Part 1: Flexible Work Schedules Will Attract More Gen Y Employees To Your Company

According to Katherine Lockett, author of “Work-Life Balance for Dummies,” work-life balance is: “The need of all individuals to achieve and maintain a balance between paid work and life outside of work.”

“The word ‘balance’ does not necessarily mean an even divide between work and life,” Lockett says. “Instead, balance means successfully managing all the responsibilities an individual has in both areas of their lives.” 

The expression “work-life balance” was first used back in the late 80s to help explain why people were choosing to neglect important areas of their lives—family, friends, hobbies, etc—in favor of work-related goals and duties. 

The Baby Boomers and Generation X have long been known as generations who live to work. But Generation Y doesn’t operate on that same principle. Gen Yers want to work to live, not live to work.

It’s not that our careers aren’t important to us, but we also want to spend our time traveling, completing side projects, meeting new people, hanging out with our family, etc., and not just working.

So encouraging a positive work-life balance is one way to ensure you retain your Gen Y employees (and all your other employees as well). 

“Good employers recognize that not all employees see work-life balance as slowing down or working part-time, although they are indeed two powerful ways to achieve work-life balance,” Lockett says. “Instead, studies and surveys repeatedly find that most workers are willing to work hard as long as they have some say and some control over when and where they work.

“As such, smart employers are offering more flexible working times and have seen that workers who are able to access more flexible arrangements are likely to have less days off ‘sick’ from work and be more productive when they are at work.” 

With this in mind, here are some suggestions for flexible work schedules that will help your employees maintain a better work-life balance, and will make them more creative and productive when they are working.

• Flex-Time—“Starting work at earlier or later times to incorporate medical appointments, child care/school runs, elderly parents, etc.,” Lockett says. “Staggering start and finish times has meant that companies who deal with different time zones have staff available for longer periods.”
  
• Compressed Work Week—“Employees can choose to work four 10-hour days and take the fifth day off,” she says.
  
• Telecommuting—“Working from home can be arranged on a regular basis—example, every Monday and Friday—to avoid a long commute or to focus on complex tasks without interruptions,” she says. “Good managers realize that staff can be ‘trusted’ to work productively without being ‘seen,’ and studies have in fact shown that workers who are able to telecommute work harder and produce more work in order to maintain the arrangement successfully.” Not to mention telecommuting works for 44 million Americans, and cuts the energy and time spent commuting by 20 percent, according to TreeHugger.com.  
  
• Company-Sponsored Volunteer Opportunities—Gen Yers are “do-gooders” and want to help out in their community. So by offering company-sponsored volunteer opportunities, you’re helping employees do more of what they love and giving back to your community at the same time.
  
• Additional Purchased Leave—“This leave is commonly known as ‘48/52’ in Australia and involves an employee ‘buying’ an extra four weeks of leave per year,” she says. “The decrease in salary for the extra four weeks is spread over the year to decrease the financial impact.”

“Studies from the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia reveal over and over again that employees who feel like their needs have been genuinely considered—even if not everything can be accommodated—are likely to be more productive, likely to stay longer with the employer—which saves employers recruiting and training costs—and are prepared to put in extra time or effort at times when their job requires it,” Lockett says.

Remember—job performance should never be judged by the number of hours an employee works, but by the work they completed, the deadlines they met and the overall quality of their assignments.  

“Employers need to think beyond the Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. model,” Lockett says.

According to Katherine Lockett, author of “Work-Life Balance for Dummies,” work-life balance is: “The need of all individuals to achieve and maintain a balance between paid work and life outside of work.”