What Is Flex Time? | The Complete Guide For Managers

As businesses continue to adapt and change in the 21st century, many managers are looking for an alternative schedule to help keep their team cohesive like it was a few short years ago. Flex time may be the answer.

In this article, we discuss the benefits and drawbacks of flex time to help you decide if it’s the right choice for your team and your business.

Table Of Contents

• What Is Flex Time?
• Flex Time Format
• Is Flex Time For Everyone?
• Flex Time Benefits
• Flex Time Drawbacks
• How to Implement Flex Time In Your Business

What Is Flex Time?

As the name suggests, flex time is an alternative work schedule in which employees can choose when to start and finish their workday as long as they satisfy certain conditions.

In most cases, team members are still required to work their regular number of hours each day or each week, but, within that framework, they’re allowed to choose when they clock in and when they clock out — within agreed-upon limits.

Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean that employees can just come and go as they please. As we mentioned, they have to satisfy certain conditions and work within agreed-upon limits.

What does that look like and how does a flex time schedule work? Read on to find out.

Flex Time Format

Most flex time schedules include three unique variables that help control when your team works.

Those variables are:

• Core time
• Start limit
• Finish limit

Core time is a set of hours when all employees must be present (either in-person or online).

Core time makes it possible to conduct meetings, collaborate, and perform other team activities with employees who work different flex time hours.

Start limit is a restriction that tells employees the earliest they can report to work.

You can set this limit at any time you choose, but it should always take into account your core time and not allow team members to leave before those core time limits are done.

Finish limit is a restriction that tells employees the latest they can remain at work.

Again, you can set this limit at any time you choose, but it should always take into account your core time and not allow team members to arrive after the core time limits start.

Sample Flex Time Schedule

To help you understand how all three of these variables work together to give your team options, we’ve put together a sample flex time schedule for eight employees.

Core time: 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Start limit: No earlier than 5 a.m.
Finish limit: No later than 9 p.m.

Based on this criteria, employees choose to work the following schedule that includes a one-hour lunch break:

Frasier: 5 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Niles: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Daphne: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Martin: 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Roz: 9:45 a.m. to 6:45 p.m.
Bulldog: 6:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Eddie: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Maris: 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

All eight employees start and end their workday at different times — according to what works best for them — but they’re all present during the core time hours between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

It’s during this four-hour time block that normal group activities can occur, including:

• Collaboration
• Brainstorming sessions
• Team meetings
• Performance appraisals
• New-employee onboarding
• Training exercises

While it may not seem overly complicated at first, keep in mind that most flex time schedules allow for different start and end times each day of the week.

That means that Daphne could work 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesday, and 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Wednesday.

This makes it easy for each employee to customize a work schedule to fit their busy life while still giving your business, and their team, the time it deserves.

Is Flex Time For Everyone?

In a word, no, flex time is not beneficial for everyone. Some types of employees may find it hard to operate without specific start and end times and may feel better if your business sets those guidelines.

Similarly, some businesses and jobs don’t mesh well with the flex time concept. Case in point: restaurants.

Because of the nature of the business, employees need to be on the job and working at certain times for things to run smoothly.

If a restaurant manager allows their prep staff to arrive anytime between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., tasks may not get finished before the lunch rush begins and the business may not be able to serve its customers.

Or, if a restaurant manager allows their waitstaff to arrive anytime between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., there might not be enough employees on site to handle the dinner service.

And restaurants aren’t the only businesses that might find things more difficult if they implement flex time.

As a general rule, it’s more difficult to make flex time work for customer- and client-focused jobs, such as servers, cooks, call center operators, and delivery drivers (and the staff who support them).

Before giving your team the option to work different ranges of time, examine the types of jobs that make your business run and see if flex time would make things simpler or more complex.

For more information on investigating this new work style and for help deciding whether it’s right for your business, see the section How To Implement Flex Time In Your Business later on in this article.

Flex Time Benefits

1) Improves Employee Recruiting And Retention

Not every business offers flex time, so you can use it as a recruiting tool — a perk of sorts — to attract top talent who want more control over their schedule and an alternative to the standard 9-to-5 workday.

That said, don’t assume that potential employees will understand the options that flex time offers. Be sure to explain the ins and outs of the system so that they see the flexibility as the benefit that it is.

In some cases, a business might choose to offer flex time as a reward to certain employees as a way to retain these high-performing individuals.

2) Boosts Motivation And Morale

Motivation and morale are tricky variables to control. Offering flex time is a relatively easy way to boost both feelings at the same time.

Switching from a traditional 9-to-5 schedule to a flex time schedule — whether it’s for the entire team or just one individual — often results in a happier, healthier, more balanced group.

If you don’t want to implement a completely new schedule, consider offering an alternative as an incentive for good behavior or a job well done.

3) Reduces Tardiness And Absenteeism

Tardiness and absenteeism may not seem like serious problems at first, but, if left unchecked, they can take root, become habit, and affect the engagement of your team and even the successful operation of your business.

Flex time gives your employees plenty of room to deal with unexpected life events and emergencies without taking away from the hours they spend at work.

When they have the option to come in early or stay late instead of just missing work, your business’s attendance numbers will improve dramatically.

4) Promotes Collaboration And Teamwork

While team members may collaborate and work together sporadically throughout the day under a normal 9-to-5 schedule, the core time restrictions of a flex schedule can actually improve the amount of time your employees spend in group work.

When team members know that everyone is on a different schedule but will be present between certain hours, they’ll be more likely to seek each other out during that time to brainstorm, talk, and discuss the project at hand.

5) Makes It Possible To Reduce Costs

Implementing flex time may make it possible for your business to reduce costs in one way or another.

For example, if all of your employees choose to work four hours in the morning in addition to the four core hours from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., you don’t necessarily need to stay open after everyone leaves.

Closing early like that may allow you to save money on expenses such as utilities, overhead, maintenance, and payroll (just to name a few). Or your team may decide to structure their flex time so that you can close the office for half a day every week or one full day every two weeks.

You may even be able to reduce labor costs in some way under the new flex time arrangement.

Even something as seemingly insignificant as closing the office one day early every two weeks or a half day every week can result in significant savings for your business over the long haul.

Flex Time Drawbacks

1) Can Be Difficult To Track

Because it can change from day to day (if you set it up that way), flex time can be extremely difficult to track without a digital solution.

Modern workforce management apps — like Inch — transform any smartphone, mobile device, laptop, or computer into a time tracking tool that your team can access anytime, anywhere.

2) More Complicated To Set Up

A flex time schedule is much more complicated to set up than a traditional 9-to-5 schedule because each team member is probably going to want to start and end at different times.

Don’t let that deter you. Scheduling tools, like Inch, make it easy to keep everyone organized and on task when they’re at work.

3) Can Impair Communication

Effective communication is essential for the smooth operation of your business.

Sometimes, though, flex time can impair that communication and cause conflicts in everything from meeting schedules to new-employee interviews.

Again, that doesn’t mean you should scrap your flex time program altogether. It just means that your business needs to provide different methods of communication that your team can use to keep the information flowing.

4) Often Requires Training

Flex time may be a new concept for some, and they may not fully understand — nor take advantage of — the benefits unless you set aside time to train them.

The nice thing is that said training doesn’t take very long. An hour, maybe two if there are a lot of questions, is all you need to get everyone on the same page.

How To Implement Flex Time In Your Business

1) Examine Your Business Workflow

If flex time sounds like something you might want to try, take the time to examine your business workflow before making the final decision.

As we mentioned earlier in this article, flex time isn’t for everyone, nor is it for every business.

Keep in mind that if your business is predominantly customer-focused (meaning that the business needs employees on the job when customers arrive, call, or need to interact), a flexible schedule might not be the best fit.

On the other hand, some positions in your business might gel nicely with the concept while others won’t. It all depends on the nature of the work involved.

It’s important to conduct a thorough examination of your workflow before getting too far along in the process because changing the way your team works may require a significant investment in time, money, and energy.

You don’t want to commit a lot of resources to the switchover only to discover later on that it’s not really going to work for your team.

Conducting a thorough examination of your workflow before setting things in stone can help reveal where flex time might work and where it might not.

2) Talk To Your Employees

Another important step in the process of implementing flex time is talking to your employees.

Like the previous step, it’s better if you talk to your employees before you make the final decision and start putting things into practice.

We’ve said it several times already, but we’ll say it again just for emphasis: Flex time isn’t for everyone, nor will everyone benefit from such a change in schedule.

Taking the time to find out how your employees feel about going from a set schedule to a flexible option can help you avoid hurting someone’s feelings or forcing them into a position in which they don’t want to be.

Talking to your team, along with examining your business’s workflow, can help you avoid putting a lot of work into a process that you might have to reverse later on.

When investigating the possibility that flex time might work for your business, consider scheduling both group meetings and individual interviews so that everyone has a chance to voice their opinion.

3) Establish Core Time

If examining your business workflow and talking to your employees goes well and you think that flex time might work, you can move the process along by establishing core time and the optional hours that employees will work every day.

In essence, you’re creating a sliding scale around a block time during which all your employees have to be working.

Earlier in this article, we described an example where the core hours were 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. All employees have to be on hand (e.g., in the office or online) for that four-hour block.

Employees can then choose when to work the remaining four hours of their shift — they can clock in before, they can continue working after, or they can split the morning and afternoon according to their needs.

Keep in mind that your business may operate better with core hours in the morning (e.g., from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.). Or, your business may operate better with core hours in the afternoon (e.g., 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.). It all depends on the nature of your business and how it operates.

Consider this step another part of the exploration or investigation process.

If you can’t find core time that makes sense for your business — or that doesn’t provide for enough optional hours around it — flex time may not be the best choice.

4) Write Instructions

If you’ve gone through steps one, two, and three and things are still looking up for flex time, go through the process of writing instructions for how you want everything to work.

As you did with the previous steps, consider this a part of the exploratory phase.

When you start putting all the details on paper, you may discover an issue that you hadn’t thought about previously and that can’t be resolved to make the process successful.

At this point, you’re only down a bit of time and energy — you haven’t committed any money to the switch, nor have you made anything official with your employees — so if something comes up during this step, it can be much easier to go back to square one or scrap the idea completely.

What information do you want to include in your instructions? Anything and everything you can think of that pertains to the process, including:

• Details about how the process will work
• Rules of the new schedule
• Choices that each employee needs to make
• Common concerns about the schedule
• Frequently-asked questions

Be as detailed as possible at this point, so that, should you decide to roll out flex time, your team will have all the information they need to understand the change that’s coming their way.

Once writing is complete and you’ve made the switch, don’t just publish the instructions and forget about them.

Like the other information in your employee handbook, the instructions you’ve written for flex time are a “living document.” Don’t be afraid to add more information after the fact or to delete some guidelines that just aren’t working.

5) Make The Announcement And Train Your Team

If you’ve gone through the previous four steps successfully without finding any major, disqualifying issues with flex time, it’s time to make the announcement and train your team for the change.

Consider writing a brief announcement informing your employees about what’s going to happen and when, and then convene a group meeting to explain things in further detail and answer any questions they may have.

During the meeting, be sure to reassure your team that you will provide plenty of training before the change goes into effect.

It may even be beneficial to meet with each employee individually to explain how flex time will affect their job and their work hours.

After that, schedule some time to train your team to navigate the ins and outs of the new process so they understand how to clock in and clock out (if your business requires that) under the new arrangement.

You can conduct training as a group, individually, or both depending on the needs of your team.

Inch Makes Flex Time Easy

Regardless of how you structure your flex time program, and who takes advantage of it, you’re going to need an easy way to keep track of everyone’s comings and goings.

The Inch app can help.

With Inch, you and your team can quickly and easily:

• Track total time worked
• Track time on task
• Track attendance
• Manage and coordinate team and individual tasks
• Schedule appointments, jobs, and projects
• Build staff work timetables
• Communicate with one another wherever the work takes you

It doesn’t matter what type and size of business you run, where your employees work, and whether or not you implement flex time, Inch can help you and everyone in your company stay organized, focused, and working toward the same goal.

For more free resources to help you manage your business better, organize and schedule your team, and track and calculate labor costs, visit TryInch.com today.