|
Improving Work-Life Fit in Hourly Jobs
The Center for WorkLife Law
Determine the optimum advance
notice of employees' schedules
The next step is to experiment with giving workers
greater advance notice of their schedules. Posting
work schedules a few days in advance of the
workweek has become the norm in many industries,
a way of business that is rarely questioned (Lambert
2008). It may be possible, however, for many
businesses to post schedules further in advance. For
example, in the retail firm participating in the Work
Scheduling Study, schedules were typically posted
a few days before the workweek that begins on
Sunday, a common practice throughout the retail
sector. Yet store managers received their staffing hour
allotments for a month at a time, making it feasible
for them to post schedules for the full month--
something few (6%) managers did. (Lambert 2009a)
Obviously, there are limits to how far in advance
schedules can and should be posted: business
conditions change, as do employees' circumstances.
Yet it may be feasible--and beneficial--for many
businesses to post schedules a few weeks or even
a month in advance, which could dramatically
reduce unplanned absenteeism. Susan Lambert
and Julia Henly are currently running a study to
document the effects of posting schedules a month
in advance.
Adopt a formal system for handling
scheduling changes
A majority (53%) of managers in the Work
Scheduling Study reported that schedule changes
were common. Those requested by management
typically reflected managers' need to stay within
hours. Those requested by employees typically
asked to switch shifts or to cover for a colleague. An
informal system for handling scheduling changes is
both costly in terms of managers' time, and limited
in the amount of information that can be processed.
The Work Scheduling Study found that, after
schedules are posted "[m]any workers call in to find
out their hours or stop by to obtain a new schedule
so that they can arrange or rearrange child care
and other family activities for the coming week."
Virtually all managers report that they try hard
to accommodate associates' scheduling requests,
regardless of the reason for the request, yet informal
systems make it hard for supervisors to "keep on
top of requests and preferences." (Lambert & Henly
2010b; Lambert 2009a) The obvious answer is to
shift to a more formal system for keeping track of,
and responding to, change requests, either on-line
or on paper. On-line systems are described below,
as are shift-swapping and hiring floaters, both of
which are tried-and-true methods for handling
schedule changes. (See On-line scheduling, on
page 37 below) Once systems are computerized,
which increasingly is quite affordable, managers
allow employees to enter not only their underlying
scheduling needs and preferences but also when
they are not available to work because of a specific
engagement on a given week (doctor's appointment,
parent-teacher conference). As will be discussed
below, new "cloud" systems can be as inexpensive as
$1.25 per employee.
The goal: Scheduling equilibrium
The ultimate goal is to identify the scheduling
equilibrium: the point at which the savings that can
be attained by increasing schedule stability equals
the additional costs incurred due to initiatives to
"Many managers we spoke with were
shocked. They have never thought
about the fact that, if associates'
hours only vary by three hours from
week to week, it makes sense to post
the bulk of the hours in advance, and
deal later with scheduling the three
variable hours of out of, perhaps,
200 hours."