Flextime

Activity Description:

Purpose:

To demonstrate how personal situations affect perspectives of flextime

Steps:

The facilitator poses various scenarios and asks for participant responses. The facilitator can have participants write down their responses or simply think about their responses and share some with the group.

Part I

Ask participants to imagine that they have a full-time job with a “9 to 5” schedule from Monday through Friday. Given the participants’ current life situation and preferences, ask them if it would be beneficial to have the ability to start working anywhere from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. and to adjust the end of the workday accordingly to maintain an eight hour day. There would not be flexibility available at the midday hours, and the next month’s schedule would need to be determined at the end of each month.

Ask participants how helpful this flextime policy would be given their current life situation. Question the participants on whether or not the flextime policy is flexible enough to meet their needs.

With a diverse group of participants, Part I may be sufficient to demonstrate the differing appeal of flextime given various personal situations. Part II is recommended when the discussion from Part I does not identify the differing appeal of flextime based on various personal situations.

Part II  

  1. Ask for volunteers to receive index cards that will change their current life situation. The participants receiving cards should imagine that they have the life situation depicted on the card. How does this alter their preference/need for flextime?

Situations on Cards:

  • You have a six year old son who gets off the bus at 3:30p.m. Your spouse is available to help your son get to school in the morning, but is unavailable to help in the afternoon.
  • Your elderly father needs physical therapy three times per week. He is unable to drive or take public transportation to the physical therapy center. You are one person who could drive him there, but the center is only open until 8:00a.m. to 5:30p.m.
  • You are not a morning person. Even after three cups of coffee, you still are grumpy before 10:00a.m. You try not to schedule meetings before 10:00 because you know that you are not at your peak performance level before that time.
  • You live in an area where the traffic is very heavy. If you leave your house before 6:30a.m., the drive to work takes ½ hour, but if you leave after 7:00a.m., the drive takes over one hour. You have discussed coming to work early and leaving work early with your coworker, but he is concerned that you would be unavailable to handle any last minutes “crises” that could arise at the end of the day if your schedule was such that you left before 5:00 p.m.
  1. Ask participants how helpful this flextime policy would be given the life situation on their card. Question the participants on whether or not the flextime policy is flexible enough to meet their needs.

Activity Source:

Content contributed by MaryAnne Hyland as a Suggested Work and Family Class Activity