Did you ever ask yourself (or Dolly Parton) why workin’ 9 to 5 was the way to make a living? And why the five-day work week? With gas at $4 a gallon and little or no relief in sight, a lot of employers, including many state and local governments, are reconsidering the whole notion of a “standard” work week and getting creative with employee schedules to cut commuting and operating costs.
For some employers and employees, this works great; for others, it doesn’t. There’s more to it than fuel savings. Look at the pros and cons when considering if scrapping the traditional work week works for your company:
Pro: Keeping Good Employees
By making their commute more affordable, and allowing employees an extra day at home with their families or pursuing outside hobbies, employees are likely to work harder and stay with the company longer. This reduces how much time and money a company has to spend finding and training new employees.
Pro: Reduced Child Care Costs
Assuming child care for a time period exceeding the normal eight-hour workday is not more expensive (as it sometimes is), by working a four-day week, a parent could reduce not only fuel costs, but day-care costs by 20 percent … 40 percent if both parents switch to a four-day week but have different weekdays off so they can each take over one day of child care.
Con: Long Days Away From Home
It may be difficult to find child care as early and as late as a 10-hour day would require, and while parents are home an extra day, the days away are long. This may be especially troubling for parents of kids who are too old for day care but young enough to get in a lot of trouble if they have no parental supervision for 10 to 12 hours at a stretch — let’s say the “ages 12 and up” crowd.
Con: Fatigue
For workers operating heavy equipment or doing hard physical labor, a 10-hour day could cause fatigue and subsequently costly fatigue-related mistakes or injuries. Make sure workers can handle the extra two hours. And remember, for those with a long commute, a 10-hour workday can really be a 12-hour day.
Con: Insignificant Savings
For someone who commutes 15 miles each way in a car that gets 20 miles to the gallon, paying $4 a gallon for gas, their savings is only $6 a day or $300 a year, not counting the saved wear and tear on the car. And that’s assuming the employee doesn’t spend their new day off driving around. It may not be worth shaking up the company and employees lives for such a small amount of money.
Pro: Lowered Absenteeism
With a weekday off to schedule doctor’s appointments, dental checkups and parent-teacher conferences, employees shouldn’t have to take time off from work for these events any more.
Pro: Savings on Other Expenses
If the weekday off is staggered among employees so there’s still someone conducting the company’s business five (or six) days a week, the costs to heat, cool and illuminate facilities will remain the same. However, if everybody in the office gets Friday off, there will be a savings on utility bills. For employees, working four days means one less day to buy or pack a lunch and one less clean, pressed work shirt needed.
IT’S ALL ABOUT FLEXIBILTY
Just because one company adjusts its working calendar doesn't mean others will follow. The issue for many businesses is being available during the same hours their clients keep. Somebody’s got to be answering the phone when customers call. And you can’t very well refuse to service restrooms on Fridays if a customer demands that theirs be serviced on Friday.
So maybe staggering weekdays off among employees is the solution rather than having everybody off on the same day. That way everything is covered. Of course you don’t save on the cost of heating, A/C, etc. like you would if you shut down entirely for an extra day; that’s the compromise.
Maybe the answer for your company lies somewhere in-between the traditional work week and the four-day week. Employees could work five (or even six) days a week during the busy season, four days a week (or less) during slow times. This schedule plays in well with many portable sanitation companies, which slow down in the winter. Turning down the heat one day a week over winter could produce significant savings for contractors in northern regions.
Or, perhaps the savings of consolidating service routes to four days would be so great that it’s worth it to offer customers some kind of incentive to work within your schedule.
If the four-day work week doesn’t seem like it would work for your company, there are other ways you can help employees save on gas. Encouraging them to organize carpools, subsidizing public transportation and allowing some employees to work from home are just a few options to consider.
And that’s the trend more than the four-day week. Not everyone is jumping on the bandwagon and shortening the work week, but companies are becoming more open to creativity, flexibility and change. You know the old saying: If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you always got. And in today’s economy, doing what you’ve always done means being stuck with high fuel bills. It’s time to think outside the box.
