Employers offering better schedules for hourly workers

It's happened to almost every working adult: a babysitter calls in sick, an elderly parent suddenly needs to get to a doctor's appointment or some other problem interrupts the working day. Professionals can come and go at will, but hourly employees often face tough choices: leave a family member in the lurch or get reprimanded or even fired.

The high rates of absenteeism and turnover among many types of hourly workers therefore aren't surprising. But they're not inevitable either, in the view of some employers, who are recognizing the value of creating scheduling policies that accommodate workers' lives. 

That's according to "Improving Work-Life Fit in Hourly Jobs: An Underutilized Cost-Cutting Strategy in a Globalized World," a 2011 report from the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. The authors are the center's founding director, Joan C. Williams, an author and well-recognized expert on work and family balance, and research sociologist Penelope Huang.

They argue that even if employers don't have the resources to offer higher pay and nice benefit packages to retain workers, they can offer better scheduling options. This by itself is an enormous benefit that keeps many workers loyal -- and at the same time improves the bottom line by helping employers reduce the cost of hiring and training new workers.

The report points out that hourly jobs (waiters, nurses, retail salespeople and call center employees, to name a few) often have schedules that are constantly shifting. But this variability rarely translates into flexibility. Workers are expected to punch in on time and stay put for the duration of their shifts.

Scenarios like these were much easier to manage in single-breadwinner households that were far more common half a century ago, Williams and Huang note. In many households today, child care, elder care and paid employment are the responsibility of a patchwork combination of mothers, fathers, children, grandparents and family friends.

The report includes a list of companies that are reflecting families' needs in their scheduling policies. They offer compressed workweeks (i.e., more hours worked during fewer days each week), flex-time (which allows workers some leeway in when they start and stop work), job sharing, reduced hours, comp time and other scheduling options.

A few examples*:

Kodak, the photo and imaging-equipment company, allows all 62,000 workers across the country to apply for compressed workweeks.

AFLAC, the Fortune 500 insurance company, gives employees the option of working three 12-hour days or four 10-hour days.

PNC Financial Services group, which has 2,500 bank branches and 59,000 workers, offers a variety of flexible scheduling options. For one example, its teams focused on CD, checking and ATM services have flexible start times from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and end times from 2:30 p.m. until 5:30 p.m.

Hotel operator Employee Resources Group, LLC lets employees with school-age children work during the hours the kids are in school (typically 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.)

Kraft Foods has a program called Fast Adapts that offers shift swapping and single-day vacations to employees who work in round-the-clock manufacturing facilities.

*Note: Information on company scheduling policies was collected from a variety of sources in "Improving Work-Life Fit in Hourly Jobs: An Underutilized Cost-Cutting Strategy in a Globalized World," a report from the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Companies have not independently verified their accuracy.