Scope of Flexible Work Schedules Seen Limited

Although many large corporations plan to offer more flexible work schedules in the 1990s, the main beneficiaries will continue to be those in clerical, administrative and sales jobs, and women, according to a new Conference Board study on corporate flexible scheduling and staffing.

In the next decade, as today, most managers, executives and professionals will not participate in such programs, according to the study, which was the result of a survey of senior human resources executives at the nation’s largest corporations.

Kathleen Christensen, an associate professor at the Graduate School of City University of New York who wrote the 22-page report, found that the less autonomy workers have, the more likely they would be to participate in flexible work plans.

Christensen said based on the remarks of the 521 executives responding to the survey, released this week, managers and professionals are less likely to be eligible for these arrangements because their jobs involve a full-time commitment.

“That’s the way it is right now,” she said. “I don’t see that changing immediately.”

However, under pressure from workers with families, especially women, the vast majority of companies--93%--have already implemented at least some type of flexible scheduling, and most firms plan to expand their programs.

The survey listed six types of flexible scheduling: flextime, part-time, job sharing, home-based work, phased retirement and compressed work weeks. With flextime, for example, an employee works a full-time schedule with an option to change starting and ending times. Job sharing involves two people splitting one full-time job.

The most common of the six is part-time work, the survey said.

Asked which programs their firms expected to offer in the near future, 73% of the respondents cited job sharing, 58% said flextime and 56% said home-based work.

But the likely growth in flexible schedules doesn’t mean that there will be a “radical transformation of the work force,” Christensen said. “There will be a slow and steady change.”

The most common reason given for companies’ resistance to adopting such programs was their worry about how to implement the programs fairly and to manage off-site workers effectively.

Christensen said employers will be cautious and elect to implement pilot programs or flexible arrangements for a select number of employees.

Those companies that already have flextime, job sharing and home-based work reported being highly satisfied with employees’ job performance, Christensen said.