Yesterday at work, I got an email inviting me to participate in the first “Federal Work-Life Survey” conducted by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. It asked questions about my workplace, use of dependent care programs, health and wellness activities, employee assistance programs…and the big one in my mind: telework and flexible schedules.
Those of you who’ve been reading my blog for a while have probably picked up on the fact that my employer — NASA, and specifically Johnson Space Center (JSC) here in Houston — operates on a pretty flexible work schedule. Employees are expected to be at work during “core hours” of 9:oo-3:00 but beyond that, you can set your own schedule. You could come in at 9 and work until 6 if you like, or come in at 6 and leave by midafternoon. (This doesn’t apply to all employees since some roles are unique, but it does to the majority.)
This schedule has been in place for years and was actually pretty great on its own. But in 2013, the center added a component they call “Super-Flex.” Every other Friday, employees are encouraged to work from home or — if able — take the day off. JSC had tried this in the past, but this time they backed it up with center-wide action. On flex day, one of the entrance gates was closed . The cafeterias were closed. Heating/cooling was reduced to most buildings. And most organizations told people not to schedule even virtual meetings that day. Finally, there was real incentive to adopt a 9/80 schedule! Yes!
The beginning of JSC’s Super-Flex policy coincided with my return to work after maternity leave with Emma and without those every-other-Fridays, I would likely get very little time truly to myself. I would not be as satisfied with my schedule or job. I firmly believe that being able to take that one day every two weeks for myself — I get to stay home while my girls still go to daycare — has been absolutely vital to my mental well-being over the last 4 years.
However, “flex Friday” isn’t mandatory. And while most of the divisions at JSC got onboard with the idea in short order, one major division in particular did not. That organization expects its employees to work a normal Monday-Friday schedule with the rationale that spaceflight is a 24/7 operation…and an unspoken opinion that flex Friday just gives employees more time to “slack off.” There’s a big disclaimer here, which is that this is my view of that division’s position, but my view hasn’t been formed in a vacuum. I have personally been in the room and heard high level management state this kind of thing, and watched them roll their eyes when Flex Friday is mentioned. “I’ve seen the parking lot at 4:30,” one of them said, “and it’s just as empty as ever!”
This drives me absolutely crazy. If someone judged my work hours based on the hours my car is in my building’s parking lot, it would look like I’m a huge slacker too — because sometimes I’m not here. I’m at another building on-site that was far enough away that I chose to drive. Or I’m not on-site becuase I’m at our contractor’s office. Or I went home early because I was here at 6 a.m. for a meeting with international partners. Or I’m working from home, period. The whole idea that people have to be chained to their desk to get their job done is just so backward with the way technology works now. It feels so distrustful and disrespectful of your employees.
There’s a lot of negative stuff floating around about government employees and while this isn’t anything new, the general distaste towards civil servants has been heightened by the current administration. If we don’t even trust ourselves to work hard and get the job done, how can we expect the general public to treat us any differently? If we don’t even have our own backs, who does?
I made the mistake on Twitter to RT with a response the article from HuffPo announcing the grants freeze from EPA (among other issues) with a statement that my last job had been funded fully by an EPA grant. I didn’t explain further but a lot of sciency and more liberal people were liking and RTing it and all was well until trolls and ‘his’ supporters started replying. It got to insane levels for me, because 5 RTs and 10 likes is about all I ever get. The anti-people didn’t really seem to have a clue what the government actually does on a day to day basis—and I didn’t even work for the US government, I worked for a tribal government with that EPA funding. Needless to say I did not engage but I suspect that most people are quite unaware just how much goes into the running of the country. Sure, there’s plenty of wasteful spending and the like but it doesn’t deserve the disgust that it is getting.
I’m in the private sector now but all of this definitely affects business on our end, too, because if regulations are loosened or destroyed we’re out of a job, too.
PS: I like flex Fridays and less work hours as well; there’s been researching showing it can be more productive. I think people just get jealous about other people having what they want, too, so they don’t think anyone should have it.
Yeah, I think there is a lot of truth to your statement that a lot of people — and I think it’s actually independent of which party they support — don’t understand how the government really works on a daily basis. I feel like this is especially true when it comes to understanding what the vast majority of civil servants do, which really can be non-partisan. (I mean, I get that politicians steer the ship so it’s partisan in that sense, but most civil servants just keep doing their job regardless of changes of administration, etc.)
And yep, with the amount of funding that goes from the government to other entities, the implications of spending cuts and job cuts are much more far-reaching than just the civil servants.
I think flexible work schedules are like any benefit – someone, somewhere is abusing it and that gives some people an example to point to and say “See it doesn’t work!!” My own take on why managers would not support flexibility is that it’s much much easier to NOT provide the benefit from everyone than to allow it and then directly address the true problem employees. You essentially get to avoid having to deal with a problem employee, but at the expense of the (majority) trustworthy employees. In reality, there are definitely employees who CAN’T be trusted to get the job done and manage their own schedule. But in my opinion, the manager/supervisors need to do their job and deal with those bad apples rather than punishing or taking away benefits from everyone.
In relation to government specifically, here’s why I think flexibility is so important. Not all employees are equally productive – you probably get done in 40 hours what someone else would need 45 or 50 or 60 hours to do. In government, the rigidity of pay scales and hierarchies mean there is not really a way to reward the most productive employees the way the private sector does (with bonuses or promotions). So if you are a manager and you your mindset solely on the need for everyone to put in the same 40 hours, that really ends up hurting and disillusioning the most productive employees who see and understand that they are doing more work than others, but also see that they aren’t being compensated for it compared to those who are less productive. I know this can apply in all sorts of settings but I do feel it is even more pronounced in the government sector.
The “rigidity of pay scales and hierarchies” is DEFINITELY an issue, and I think some sort of action to address that would go much farther towards improving the federal workforce than things like flexible schedules (on the positive side) or hiring freezes (on the negative side) will ever do. It should be easier to reward good employees for good work. It should also be easier to part ways with underperformers.
The stereotype of the lazy government employee exists because there is truth to it, and it can be extremely difficult to effectively address underperformance. There is little risk of poor performers losing their job, and thus little incentive for them to improve.
Hmm. I think MOST people are slackers and DO have to be chained to their desks to get work done, unless they have the type of job where they’re paid based on results (like sales) rather than simply hours worked. I always think of college when MOST people procrastinated like crazy, put off work until the last minute and generally were slackers. And that’s at Georgia Tech, where I’d argue the average student is above average compared to the population as a whole.
You, Sarah, are not average and are obviously not a slacker. I would guess that most NASA employees are also not “average.” You have to be smart and, more importantly, hard-working to get a job at NASA in the first place. Therefore, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have policies like 9-80s for NASA employees even if it wasn’t viable for the population at large.
With that being said, if I were an employer, we would not have 9-80s – at least not at full pay. I’d be open to people working fewer than 5 days a week for a corresponding reduction in salary. Working 40 hours in 9 days for full pay, though? No. The vast majority of engineers not funded directly or indirectly by the government work 40 hours in 9 days anyway – and then they work a 10th day.
Also, if I were an employer, I’d be open to people working from home on a limited basis – when they were sick, for example, or if they were caring for a new baby (man or woman). But I wouldn’t allow any regular working from home for most employees – ie every Friday or something like that – because I would anticipate that people would not work as hard.
So, I have been thinking about this a lot because law time keeping is so different. Where I am now, for instance, no one keeps track of my hours. I am expected to keep up with my work (which is more than ample for a full work week, but its rare that there would be an expectation to work a long work week to finish it, we can set our own schedule and the pace of justice is a slow one) and be there approximately when Judge is there if we can. But if all of chambers goes out together for a 2 hr lunch (which has happened), there’s no expectation that I work extra hours to make up for it, you still go home at the end of the day… but I stayed until 8 pm the other night to get trial prep done, and in my old job I would have made up for it by taking off a couple hours at another time, but here, no timekeeping, and my arrival time the next day didn’t change. After 15 years, its weird not keeping a time card like I used to.
If I should ever choose to become a real lawyer in private practice, its kind of the same. The expectation will be I bill clients for a certain number of hours of work (at big firms, usually an insane 2000 hrs a year), but for the most part it will be up to me to determine how much time in the office needs to get spent to do that billing (e.g. you can’t bill every minute you are at the office, obviously, some work can be done from home, but “face time” is usually considered important so you have to show up). Obviously with that giant billing requirement, you are going to by necessity exceed 40 hrs a week so I suppose worrying about slackers is a non-issue.
As for 9/80 Fridays, I am beginning to appreciate the idea of them grew up around major cities — now that I am commuting 1 hr each way, that’s a huge chunk of your day. I totally appreciate the idea that you could work a lot harder 4 days a week and get some of that “commute” time back, its worth it to a certain extent and get your job done in that time and I think it would still be a full time job. If you are driving a long way, condensing your hours becomes super efficient (as does telework, etc.) And it eases the traffic burden on the cities too if you have less cars commuting.
I suppose it all depends on the job and the type of people working in it. I was a super procrastinator and slacker in college, as you well know. But in adulthood I work in much more even and planned manner. I can do things now I couldn’t do when I was 19 in terms of working responsibility. Not saying everyone does. But I don’t think the work place — especially knowledge-based or professional workplaces — should be designed to assume the lowest common denominator of performance.
Also, another thought, we are all coming out of this as the idea of salaried professionals who are not subject to the FSLA. The vast majority of americans are not FSLA-exempt. When they work over 40 hrs a week, they get paid overtime. So their employers are actually pretty fastidious at hour tracking and keeping it at exactly 40 hrs (or defining when overtime periods begin). In those cases a 9/80 is actually a true work week.
That’s a good point. My personal ideal schedule would be one like you are working in your current job, where you’re not having to track hours but simply working what you need to do to get the job done.
But that’s probably hard to do in most jobs for many reasons. At NASA, for instance, there’s such a large workforce (vs. the small, independent team you’re now on) that having set hours helps set equal expectations. And we obviously need to track charge codes to understand where the taxpayer’s dollars are being spent.
At GT, I fell into your categorization of slacker. I procrastinated all the time! I can’t count how many times I waited until the last minute to finish an assignment or study for a test. And I’ll be honest — I procrastinate on some tasks in my job right now. Not all, but definitely some.
Anyway, I’m surprised to hear you think most people are slackers. I don’t really agree, at least not within my realm of experience. I think most people do their job reasonably well. They may not be high performers, but I also don’t know tons of low performers.
But I do recognize that my experience is very narrow — the only place I’ve ever worked as an adult is NASA — so it’s certainly possible that I’m extremely naive in this belief.
People work pretty hard at my workplace. Like NASA, our hiring bar is high, and for a long time, people were hired with the expectation of 11 hour days. I would guess my co-workers and yours are more self-motivated than average – but still, we are human. The temptation to slack is there.
The fact that you did so well at GT despite being a self-confessed slacker shows that other people slacked much, much more – or you were simply smarter. But I would guess the former played a major role. (Also, your meticulous notes that you were so kind to pass on to me suggest that you were not really slacking all that much.)
Also, I would consider school a “profession” like sales or law where you have clear, objective deliverables – homeworks (graded) and tests. At work as an engineer, on the other hand, it’s a lot harder to objectively assess how hard people are actually working, and as a result, I think there’s a lot more temptation for people to slack if given the chance.
All in all, I think it’s OK that people are slackers. But things like having to show up at work at a reasonable hour and show your face while you toil away at your desk help us all motivate ourselves to work harder. Even my husband, who is an incredibly hard worker, finds it harder to be motivated at home than at an office.
So the other part of this whole thing is efficiently… I worked with several people, who, if they had a big presentation, the whole week leading up to the presentation was “lost” to other work, its all they did. And worked hard at it, not slacking. Whereas, though, I devoted the necessary prep time, I never understand how it could possibly take that much work, in fact, the prep time might only make a dent in my capacity to do the rest of my normal job for the week.
One thing they talk about in law is that women — especially working moms — are punished for efficiently. Often times they find ways to get their job done effectively and efficiently, in minimal time, maybe with less BS’ing with their coworkers in the office, or intense focus over short time, or whatever, but they do what is done to “get out” to deal with their home obligations. In an office that keeps track of hours worked, it encourages people to “look busy” for longer periods of time than they need to or take longer (or in law to bill for editting that document the 90th time to make sure no commas are out of place)..