Flex-Time Work Options

Success Factors

Communication

How to Create a Workable Plan

Frequently Asked Questions

Trouble Shooting Guide

Ad hoc flex-time allows an employee with cancer to continue working full time while:

• Varying the start and end times of her work day and/or

• Taking time out during the work day to make appointments and making the time up by working either earlier or later in the day.

Success Factors

Ad hoc flex-time can succeed if you consider the following factors:

1) Appropriate Schedules

• It will be up to you to assess the staffing needs and workflow of your work group. Then, together with your employee you should make sure there is adequate coverage for:

• The time(s) of day when customers typically need the employee the most

• Regular scheduled meeting times

2) Nature of the Job

While most jobs can accommodate some degree of flexibility in scheduling, jobs that require an employee's presence at unpredictable times throughout regular business hours do not lend themselves to flex-time. Independent, task-focused work is a particularly good match for flex-time .

3) Communication

• You and your employee should both think through who needs to know about her revised schedule and how that information will be communicated. Communication can be via:

• Posting of a weekly work schedule in a place where everybody will see it

• Staff schedule white board

• Electronic calendar

• Memos

• E-mail

• Voice messages

• Employees can use voicemail messages to remind people of their schedule. This can be a:

• Standard message that includes the schedule or
• Message that changes daily and explains how to reach the person.

4) Accessibility

• Presence in the office is not the same as access. Employees can make themselves accessible for critical needs without being in the office at all times.

• For example, if your employee is working an early flex-time schedule and there is a vital late-afternoon meeting, the employee might be able to be accessible by phone for the meeting.

How to create a workable plan

At some stages in an employee's treatment and recovery she might want to work full time but need the flexibility afforded by ad hoc flex-time. How flexible the arrangement is can be decided by the two of you based on the needs of both the employee and the job. Here are some possible plans:

• During the diagnosis and treatment selection phases of dealing with cancer, an employee might have numerous doctor's appointments, mammograms, biopsies and lab tests that have to be done during the regular work day. If she chooses to work full time in the office during these phases and it works for the job, you can let her arrange her work time around her appointments without having to find others to do some of the work she previously was doing. The amount of flexibility might be modest – an occasional change of schedule on the day of an appointment. Or it might be an ongoing change on a daily basis for a number of weeks.

• An employee who is the caregiver of someone with cancer might choose flex time to work around that person's diagnosis and treatment schedule. This would allow the caregiver to be with the person with cancer during doctor's and lab visits or radiation sessions and still be working full time.

• An employee whose job isn't suited to flex-time might temporarily want to switch to some kind of work that would allow her to flex her hours.

Frequently Asked Questions about Employees with Cancer Working Flex-time

Q. Does an employee working ad hoc flex-time have to work the same schedule each day and each week?

A. Even if the arrangement were not ad hoc, the answer to that question would depend on the nature of the job. Ideally the employee will be afforded the maximum amount of flexibility necessary to accommodate her diagnosis, treatment and recovery schedule. At the same time, you'll want to make sure that her work gets done. If you are able to arrange coverage on an ad hoc basis scheduled around her needs, the employee won't have to work the same schedule each day and each week. If the coworker providing the coverage needs a more consistent schedule, complete flexibility may not be possible.

Q. Can an employee working ad hoc flex-time work more than eight hours in a day or forty hours in a week?

A. You'll want to pay attention to relevant state and federal labor laws. If an employee is exempt from these laws (an “exempt” employee), she can vary the length of her work day and work week without any difficulty if it meets the needs of the business. If she is a “non-exempt” employee, she may be able to work over eight hours in a day but not forty hours in a week without there being overtime implications. You might want to consult with Human Resources about this.

Q. Won't an employee on ad hoc flex-time inevitably be working unsupervised and therefore unproductively?

A. Clear performance measures are the cornerstone of any successful flexible work arrangement. Most managers cannot watch their employees work all the time – flexible hours foster an environment of “managing for results” and of self-sufficient and self-managing employees.

Trouble-shooting Guide

No matter how well you and your employee have planned and implemented an ad hoc flex-time arrangement, from time to time breakdowns do occur. Below are some common breakdowns you might experience:

BREAKDOWN: The employee working ad hoc flex-time didn't arrange for someone to cover her work during the time she was out of the office and things “fell through the cracks.”

INTERVENTIONS:

• The two of you need to sit down together and work out a back-up plan.

• Your team would do well to have a general workload backup plan, not just individual ones worked out for specific situations. Each person should have someone who knows enough about his or her job to be able to cover in an emergency, during a medical leave or vacations and while the other employee is otherwise out of the office.

BREAKDOWN: There are two people in a department who work early schedule flex-time arrangements. The employee with cancer needed an early schedule for six weeks during her radiation treatments and her manager didn't want to turn her down. This is causing coverage problems at the end of the day. Everyone in the department knows about her situation.

INTERVENTIONS:

• Bring up this scheduling problem at a team meeting. Explain the situation and let the group come up with a solution.

• There might be others in the department who would be willing to work a later shift for the six-week period.