I’m a strong advocate of Flexitime, I used to work in an environment where it was available and I still miss the benefits ten years on. For an employee it is a great way to get that work life balance as well as generally making you feel more productive (you put in the hours when your work demands it rather than just when the clock tells you to).
I see from today’s Legal Week that Allen & Overy are looking at an initiative to bring in flexible working. Now whether this is a true move to flexitime for all staff (including support staff), just general flexibility for partners or meeting the 2003 legislation for parents you can’t really tell from the article. But the fact it’s in the press to me shows at least law firms are starting to think about it.
Looking at Legal IT in particular, what are the benefits of flexitime? As well as the afore mentioned obvious benefits to the employee it also has benefits for the employer.
Key at the moment are the cost savings you could get immediately by extending the core hours:
Say your current hours are a usual 9 to 5. To get staff to work long after 5 you’ll either have to have very well motivated willing staff or more likely you’ll have to pay overtime.
In a flexitime environment you could extend core hours to 6 to 8 (staff chose which 7/7.5 to work in this time), staff know that if at busy periods they work a 10 hour+ day they will be able to work shorter days when it isn’t busy. The employer gets the savings in reduced overtime pay.
Another benefit of the extended core hours is you widen your coverage in the day for customers as some will rather come in early and some will rather stay late.
Productivity usually increases as people maximise the work when it is required. They will put in the effort to reach milestones, get pieces of work done etc as they know that in the lulls they can claw the time back.
Personally I think the UK has an unhealthy focus on just the hours you’re in the office. These being more important than the work you do in those hours. Two stories stick in my mind regarding this:
- First was from a friend of mine who went to work in Germany, he told me the story of a British manager who had gone to work for the same company. The manager did the usual British thing of staying in the office late, after a few weeks his boss had pulled him to one side and told him if he couldn’t do the work in the hours allotted he clearly wasn’t the man for the job.
- The second I heard was of a manager who spoke up when challenged by the boss on the reasons why there was no one in the office late. Clearly this was an indicator that the dept needed to be busier. The manager responded by asking whether he (the boss) wanted an office where people came in and simply sat at their desks from 7 to 7 or where people were in (maybe for less time) but got the job done?
Yes there are times when extra hours are needed to get jobs done, but as I’ve pointed out flexitime helps this by allowing employees to be somewhere else when there isn’t the demand. Most employees when they feel they are being looked after will give a lot in return.
Have a look at this great post by Adrian Dayton that highlights the generational difficulties in adapting from the old way to the flexible way.
Will it happen in Legal? I recall when I first started in a law firm, the working week for support staff was 37.5 hours, thanks to competition in the London firms support staff (secretaries at the time) this was reduced to 35 hours to keep the good people. If more city firms look at flexitime then it could ripple through the top 200 fairly quickly!
Working in a top 50 London lawfirm theres no way our team would introduce flexitime – far too difficult to manage , if the lawyers and secretarys have to stay behind to complete for the firm to make money and succeed , why shouldnt the IT team be expected to do the same ? isnt that why legal and banking pay more ?
In my experience it isn’t difficult to manage at all, most staff are professional and know when the hours are required.
I totally agree the IT should put in the hours when the business needs them, my argument though was more about giving the flexibility and seeing the benefits this will bring in terms of staff morale as well as cost savings that, in my opinion, this brings (my guess is most secretaries for example don’t work the extra hours for free).
The problem is in most sectors other than the public sector it is my experience that flexi-time is viewed with suspicion along with home working.
Most assume that this means people won’t put in the hours or somehow work less. When I worked flexitime I often worked until midnight and beyond, mainly so I could work some shorter weeks.
I never see an issue as long as people deliver on time to the same quality, all flexi time systems are based around office core hours anyway and any organisation that has flexitime can often reduce wages they pay as the flexi is seen as a massive benefit.
Unfortunately the british are a “keep it close and keep em working hard” culture. This means in my opinion lots of companies miss recruiting certain individuals as they would prefer to have a decent work life balance, which is a phrase that others also sometimes misunderstand to mean “this person doesn’t want to work hard”.
Having worked in both systems both in IT and in other industries I always found flexitime a real boon and was always more productive and I also charged out less overtime to the company because I was working within a system.
Flexi time does bring with it an admin overhead but there are automated systems to deal with this to make everyones life easier.
In my mind flexitime makes perfect sense for legal firms not only for fee earners but you support staff too, particulary in relation to IT.
Clearly there needs to be a base of support staff available but most disruptive project work, and some essential maintenance is much better done when users are not hammering the system.
The management of flextime is easy and best left to the individuals in the department, and most firms timesheet staff to death so highlighting slackers is easy.
I have managed IT teams in accountancy practice and have implemented flexitime with no downsides at all, in fact if you do it right it offers a greater spread of support and allows staff a better work life balance.