making a written request to the commission,
stating in detail why such a project would interfere with the agency
carrying out its functions. The commission will exempt only those cases
where altered work schedules would not serve the best interests of the
agency, government, public, or employees. On the same basis, the
commission may also terminate or place restrictions on any agency work
hour experiment.
The act provides more latitude in designing flexible working hour

arrangements by relaxing the premium pay requirements of titles 5 and 38
of the U. S. Code and title 7 of the FLSA for work hour experiments.
For example, a full-time employee could accumulate up to ten credit hours
The implications for the private sector of the act covering

alternative schedules for federal employees were the basis of trade
union objections in congressional hearings before its passage.
Kenneth Meiklejohn, AFL-CIO legislative department, for example,
testified that "If the government were to require the waiver of labor
standards as a price for flexible work hours in government employment,
we would expect that private industry would soon follow the
example...and that fair labor standards, achieved through long and
hard fought battles, would soon disappear from the workplace" (Bureau
of National Affairs, Government Employee Relations Report [hereafter
cited as BNA], 1978b:3).
**
For the text of the act, see BNA, Daily Labor Report 181 (September
18, 1978):F—1 to 3.
33
from one biweekly pay period to the next. Credit hours are defined as
hours that an employee chooses to work over and above his or her basic
work requirement so as to vary the length of the workday or workweek.
Overtime hours are defined as those that are in excess of eight a day or
forty a week and that are "officially ordered in advance." Employees
will be compensated for overtime at standard Federal Pay Act and FLSA
rates. On request of the employee, however, the agency can give
compensatory time off in lieu of premium pay—a provision to which the
unions took exception during hearings on the bill.*
The act sets up special rules for experiments where negotiated

contracts with an organization of government employees exist. There are
two such provisions: (1) where an employee organization has exclusive
recognition, employees can be included in the flexible or compressed
work schedule only as provided in a written agreement between the agency
and the employee organization; and (2) the commission or an agency may
not include employees covered by a contract that contains premium pay
provisions inconsistent with those spelled out in the act.
The act also contains a "prohibition against coercion," a provision

designed to protect employees from being intimidated, threatened, or
coerced—directly or indirectly. In effect, the provision prohibits
managers and supervisors promising or giving special benefits or
penalties in order to interfere with an employee's rights to elect
arrival and departure times or to request or not to request compensatory
time off in lieu of premium pay for overtime.
The commission must also provide technical aid and educational

materials to the agencies throughout the experimental period.
Experiments are to run only until October 1, 1981. An interim report
containing recommendations for legislation or regulation is to be
submitted no later than two and one-half years after the effective date
of the act (October 1, 1978), and a final report on the experiments
conducted under it is to be submitted to the president, the speaker of
the house, and the president pro tem of the Senate no later than three
years after the effective date.
Unions and Flexitime
In most discussions of the position of organized labor on flexitime,

the general opinion is that "Organized labor has reservations about
Meiklejohn, for example, commented on the provisions of the proposed

law that would permit an agency to "grant compensatory time off in
lieu of payment for overtime hours...." He was not sure that the
requests from employees would be voluntary. He said, Our experience
has indicated that ’voluntary* requests from employees too often
reflect subtle employer pressures and most employees are best
protected by standards guaranteed by law" (BNA, 1978b:4).
34
flexitime, but is not entirely opposed to it" (Worklife, 1977:3).

Indeed, union opposition to flexitime is not as pronounced as it seems
to be to the compressed workweek where labor's main objection has been
the fear of weakening the ability to enforce the eight-hour day, forty-
hour week standard that unions worked hard to effect. Interestingly
enough, despite less opposition to flexible work hours, the same fear
applies to flexitime systems that would require amending the present
laws or collectively bargained agreements on premium pay and overtime.
Although trade unions so far have not strongly nor generally

opposed flexitime, there is evidence that until recently the issue has
not been of particular importance to many of the larger unions. For
example, the Business and Professional Women's Foundation reported that
in the mid-1970s there were few union officials who would discuss union
policy on flexitime. They reported that there was "little evidence that
unions at the national level have even focused on flexible hours of work
as a system separate or different from variations of fixed hours"
(Hartley, 1975:50).
In a report to the U. S. Senate (1976:87-136), the comptroller

general's office noted that the United Auto Workers said it took no
position on the use of flexitime because it had not studied the matter
sufficiently. The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union saw
flexitime as a possibility in terms of a continuation of an informal,
albeit occasional, arrangement now used by supervisors for working
mothers—possibly because garment work does not demand tight scheduling.
The Teamsters regarded flexitime as a matter to be decided by the
locals.
One of the reasons that flexitime has not received more attention
from unions, with a few exceptions to be discussed later, relates to the
kinds of jobs and occupations in which flexible work schedules are most
easily accommodated. As noted previously, the system is used most
frequently in occupations where activity is autonomous, involves only a
single shift, and does not have fixed time demands (Hartley, 1975:48).
Nollen and Martin (1978:12) estimate, on the basis of projections from a
survey of companies using alternative work schedules, that flexible work
hours are most popular in finance, insurance, and real estate—
organizations that are not highly unionized. Further evidence about
involvement of union members on flexitime emerged in their case studies:
Of the 196 organizations using flexitime, about 50 percent had unions.
But only 7 percent of these had "half or more of their flexitime
employees in a union" and only 17 percent had "as many as 10 percent of
their flexitime employees in labor unions."
Nollen and Martin speculate that the fear of union problems may be
a factor in some cases, but that in general the reason is related to
occupational differences between union and nonunion employees. Clerical
workers, they point out, are less apt to be unionized and more often on
flexible work hours, while production workers are more frequently union
35
members and less often on flexible hours. In some cases, however, where
clerical and other white-collar workers are represented by unions, union
locals have been actively involved in establishing, implementing, or
monitoring flexitime programs.
Examples of Union Involvement in Flexitime
The following examples are drawn from the Alternative Work Schedule
Directory (NCAWP, 1978).
Private sector. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) have

been involved in planning and implementing flexitime programs for 1,000
employees in Mountain Bell of Colorado; the program operates under an
agreement between the company and CWA District 8. The CWA is also
involved in a program for 600 employees at General Telephone of
California at Santa Monica.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW)

cooperated in implementing flexitime for 1,050 employees of Pacific
Telephone, San Francisco, Directory Department. IBEW Locals 1600 and
1520, which represent 70 percent of the 2,375 employees on flexitime,
are monitoring the program at Pennsylvania Power and Light Company in
Allentown.
The Engineers and Scientists of California local cooperated in the

establishment of flexitime for 519 employees in the Design-Drafting
Department of Pacific Gas and Electric in San Francisco.
The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 6 cooperated

in the establishment of flexitime for 200 clerical and first-line
supervisors at the Kansas City, Missouri, Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union Local 14A is

involved in a program for 15,000 workers (not including unionized hourly
employees) at Xerox Corporation in Rochester, New York.
Public sector. The Oregon State Employees Association Union

participated in the implementation of flexitime for 10,000 to 20,000
state employees.
The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees

(AFSCME) Local 2805 was involved iri establishing flexitime for 400
employees of the Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund. AFSCME Local 2702
represents some of the 740 San Diego County Probation Office employees
who are on flexible work hours.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 1923

has cooperated in planning and implementing a program for 18,700 Social
Security employees. AFGE Local 1178 is involved in informal discussions
36
with the Department of Defense's computer systems section about

flexitime for 357 employees. Other AFGE locals, as well as locals of
the National Association of Government Employees Union, are involved in
flexible work hour programs in other federal agencies.
Given the fact that there are, by conservative estimate, more than
141,000 workers in federal agencies on flexible work hours and many more
in local government units, it is not surprising that public sector
unions and employee organizations have been more active than private
sector unions in planning and monitoring flexitime. This involvement,
however, does not necessarily mean that public sector unions are less
wary than the private sector unions. Kenneth T. Blaylock, president of
the AFGE, commented on the union's effort to assist management and
added:
However, we're still concerned about the application

of the concept. We're adamant about preserving the
8-hour day, with premium pay for all work in excess
of 8 hours. We have had complaints that some
Federal managers sometimes wink at the "voluntary"
aspects of flexitime. And we're still a little
skeptical that once an operation shifts to such
scheduling it may be difficult to switch back even
if the system isn't working well from the employees'
point of view. Many of these objections might fade,
depending on the degree of good faith Federal
managers apply to the concept (Worklife, 1977:5).
The Trade Union Perspective
An analysis of the types of flexible schedules that local unions,

public and private, have been involved in indicates that more union
leaders would be inclined to accept flexible work schedules that
continue to pay overtime for all hours over the standard eight and
forty. Swart (1978:93-94), however, found in a survey of national union
leaders that they may be divided in their opinions on the subject. Of
the forty-two AFL-CIO and independent union leaders who responded to his
questionnaire, eighteen were neutral, eight opposed, and sixteen in
favor of a "flexitime schedule not containing debiting and crediting
options and in which overtime payment requirements would not be
relaxed." Swart noted that these responses represented only 21 percent
of unions queried and the low response rate could indicate, among other
things, that the subject was controversial.
In remarks before the National Conference on Alternative Work

Schedules, John Zalusky, of the AFL-CIO research department, discussed
some of the issues with which unions must be concerned (see Martin and
Nollen, 1978:40; and Zalusky, 1977:54-55). One of the points about
which labor appears to be adamant is that where union members are
37
concerned, the planning and implementation of flexitime should include

union participation and, in many instances, collective bargaining. The
issues that call for labor-management negotiation include overtime pay,
shift differentials, and paid time off. In each of these areas, the
question focuses on whether the gains made through previous bargaining
over the subjects will be retained under the new system. The advantages
that are claimed for flexitime suggest that negotiations should include
the larger question of concern to union leaders: Will employees share
the profits from the increased productivity that results from "decreased
absenteeism and tardiness, improved morale, or more efficient
scheduling?" Unions also want to be able to negotiate the kind of
timekeeping system used, whether or not union meetings can be held
during fixed working hours, and the question of compensatory pay or
privileges for workers whose duties may bar them from being on flexible
schedules.
Other issues of importance in any bargaining over flexible work

schedules include job classification and schedule setting. In relation
to job classification the question arises because in some situations
production and service schedules cannot be maintained along with
individual flexibility for workers unless workers can cover for one
another during the noncore periods. The question is, "Will they be
allowed to work outside their job classifications in order to accomplish
this?" In relation to scheduling, Zalusky (1977:55) emphasizes that
contract language should ensure that "the Flexitime schedule is at the
employee's option rather than his immediate supervisor's need." Where
overtime is requested, it must be compensated for at overtime rates and
and not treated as credit for the future; previously agreed upon paid
time-off should remain operative, and employees on flexitime should
continue to be paid for these hours.
Zalusky's position on flexible work hours is that unions will look

at flexitime with interest, but will not endorse it until they are sure
that it is in the best interest of the members—and this will involve
hard bargaining. A similar point was made in 1978 when representatives
of six U. S. unions took part in a seminar on alternative work patterns
in Europe. The seminar report concluded that "flexitime is definitely a
potential benefit for workers." Nevertheless, the report noted, the
terms of the bargain should be negotiated since employers gain much and
give up little (BNA, 1978a:31).
George Poulin, representing the Machinists, stated that this point

did not reflect his union's position nor the group consensus. He said
that flexitime "is already being used for thwarting unions' organizing
efforts" and management could use this report, in some situations, as
an endorsement of flexitime by labor (BNA, 1978a:32).
V
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM FLEXITIME
Alternative work hour arrangements are being evaluated primarily in

two ways: (1) in practical terms—as ways to improve "worker morale and
output per unit of labor and capital" (Hedges, 1977:62) and ways to
solve problems in the community, such as traffic congestion, energy
consumption, and unemployment; and (2) in more ideological terms—as
ways to improve the quality of working life by what Bernstein (1976:8)
called "loosening the bind of clock and calendar."
Advantages and Disadvantages
Actual and potential advantages and disadvantages of flexible work

hour schedules have been discussed in numerous publications. Among the
more recent of these is a book written by Swart (1978), which brings
together most of what is reported in the literature, and an AMA survey
report by Nollen and Martin (1978).
For the Employee
Advantages. For the employee, greater autonomy in determining work

hours can reduce stress on and off the job, provide opportunities for
better balance between work and leisure, and possibly increase
productivity and job satisfaction. Being able to choose arrival and
departure time may reduce commuting time and permit personal matters to
be attended to at nonrush hours. In many cases, flexitime reduces
congestion in the workplace and makes for quiet times during which more
can be accomplished by limiting the busy times to core hour periods.
Demands of the flexible work hour program frequently lead to job
enrichment through the need for employees to take on the new
responsibilities and to learn the new skills required to cover for
coworkers during noncore periods.
Swart and others have also made the point that flexible work hours
extend some time privileges, formerly enjoyed only by managers and
professionals, to the rank and file. These privileges may add to
"democracy in the work place" and help to improve employees' morale by
allowing them to assume more responsible roles.
Some employees who have been able to vary work hours on an informal
basis have suggested that the formalization of the system would have
advantages: (1) A formalized alternative work schedule would preclude
individuals having to be grateful for "special privileges." (2) If an
38
39
employee’s freedom to vary working hours is spelled out by company

policy, all employees will be treated more equitably.
Disadvantages and inconveniences. It is possible that short breaks

formerly allowed without reducing pay or having to be made up will have
to be counted. The use of a time-recording machine, which may be needed
when variations in working hours are formally established, may be
bothersome and degrading to some workers who previously have not had to
clock in and out. Loss of overtime may result unless care is taken to
distinguish between work outside normal hours at the supervisor's choice
and work outside normal hours at the employee's choice. Frustrations
may result from supervisors being inexperienced and less than adept at
coordinating schedules, giving advance instructions, or delegating
authority. Additional time may be required for scheduling, contacting
coworkers, and reaching clients or suppliers in other organizations.
Publicity about the new "benefit" may lead employees to expect too
much of the new scheduling system, and, as a result, there may be some
initial disappointments (see Appendix B). Comments by a few persons on
flexitime suggest that in some cases family demands on time may increase
because one spouse is on a more flexible working schedule than the
other, and that time saved often may not be as great as anticipated for
several reasons—car pool arrangements may be disrupted, and buses and
subways may run less frequently at hours outside peak periods. For some
employees, the satisfaction of workplace socializing (coffee hour and
lunch times with particular friends) may be disrupted. Some individuals
may not wish to assume more responsibility or learn new skills.
Supervisors (and coworkers, in some cases) may be overly assiduous in
checking on other employees' comings and goings.
For Management and the Organization
Advantages. Many of the potential and observed (but not always

statistically documented) advantages for the employer and the
organization have frequently been the basis for adopting flexitime.
These advantages relate to the presumed increase in productivity and
reduction of workplace stress from reduced absenteeism, tardiness,
overtime, and employee turnover; increased quiet and uninterrupted work
time, employee morale, and recruiting success; and, because the
workplace can be open longer to provide earlier arrival and later
departure times, an increase in the number of hours in which to remain
open for business. Some employers have also found flexible work hours
to be an employee benefit that is attractive to employees and readily
accepted because they can choose to use it only to the extent they wish.
Other advantages to the organization include the ability to hire more
women and older workers; opportunities for employee development through
cross-training; and the need, before implementing flexitime, to
reexamine and improve organizational communications and the "way related
tasks are structured into jobs" (see Steen, 1977:43).
40
Disadvantages and drawbacks. Specialists in organization and work

design generally agree that flexitime may not be workable in certain
kinds of organizations or jobs: for example, "fragmented work, or work
arranged in an add-on pass-on sequence.... functionally narrow work
resulting in very small products or services....duplicated work along an
interface, such as reviewing or checking someone else's work" (Steen,
1977:44-45). In other situations, as in the case of potential
disadvantages for employees, the disadvantages and drawbacks for
management are recounted in terms of problems that can be circumvented
in planning or can be solved as more experience under flexitime is
gained. The following discussion describes problems that may or may not
occur but that are important for the organization to know about when
considering a rearrangement of work schedules.
The unavailability of all staff members during the standard work¬

day may increase the difficulties of scheduling staff meetings and
training classes, more of which may be required by the introduction of
flexitime. Internal and external communications may be weakened, and
the additional requirements for "more sophisticated planning,
organizing, and control" may be a deterrent to implementing different
work schedules (see Swart, 1978:198-199). Actual costs may be involved
if there is the need to purchase time-recording devices, provide
additional hours of light and heat for the extended workday, and provide
cafeteria, telephone, and safety services over a longer period.
Swart (1978:197, 200) points out that managers and professionals

may feel downgraded if required to use clocking devices and that some
employers already are concerned about the backlash caused by resentment
of workers who cannot adjust their schedules to leave early. The same
kind of resentment may become evident where some employees can and some
cannot debit or credit hours because of their different statuses under
labor laws or union contracts. First-line managers and supervisors also
may be resentful, a possibility commented on by Zalusky (1977:55). He
noted that first-line supervisors "absorb the scheduling problems [and]
if they feel put upon by this groovy new concept, then all the
subordinates will pay a part of the price."
Although not specifically mentioned in the literature as a

drawback, one of the problems with adopting flexitime in some
organizations may be the amount of work that is required for
implementing the system (see Chapter 3 of this report), especially in
view of the oft-repeated note that once installed, employees may not let
an organization discontinue it. One might also ask what effect starting
up a flexible work hour schedule might have on the need to revise job
descriptions, the personnel manual, and job evaluation procedures.
For Society
Advantages. Public policy makers have commented on the expected

benefits of more flexible and individualized work schedules; they could
41
improve the quality of life and also help to increase employment

opportunities for working parents, older persons, and the handicapped
(see, for example, President Carter’s remarks in BNA, 1978c:3). Other
advantages to society that have been discussed since the earliest
introductions of the concept in Western Europe are more efficient use of
public transportation facilities and reduction of traffic jams, which
would lead to savings in gas consumption and decrease of air pollution
(see Kaye, 1977:57-59).
Cautions. Hedges (1977:64) raises the question of whether or not

flexitime will add to the oversupply of labor "by increasing the
likelihood that persons now employed will use flexible hours to take a
second job. She points out that "studies of multiple job-holding
indicate that workers on non-standard schedules are more likely than
others to hold more than one job." Except in a few metropolitan areas,
the benefits expected to accrue in relation to transportation have not
been documented and are highly dependent on more general use of flexible
work schedules than now exists (see Kaye, 1977:57-59).
Public Policy and the Future of Flexible Work Time
Flexitime and National Goals
Public policy efforts to improve the quality of work life have not
ignored the importance of economic well-being and national productivity,
but underlying the public policy issue, according to Abraham Weiss,*
is the acceptance of the thesis that the "quality of life at work...is
an important goal in its own right [and] does not always require an
economic pay-off." Where national goals and priorities are concerned,
the interest in flexitime has been within this framework. Flexible work
schedules are being considered along with other innovations designed to
humanize work by "increasing worker responsibility, autonomy, and
participation in the affairs of their organizations" (U. S. Senate,
1976:19, 23).
Weiss also discussed "the array of options that might enhance the
quality of working life," noting that "in the short space of a single
decade the concept of flexible or freely chosen working hours
(flexitime) has emerged as a major topic of discussion and an area for a
great deal of imaginative action" (ibid., 24). These remarks were made
before the U. S. Senate Subcommittee on Employment, Poverty, and
Migratory Labor hearings, Changing Patterns of Work in America.
*
Formerly, Assistant Secretary for Policy, Evaluation and Research,
U. S. Department of Labor.
42
The Senate hearings coincided with the first American conference on

flexible work hours and permanent part-time programs. The conference
was cosponsored by the National Center for Productivity and Quality of
Work Life and the National Council for Alternative Work Patterns
(NCAWP). Resulting articles in both professional and trade journals,
as well as news releases, focused greater public attention on the
issue.
NCAWP, in cooperation with the Advanced Education Center, School of

Government and Business Administration of George Washington University,
sponsored the National Conference on Alternative Work Schedules, which
was held in Chicago in March 1977. The meeting provided an in-depth
examination of the issues relating to implementation of flexible work
hours, compressed workweeks, and part-time and job-sharing programs. A
large number of European experts participated in this conference.
A second conference in March 1977, cosponsored by the NCAWP,

Georgetown University, and George Washington University, was the Round
Table of European Experts: Trends in Work Patterns, held in Washington,
D. C. It was organized to provide an opportunity for dialogue among the
European experts who participated in the Chicago conference, the
academic community, policy makers in federal agencies, and members of
the U. S. Congress.
The Flexiyear
The discussion and imaginative action Weiss referred to in 1976 has

moved beyond the idea of simply rearranging the working day, week, and
month. Bernhard Teriet, professor of labor economics at Kassel
University in Germany, sees the next step in nontraditional work
schedules as the "flexiyear." Teriet proposes that the working-year
contract model has potential advantages in many sectors of the economy—
for employers and employees—as well as for the social good. He sees
the concept as an extension of the time frame in which variable
Since the mid-1970s, the NCAWP has taken much of the leadership in
disseminating information on alternative work patterns. Formerly
known as the Committee for Alternative Work Patterns, the NCAWP, is a
broadly based coalition of labor, management, government, older
persons', women's, university, psychology, personnel, and other
professional groups. It was organized principally as an educational
organization. Its latest project, a national directory of public and
private organizations that have implemented alternate work schedules,
was cited earlier in this Key Issues report. The directory lists
organizations using flexitime, compressed workweek, permanent part-
time and job-sharing programs; all are cross-referenced by the
particular work schedule and the type of business.
43
arrangements are now possible under flexitime. Advantages to management

would be the capability to correlate, in advance, production plans,
time constraints, and personnel resources." Personnel costs would be
reduced because workers would receive compensation for only productive
time and absenteeism would be reduced. Among the advantages for the
individual Teriet foresees is more equal participation of men and women
in family life and in educational and recreational activities. He
believes that the major obstacles to flexiyear programs will be
associated with "traditional work rules and regulations" and with the
question of 'whether the trade unions, employer associations, and
governments will allow individuals to participate in working-time
decisions." So far, the model is being used in Germany primarily by
part-time workers in the retail trade (Teriet, 1977:62-65).
Flexible Work Life
Carrying the argument for flexible working time to its ultimate

conclusion, Fred Best, research associate in the U. S. Department of
Commerce, discusses workers' preferences for how various activities
should be distributed over their lifetimes. In an informal survey, he
asked workers to express their preferences for various kinds of work-
leisure tradeoffs. He also asked them to indicate their choices for a
life plan from among the following: (1) the "linear life plan," which
is the traditional allocation of education in younger years, work in
middle years, and retirement (complete leisure) in older years; (2) the
"moderate cyclic plan,” which would be education in younger years and a
redistribution of leisure and work periods in the middle and later
years; and (3) the "full cyclic plan," which would be reduced periods of
education in younger years and a redistribution of time for work,
education, and leisure over most of the adult years (Best, 1978:35).
Best found that only 20 percent of his respondents preferred the

traditional linear model and 46 percent preferred the full cyclic plan.
Most respondents also indicated, in answers to other questions, a strong
preference for "life scheduling flexibility." Best examines the
implications of this finding for social policy and sees the following
possibilities: redistribution of earned income over a lifetime (through
"redistribution of work rather than money"); redistribution of
employment opportunities through more job sharing and part-time
employment; reduction in the need for day-care facilities; improvement
in family stability; and better preparation for the enforced leisure of
old age. He also indirectly addresses the problem of "worker
alienation" by noting that his findings, and those of earlier studies,
on preferences for time-income and work-leisure tradeoffs indicate that
"Efforts to 'humanize' working conditions should explore wider ranges of
time-income tradeoff and work scheduling options" (ibid., p. 36).
44
Conclusion
What one finds generally in the literature on flexible work hours

is that the programs are working well, advantages outweigh costs and
inconveniences, and for the most part problems that have occurred are
seen as resolvable. The literature refers to only a few cases in which
flexible work hour schedules have been discontinued once put into
operation. Martin and Nollen (1978:44), for example, found that only 8
percent of their survey respondents had dropped flexible work hour
schedules once they tried them. Firms that had discontinued some form
of flexible scheduling did so for a variety of reasons, most of them
related to supervisory and coverage problems and some to the
complications of timekeeping and the difficulties in controlling
employee abuses of the system. The characteristics of the organizations
dropping flexitime appeared to be little different from the
characteristics of those continuing its use.
In reading the generally positive (and frequently glowing) reports

of the advantages of flexitime, the organization contemplating a formal
program of flexible work hours should keep in mind the following:
1. Flexible work hour schedules, so far, have been introduced

primarily in work situations well adapted to a relaxation of the
traditional eight-to-five approach. Thus far, the level of management
control and the basic patterns of flexible and core times have been
designed to fit the business purposes of the organization. In short,
flexitime has seldom been introduced where the potential for failure is
high.
2. To varying degrees, management still controls working time and

the degree of flexibility a worker can have. The control exists in
management's prerogatives to determine not only the length of the
workday and the flexible hours within which the employee can choose but
also whether the employee simply selects and then sticks with a new
schedule or has the option to vary that schedule on a daily basis.
3. Accounts of experiences are based on a wide range of variations

in work environments and types of scheduling. Most evaluations are
based on the results of attitudinal surveys and observed differences of
the effects on worker morale and output over a fairly short period of
time. The empirical findings should not be discounted at this point,
but they should be recognized as preliminary evaluations—usually by
management or management specialists—of a system for which, according
to Hedges (1977:62), "the initiative came primarily from management,
seeking improvements in worker morale and output per unit of labor and
capital investment."
Owen (1977:159), Bernstein (1976), and Wagel (1978:10) point out

that in the United States flexitime schedules have not been in operation
45
long enough to allow conclusions about their potential. Owen, whose

work is based on interviews and site visits in Europe and the United
States concludes that the European experiences provide solutions to most
of the flexitime problems that remain to be worked out by business,
labor, and government in the United States. Wagel, arguing from the
personnel manager's standpoint, states that, as employee interest grows
in alternative workday and workweek schedules, employers will "be forced
to either justify their opposition...or acquiesce to worker demands."
And, Bernstein, in his presidential address to the Industrial Relations
Research Association in 1976, appealed for more research on the
practical question of "how [the domination of] time-oriented work may be
...mitigated and added, "The United States, with its highly
decentralized systems of industrial relations and collective bargaining,
is an excellent setting for this experimentation. The writing done thus
far in this area is superficial and hortatory. We need to monitor and
evaluate these experiments carefully" (Bernstein, 1976:8).
In considering the role that time plays in employment relations,

Bernstein saw a close relationship between job satisfaction and the way
that time regulates the life of workers.
While most workers do not appear to be fundamentally

alienated from work, the great majority is alienated
from the way in which work is regulated in relation
to time....
The greatest potentiality for diminishing alienation

lies in this area, in reducing working hours and
working years and in rearranging work schedules.
This can often be done while still assuring the
employer that a work force will be available at the
times he needs labor (Bernstein, 1975:130).
Dr. Albert S. Glickman, organizational behavior specialist, has

argued for more systematic analysis of the effects of new patterns of
working time, which he sees as "harbingers of things to come." Some of
the basic questions that he feels should be studied relate to the
adjustments individuals (as well as organizations) make and must make
now and in the future: How do new work schedules affect behavioral
choices and new demands on an individual's time? What problems result
and what adjustments do individuals have to make to cope with them?
According to Glickman, answers to these kinds of questions are needed to
assess more adequately the overall effects of innovations in the
scheduling of work (U. S. Senate, 1976:246-247).
APPENDIX A
INSTRUCTIONS FOR FLEXIBLE WORKING HOURS PARTICIPANTS

AT THE SINGER COMPANY, LINK DIVISION, BINGHAMTON, NEW YORK*
I. GENERAL
The purpose of Flexible Working Hours is to provide a greater

capability for each employee to establish their own program of
working hours. This is intended to assist each participating
employee with day-to-day time scheduling and allow realistic
balances between personal and work times. You, as a full-time,
permanent employee, will be the determining factor in the success
of this program. It is recognized that initial efforts in the
start-up phase of this program will bring forth problems in its
administration. With your help and cooperation with your
Participative Action Committee we can successfully resolve these
problems.
The following procedures are to provide the basis for the

initiation of the flexible working hours program. These procedures
have been established by the Participative Action Committees'
decisions during the test programs and a detailed management review
of the program's results. Committee members will continue to act
as your representatives. Should you have individual problems or
questions these representatives will assist you.
II. THE FLEXIBLE WORK WEEK AND FLEXIBLE WORK DAY
A. Work Week - A total of 40 hours will form the basis for the
normal week. This is the minimum number of hours that must be
accounted for in the weekly time period of 7:00 a.m. Saturday to
7:00 a.m. the following Saturday. A "normal" work week is
defined as Monday through Friday. A normal work day is the 24
hour period commencing each day at 7:00 a.m. Application of
accumulation periods for time worked for exempt and non-exempt
employees is discussed Section IV. C.
B. Work Day - The total time, exclusive of scheduled overtime,

during which an employee may work.
1. Core Time: - This is the time during the total working day
that an employee must be present, unless specifically excused
by the supervisor.
*
Used with the permission of The Singer Company, Link Division.
46
47
2* Flexible Period; - This is the time during which an employee

may elect a start and finish time.
C. Schedules - The Flexible working day applied to Binghamton

facilities will be as follows [for the 1st shift]:
Flexible Core Core Flexible

Period Period Period Period
Start Start End End
7:00 a.m. 9:30 a.m. 3:00 p.m. 7:00 p.m.
NOTE: (1) Flexible working hours will not apply to the 2nd and
3rd shifts. (2) Non-exempt employees who are under the
provisions of the Walsh-Healey Act will participate on a
modified schedule only. Application of the Walsh-Healey Act
will be designated by department for employees participating.
These employees will be paid overtime for hours worked in excess
of 8 per day. They will be allowed: (a) To elect a starting
time that will allow no more than 8 hours straight time worked
in a normal day. (b) Overtime will be paid for work performed
in excess of 8 hours per day. (3) Lunch periods - lunch will
remain as the 30 minute period presently scheduled. There will
be no provisions for flexible lunch periods at this time.
D. Minimum Coverage - During times of the total work day the

department manager may specify requirements for a minimum number
of personnel to be present. This requirement is contingent on
the nature of normal departmental operations and workloads
existing at a given time. Arrangements for providing such
coverage will rest heavily on cooperative agreement among
department members. The supervisor will, in all cases where
such agreement cannot be reached by cooperative means, designate
personnel for that coverage.
III. TIME REPORTING
A. Nature - Time reporting for payroll purposes is not to be

confused with time accumulation which will be described in the
next section. Time reporting is the function which has always
been carried on in accordance with legal requirements.
B. Time Cards - Completion of time cards will follow the same rules
as at present. The following rules will apply:
1. Sickness Absence - Sick time policy will remain the same for
exempt employees. The sick time will be applied weekly to
make up the difference between time worked and 40 hours if
the reason for the time worked deficiency is sickness.
48
The non-exempt employees not subject to the Walsh-Healey Act

will be subject to the present policy for sickness absence
but will gain an option to make up time within the work week,
if such absence occurs early in the week. Sickness absence
incurred at the end of the week, where there is no
opportunity available for make up time, must be charged as
sick time and will be subject to policy. Non-exempt
employees subject to Walsh-Healey provisions will also be
covered under the sick pay policy but will not have the
"make-up” option.
2. Personal Absence - It is the intent of the flexible work day

that anticipated personal absence be taken where possible
during the flexible portion of the total work day. It is
recognized however, that emergency situations occur where
personal time must be taken during the core period. In such
cases, the following will apply:
a. All such absence which falls within the core day will
require supervisory approval. Approval and administration
of this time will remain the same as at present.
b. Non-exempt employees will not be paid for such absence,

and it will be deducted from approved overtime worked for
exempt employees.
c. All personal absence during the core period must be

appropriately reflected in time card entries to Account
045.
C. TIME WORKED
1. Overtime:
a. Overtime will be charged in the day incurred and noted in

the overtime (O.T.) line of the time card.
b. Overtime, in order to be paid to non-exempt employees will

require prior approval at the immediate supervisory level.
It will be the express responsibility of the immediate
supervisor to assure that time card entries will reflect
make-up time, as applicable, as regular hours and that
authorized overtime be shown on the overtime line of the
time card. Supervision will assure, in the case of non¬
exempt employees that overtime will not be worked unless
approved. Exempt overtime will require approval [also]...
c. Saturday and Sunday will remain as overtime days unless

work week shifts are designated by the supervisor for
purposes of work scheduling. For example, a Saturday
49
worked in lieu of working the following Friday, in this

case, you enter scheduled day off in the Friday column.
2* Make-up Time - For all non-exempt personnel not covered by

the Walsh-Healey Act make-up time may be carried over from
one day to another. This is why accurate, day-to-day time
recordings must be made. While you must work during the core
periods, you may make up time in a week on a day-to-day
basis. In no such case may the hours accounted for equal
less than 40 in a week. Non-exempt personnel covered by the
Walsh-Healey Act cannot exercise this "make up" option.
3. Time Card Examples: These time records are to be completed

in a manner reflecting the way the hours were actually
incurred. Any changes such as reductions of overtime for
sickness or personal absence will be accomplished by the
Payroll Department. [Here Singer included examples of time
cards for exempt and nonexempt employees with notations on
exactly how employees were to fill them out. An example of
the Manual Log In-Out Sheet was also furnished.]
IV. TIME ACCUMULATION PROCEDURES
A. General: It is important that you may easily account for your

time on a daily basis, and thereby record this information on
your time card. A manual system will be used. Your attention to
use of this system is most important.
B. Manual System: This system will entail the use of manual sign-
in and out books in each department. If, due to larger numbers
of employees, more than one location in a department for these
books is desirable, they will be provided. The sign-in and out
sheets are virtually self-explanatory. The employee simply
signs in on his sheet when he arrives or leaves. The employee
will then, at the end of the day enter the number of hours
worked to the nearest tenth of an hour. Day by day these hours
will be carried as an accumulated total. The following codes
will be used in the approval column to indicate the reason for
time not worked on a normal work day: 045 - other lost time;
037 - sickness absence; 040 - vacation; 041 - holiday. The
employee should note that failure to log in and out will require
that the employee substantiate that the time was worked to the
satisfaction of the immediate supervisor.
C. Hours of Accumulation
1. Non-exempt: Due to legally required timekeeping and payroll

criteria, personnel in these classifications will accumulate
time within the normal working week defined in II-A above.
50
2. Exempt: This employee group will initially accumulate only

within the normal work week criteria. Future expansion of
this period is subject to administrative facilitation.
V. CONCLUSION
Flexible working time is a method of providing employee groups a

measure of participation in determining the conduct of their jobs.
It is therefore the responsibility of each participant to adhere to
the operating criteria and cooperate fully within the work group.
It is sincerely hoped that this will enhance the job environment
and benefit each employee.
APPENDIX B
EFFECT OF FLEXITIME PILOT PROGRAM ON EMPLOYEE ATTITUDES

IN THE OFFICE OF ACCOUNTING, OASAM, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR*
Communication
Responses to questionnaires distributed during the pre-flexitime test

period and after the experiment began showed a noticeable change in
attitudes among coworkers and supervisors. Positive responses dropped
approximately 47 percent when compared with those compiled before
flexitime. Also, responses to questions about supervisors showed a
decline in employee feelings that supervisors were cooperative and
willing to delegate responsibility.
Possibly, employees and supervisors alike were expecting too much from
the experiment and not sharing the responsibility for improving employee
relations within the organization. Although employees were informed of
the changes that would occur due to flexible working scheduling, many
had not prepared themselves for the added responsibility of job sharing
which results. As more attention is applied to this area and
understanding and adaptability occurs, communications might improve.
Job Attitudes
Statistics drawn from the surveys showed that employee attitudes toward
their jobs were slightly more favorable after flexible working schedules
The following excerpts are from "An Analysis of the Pilot Flexitime
Project in the Office of Accounting," Office of Management Systems,
OASAM, October, 1977, used with the permission of the Office of
Management Systems.
51
were implemented. Approximately 50 percent of those employees who

responded felt they were working at their intended profession.
When queried before and during flexitime, several attitudinal changes

surfaced. When employees were asked if they were pleased with the type
of work they were performing, about 63 percent replied yes before the
experiment began, and 66 percent answered in the affirmative during the
experiment. In response to questions such as whether they found their
jobs stimulating and challenging, a year ago slightly more than 50
percent replied no. After performing under flexible schedules,
employees replied yes about 59 percent of the time.
Employee satisfaction on the job, however, often stems from how they
envision their opportunities for advancement. In this area, employees
responding to the survey in the pre-flexitime testing period and during
the actual experiment showed a solid 52 percent negative reaction.
Reasons most often offered as obstacles to advancement were favoritism
and discrimination, no positions available in the organization, and lack
of education.
Although lack of education was seen as an obstacle, when employees were

asked what they liked best about flexitime, only one reported that it
provided time to attend school. There are, however, at least two
employees attending school during a time of day that would probably not
be possible under a fixed workday.
Employee Reactions Toward Flexitime
Favorable employee attitudes toward flexible working schedules were more

prevalent than negative reactions.
Employee attitudes toward flexitime revealed the tremendous desire

workers have to make their work environment mesh with their private
lives.
The overriding benefit employees felt they derived from flexitime was
the opportunity to adapt their working day more closely to their
individual personal needs.
The one factor employees liked least about flexitime was the method of
recording time. A few employee reasons for not accepting the time
accumulator were: it did not always function properly; supervisors were
more suspicious of employees; and the system was "degrading." Eighty
percent of these employees preferred the honor system to the present
method.
Employees were asked to indicate which of the following factors helped

to determine the hours they chose to work [percentage of positive
responses are in the right-hand column]:
52
Positive
Factors Responses
Child Care 37 %
Traffic or carpool arrangements 67 %
Personal habit patterns 31 %
Spouses/partner's work hours 22 %
Educational opportunities 19 %
Second job 6 %
Personal appointments 34 %
Community activities 13 %
Recreational activities 10 %
Shopping 16 %
Repair and maintenance (cars, 22 %
homes, appliances)
Social activities 10 %
Other 10 %
As indicated above, the majority of reasons employees gave for the hours
they chose under flexitime were traffic and car pool arrangements, child
care, and personal appointments.
When asked what they liked best about flexitime, employees responded as
follows:
Freedom to choose time and be more flexible 55 %

Less traffic and better commuting arrangements 28 %
Personal needs, such as shopping, appointments, etc. 22 %
Saves leave 19 %
More time for spouse and children related problems 19 %
Helps in general attitude and morale 15 %
Time to attend school 3 %
Although there were some advantages to converting to flexible schedules

in the work situation, such as job sharing and cross-training, few
employees chose to take positive actions to enhance their careers
through formal schooling. Also, while general attitudes toward the job
situation improved, feelings toward coworkers did not.
In synopsis, flexitime provided a motivational boost to employees in

those areas where they feel a very private concern: traffic and
commuter problems, personal needs and problems, and a feeling of having
some control over their work environment.
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U. S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare

1976 Changing Patterns of Work in America; Hearings before the
Subcommittee on Employment, Poverty, and Migratory Labor.
94th Cong., 2nd Sess.
Wagel, William H.
1978 "Alternative Work Schedules: Current Trends." Personnel 55
(January-February):5—10.
Walker, James, Clive Fletcher, and Donald McLeod

1975 "Flexible Working Hours in Two British Government Offices."
Public Personnel Management 4 (July-August):216-222.
Weinstein, Harriet Goldberg

1975 A Comparison of Three Alternative Work Schedules: Flexible
Work Hours, Compact Work Week, and Staggered Work Hours.
Philadelphia: The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Worklife
1977 "Set Your Watch for Flexitime." Worklife 2 (March):2-6.
Zalusky, John L.
1977 "Alternative Work Schedules: A Labor Perspective." Journal of
the College and University Personnel Association 28
(Summer):53-56.
Zawacki, Robert A., and Jason S. Johnson

1976 "Alternative Work Week Schedules: One Company’s Experience
with Flextime." Supervisory Management 21 (June):15-19.
010101 000
Continued from inside front cover:
14. Manpower Information for Effective Management: Skills Inventories and Manpower
Planning (Part 2) by Felician F. Foltman, 1973, 40 pages, $2.
15. The Right to Strike in Public Employment by Antone Aboud and Grace Sterrett Aboud,
1974, 44 pages, $2.
16. An Introduction to Collective Bargaining in Higher Education by A. W. J. Thomson,

1974, 40 pages, $2.
17. Promotion: Practices, Policies, and Affirmative Action by Elaine F. Gruenfeld,

1975, 64 pages, $3.
18. Group Legal Services by Susan T. Mackenzie, 1975, 72 pages, $3.
19. Noise and Office Work by Susan T. Mackenzie, 1975, 52 pages, $3.
20. Employer-Employee Committees and Worker Participation by Charlotte Gold, 1976,

60 pages, $3.
21. A Union and Its Retired Workers: A Case Study of the UAW by Richard Korn, 1976,
64 pages, $3.
22. The Union 64 pages, $3.

HD5109•2 .U5S55
Silverstein, Pam.
23. Employee y Robert N. Stern and
Flexitime, where, when, and
Philip Con
how? , fk
24. Flexitime:
pages, $3. :con letta H. Srb, 1979, 60
DATE ISSUED TO £8 I M
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Flexitime: Where, When, and How?

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flexitime:

where, when, and how?

KEY ISSUES: background reports on

Series Editor: Jozetta H. Srb

2. The Lie Detector in En vised, $2.

4. Portable Pensions by J<

7. Games and Simulations a Laoor Relations Training by Mary Ann

8. Communicating with Employees about Pension and Welfare Benefits by Jozetta

9. Redefining the Environment by Jerome Abarbanel, 1972, 40 pages, $2.

Continued on inside back cover

FLEXITIME: WHERE, WHEN, AND HOW?

Copyright (c) 1979 by Cornell University

Library of Congress Card Number: 79-88670

Publications Division, NYSSILR

II. EXAMPLES OF PILOT FLEXITIME PROGRAMS IN THE U. S. 12

III. HOW TO SET UP A FLEXITIME PROGRAM. 23

IV. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS IN PLANNING FLEXITIME. 30

Labor Laws and Flexitime. 30

V. WHAT TO EXPECT FROM FLEXITIME. 38

Advantages and Disadvantages. 38

APPENDIX A: INSTRUCTIONS FOR FLEXIBLE WORK HOURS

APPENDIX B: EFFECT OF FLEXITIME PILOT PROGRAM ON

The authors express their appreciation to Frank

While most workers do not appear to be fundamentally

Despite the fact that in 1977 only about 42 percent of all

The concept of flexible working hours is relatively simple. The

1. Flexibility within the working day. The employee may choose

Flexible hours 7:00 to 9:00 a.m.

In other cases the employee has additional flexibility in relation to

Flexible hours 7:00 to 9:00 a.m.

2. Flexibility within the workweek. The employee can choose

3. Flexibility within the working month. The employee must work

In addition to the restraints already mentioned, certain

different alternative patterns of work for various groups within the

Chapter 1 of this Key Issues report provides a brief history of the

According to Dornberg (1977), the idea of flexible working hours

By 1967 several municipal administrations, the power plant for the

only were the traffic jams eliminated, but "absenteeism declined by

The basic concept of flexible working time rapidly became

Life has become too regimented, too impersonal, too

restarting, reexamining a file, or reassembling the necessary papers the

In 1975 Allenspach wrote that there were special problems with

Similar figures have been reported for other European countries.

The German Union of Administrative Employees has followed the

According to Evans (1977:34), in France seven hundred thousand

ninety-five offices representing the central government in the various

Compared to other European countries, Great Britain was late in

One of the first trial programs was in Britain's largest insurance

The most quantifiable advantage noted after Prudential's six-month

Described in detail in European Industrial Relations Review

for a group of employees to carry out a certain task, freedom to choose

In 1974, after experimentation and detailed evaluation in nine

Approximately six years after flexible working hours had been

Some employees on flexitime schedules expressed dissatisfaction

According to a study in 1977, there were also approximately twenty-

the development is symbolic of the new approach to improving the quality

The Compact Workweek

Employers, more recently, have incorporated some of the past

boredom, or otherwise improving the quality of work life. To accomplish

In 1975 an article in the Wall Street Journal (June 24:1), however,

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published a bulletin the same

Harriet Goldberg Weinstein (1975:172-174) compared three types of

Flexitime: An Emerging Idea