The option to work from home has been shown to benefit employees and employers. This type of flexibility in working arrangements, when appropriate based on the employee’s responsibilities, increased productivity and retention for the employer and job satisfaction for the employee. The same benefits apply to working arrangements that include flexible hours.

As Margaret Heffernan explains in INC Magazine, “Treating employees like grown-ups made it more likely that they would behave the same way.” This treatment includes trust; if you hire the right people, you can trust them to accomplish their tasks and goals on time and under budget without worrying about the time they walk into their cubicle and the time they leave.

It’s difficult to treat employees like adults, however. At one of my corporate jobs, I joined a team some time after the management hired an efficiency consultant. The consultant sat with each employee and monitored and logged every minute of each employee’s work day in order to determine opportunities for improvement in productivity. After the study, productivity might have increased, but it most likely didn’t last long. Employees resented the requirement of tracking every minute of their days.

Around the same time, one of the supervisors made a habit of walking the floor at nine o’clock in the morning to see who was at their desk on time every day. This type of micro-management benefited the supervisor, and perhaps it gave her a feeling of control, but the employees resented the approach, even if they were at their desks on time each morning. Even when arriving on time, the employees would need to be at their desks at the moment the supervisor walked by rather than in the rest room or the kitchen area.

Thankfully, this supervisor was no longer with the team by the time I accepted my position.

A policy that includes flexible hours gives employees ownership of their roles and allows them to make decisions about the best time to do their jobs. The right people can handle these decisions without taking advantage of the employer or the flexible policies.

A flexible working hours arrangement can take a variety of forms:

• forty hours every week spread over four days instead of five
• eighty hours every two weeks spread over nine days instead of ten
• eight hours every day starting earlier or later than nine o’clock

This type of flexible working arrangement may increase productivity. Happy employees tend to be better employees, and they stick with the company longer. Long-term loyalty to a company has decreased over the years due to many changes in the relationship between employers and employees, but a policy involving flexible hours and other benefits can help reverse that trend.

Work/life balance isn’t always appropriate. I am always torn with this concept, because different goals require different treatment. When I worked for a small non-profit organization whose lofty goals were difficult to achieve on a tiny budget and a lack of resources, the expectation was to put our lives into our work. The only way to achieve greatness is to be completely dedicated to the mission, and that required making many personal sacrifices. Most jobs and careers do not work in this fashion, but in any career, this type of dedication can lead to success.

Work/life balance is a great approach for the cast majority of the American workforce that recognizes that life outside of work is important, but those whose personal mission is to become the best in the world at their job, life is just a distraction.

As a business owner without any employees, I took advantage of flexible hours. When I left my corporate job over a year ago, I experimented with creating a regular schedule for myself, but I determined — and this was something I had known since I was a teenager — that I just work better and more efficiently when I have the flexibility to work when I like.

Do you have flexible working hours at your job? Is it beneficial or detrimental to your group? If you work flexible hours, have you seen any personal benefits?

INC Magazine, American Psychological Association, Forbes

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A group of fresh, unemployed lawyers have banded together to sue law schools. 73 alumni have filed at least fifteen class-action lawsuits, alleging the schools inflated employment figures and salary data to attract students and increase rankings. The real goal of the lawsuits seems to be to effect systemic change in the education industry and associations that accredit law schools, like the American Bar Association.

Schools are in the business of generating alumni, and to a great extent, use as many marketing tricks that any company uses in order to influence public opinion. It’s true that a 90% graduate employment rate looks better than a 75% rate on paper, and I’d be more inclined to choose a school with a higher employment rate, with all other factors being equal. But a 90% graduate employment rate doesn’t guarantee that I would receive the job I want after graduation, even if I were in the top 10% of the class.

Furthermore, I’ve come to the conclusion over the years that any statistic used for marketing purposes is subject to manipulation in an attempt to further the goals of marketing. Hard numbers give the impression of fact. From an early age, we’re trained to believe that one plus one equals two, in all circumstances, and numbers are truth. Statistics can be misleading in many ways, and are used more often to try to convince others of a point of view rather than quantify facts in reality.

The group of lawyers probably can’t prove that the blame for their unemployment situation rests with the law schools. There are many factors that contribute to unemployment, including the overall economy, local job markets, and the effort, skills, and self-marketability of each alumnus. It doesn’t appear as if the former students are suing to have the schools compensate them for the lack of expected income from working, but they are suing to enlighten the public to the issue of misleading statistics throughout the educational industry.

Mutual funds must advertise that “past performance does not guarantee future results.” Even if a graduate employment rate were perfectly measured and accurately reflected exactly what a potential student understood the number to be, a good rate today is no indication that the rate will continue to be high by the time the school awards a degree or certification. If my index mutual fund returned 12% last year and lost 8% this year, I can’t sue the fund manager or the stock market for not providing the dividends I was hoping for. If fraud was involved, it might be a different situation. Perhaps misleading statistics like graduate employment rates are somewhat fraudulent, but I don’t see a parallel as schools do not typically promise that students will be employed at the level they’d like after graduation — and in the case of lawyers, after passing the bar exam.

There might be better ways of raising the issue of misleading statistics in the marketing endeavors in which institutes of education engage. Using the courts to make a point is only one tool that’s available to increase awareness of an issue. When you’re a hammer, though, everything looks like a nail.

Several years ago, while I was completing my Masters in Business Administration degree, I considered attending law school. Ultimately, I decided not to pursue a law degree and to focus my energy on my business instead. I think I made the right decision.

Photo: CubanRefugee
WNYC

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