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At my small sized company (~10-15 people) I have always had a very liberal policy on work hours. My employees can choose their own hours as long as.

  • They are in the office from 11am-2pm
  • They average 8 hours a day during the week.

This means they can come in and leave when they want outside of those 'everyone in' hours and can also work fewer hours one day if they work more hours another etc. This policy has always been very popular, and I feel it works well. It has never caused any issues so far.

However as the company grows (expecting to double in the next year) and beyond, how can I ensure that this policy is kept to/isn't abused when extended to a larger and larger amount of people?

I don't 'distrust' any of my employees and I have no desire for them to 'clock' in or out. But I'm mindful that this system when put across a larger amount of people needs to be managed in some more formal way or eventually it will inevitably be misused.

Just to be clear, being in within certain hours isn't an issue and can be fairly easily ensured, its obvious if someone isn't in. What could be an issue is someone only working 6-7 hours everyday with no time made up.

I want to... Ensure the policy isn't abused.

Not... Ensure 100% all workers are at their desks for X hours a day/week.

Sam
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  • How do you know they average 8 hours a day per week? – J. Doe. Jun 26 '19 at 10:27
  • I currently don't know for 100% sure, but with only a handful of people there is a higher degree of trust and I can passively monitor how often they are around. This does not scale though. – Sam Jun 26 '19 at 10:29
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    Are you in Europe? You might not actually have a choice in the matter: https://www.politico.eu/article/all-companies-must-record-staff-working-hours-eu-court-rules/ – nvoigt Jun 26 '19 at 11:30
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    @abigail I want my employees to not abuse the flexi time as the company grows. – Sam Jun 26 '19 at 12:42
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    Are you actually concerned about employees putting in a certain amount of time, or do you care about what they actually get done? Do your employees have objectives and goals to reach? – Seth R Jun 26 '19 at 15:19
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    Can I ask a question which no one seems to have asked yet? What do you consider to be 'abuse' of the policy? –  Jun 26 '19 at 21:18
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    @sleske - "Well, the obvious solution to verify people work 40h a week is to have them clock in/out", that only verifies that they are in the office 40 hours a week, which is a different problem than verifying that they are actually giving you 40 hours of productive work. – Johnny Jun 26 '19 at 21:46
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    @Johnny: True. However, I see no indication OP can verify "productive work" right now. – sleske Jun 26 '19 at 22:14
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    @Sam Re your reply to abigail, but what is your goal? Getting 40 hours of time in chair, or getting the work done? If it's the latter, then you prevent abuse by tracking and enforcing performance regardless of hours in chair. If it's the former (perhaps you are a government contractor and this is a legal requirement), then you need to track hours in chair in some way, independent of performance. *Time in chair and performance are only loosely related. A person may get more done in 1 hour on one occasion than they get done in 40 hours on another (no hyperbole here). – bob Jun 27 '19 at 15:10
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    Is the work getting done? – shoover Jun 27 '19 at 18:12
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    What do you count as abuse? Systematically only working 39 hours? 38? – Mast Jun 27 '19 at 19:13
  • Of course productivity is not directly related to presence but I fully understand you want to make sure somebody is not less present than others. Why don't you like to make them clock in/out? If this is argumented well I could imagine employees understand why they shall do so and it avoids questions like "are others really as dutiful as I am or do they cheat?". Then you could open this policy to an average worktime without "in a week". Having a day off from overtime is nice! – puck Jun 28 '19 at 11:45
  • As others have mentioned, it's not clear why you see potential "abuse" as a problem. Are you having problems with assigned work not getting done, and you suspect that it is because people are leaving early? Are you more concerned in the abstract, that allowing workers to work less than 40 hours is someday going to contribute to a higher likelihood of rifts in the time-space continuum? Have you gotten complaints from customers that your workers never seem to be around when they are needed? – Robert Columbia Jun 28 '19 at 12:26
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    I'm a bit confused about the phrasing of this question. Do you want to "ensure that the policy isn't abused", or do you want to ensure that the harm caused by abusers is smaller than the gain caused by having a policy that productive employees prefer? If 5 % of your employees abuse the policy but it makes the top 30 % a lot more effective, it still might be net positive. – JiK Jun 28 '19 at 13:14

12 Answers12

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However as the company grows (expecting to double in the next year) and beyond, how can I ensure that this policy is kept to/isn't abused when extended to a larger and larger amount of people?

This is what middle management and company culture are all about.

As new employees join, make sure they understand your liberal company culture - what kind of trust they are entitled to, and what is expected of them in return.

Then, as your company grows, make sure all middle managers understand this too. They must hold folks on their teams accountable. If abuse starts to occur, the middle managers must talk to the relevant employee, remind them of the rules, and help get them back on track.

At some point your company will grow beyond the point where your personal span of control can be effective. So your challenge is to find and train middle managers to carry out your company's culture effectively.

Flexible work hours can be very appealing to current and potential employees. That's one perk that can help attract and retain great workers. You are right to be concerned that it might be abused - in my experience such abuse can ruin a great culture. But the way to avoid abuse is not by imposing formal control on an otherwise trusting culture.

Joe Strazzere
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    +1, this is a great answer because it understands the reason for the current policy and aims to try to scale the benefits of that policy with the size of the company while also adding some advice on how this can be achieved and maintained. Thanks! – Sam Jun 26 '19 at 11:44
  • Suppose you eventually obtain an employee who wants to test the boundaries and/or outright abuse the system. How would you proceed? (e.g. would you have a formal policy that you only apply as part of a disciplinary procedure?) – P. Hopkinson Jun 26 '19 at 12:40
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    @P.Hopkinson In the same way you would handle an employee who arrives too late or leaves early in a strict working hours policy. – Justin Jun 26 '19 at 20:45
  • @JustinLessard But the OP needs to be very clear on what he is measuring. If some guy drops in at 3 am, and sleeps for 8 hours, I really don't think those "hours" count, but I'm not sure OP's question have clarified that. How do they measure besides "sitting on a chair for 40 hours"? – Nelson Jun 27 '19 at 06:14
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    @Nelson that depends entirely on the work performed. If the employee is a test subject at a sleep clinic for example... – jwenting Jun 27 '19 at 06:15
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    @jwenting That's a terrible example. You can't go by a sleep clinic at 3 am. It'll wake up the other patients. You have to go there around 8pm or so, spend an hour having wires hooked up, then you try to fall asleep starting at 9pm. Most people have problems falling asleep at a sleep clinic. – Nelson Jun 27 '19 at 06:17
  • @Nelson most people go to a sleep clinic because they have trouble falling asleep. The sleep clinic isn't what causes the problems :) I've been to one. Started at around 4pm, got hooked up to the machinery, until the next morning. – jwenting Jun 27 '19 at 06:40
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    You might still want to monitor hours to check that a middle-manager isn't forcing their team to work extra hours. – Robin Bennett Jun 27 '19 at 08:12
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    @P.Hopkinson The OP's policy clearly expects a total number of hours worked during the week. If anyone isn't working that many hours (and hasn't agreed an exception with their line manager to make it up next week) then it's up to their line manager how to proceed. This could be a warning, formal in/out times, or anything agreed between the manager and employee (and potentially HR) as appropriate. If there are reasons, it could even be an agreement to do a 32-hour working week with a 20% drop in salary. As Joe says, you can let managers manage without second-guessing them too much. – Graham Jun 27 '19 at 10:24
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    As a middle course you can encourage your employees to overlook their hours self-reliant. A responsible employee would make this without request. For example with a article on company-employees-website about a useful app / software. So one signals interest and importance WITHOUT undermining trust in the employees – Allerleirauh Jun 27 '19 at 10:47
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I work at a company with 800+ employees, that has flexible hours as one of the perks of working here. The way this is managed is by access control via RFIDs, but this doesn't mean that management is draconian about working 40 hours a week(although it's expected that you're being productive some amount of hours close to 40 each week).

The fact that access control is effectively clocking in/out from the workplace has almost no overlap with the flexible time and the trust between the company and its employees. We are a goal oriented company, so if you're reaching your goals consistently then it's assumed that you're not abusing the system. Whenever some performance issues are detected for an employee, we normally take a look at the logs from access control to find out if the performance issues are coming from actually not being in the office or by some other means. If the employee is not reaching their goals and has low hours in the office, a meeting is called in which the main focus is not the hours the employee is working, but the performance issues that have been noticed. This is accompanied by a suggestion to try to reach the expectation of 40 hours/week in order to get the performance back to normal.

Note that even if we have people clocking in and out to keep a record of their office hours, it never comes up as an issue until it is an issue(no one gets reprimanded for not reaching the expected hours; they get reprimanded for performance issues).

IMHO this kind of system works best when trying to manage flexible working hours for a growing employee population - it doesn't interfere with the freedom of flexibility and the hours rarely get mentioned as an issue. There's a lot of people that probably work around 35-40 hours a week but since productivity is what we measure, we don't consider that as an abuse of the policy.

cst1992
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Max Rasguido
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    This - you can let everyone clock in/out and still be flexible about work times. Clocking in/out does not enforce anything, it just gives you data. – sleske Jun 27 '19 at 06:53
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    This is also done by at my work, 10K+ employees – AEonAX Jun 27 '19 at 06:54
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    We (medium-sized company, 400+ employees) also do this. We can even work from home and clock in/out remotely. – sleske Jun 27 '19 at 06:59
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    I should mention that while many companies have an RFID entry system, you can't use it to log hours unless you need your tag on the way out (rather than anonymously pressing a button) and you require groups of people to individually tag the door, and you have a system for monitoring breaks. – Robin Bennett Jun 27 '19 at 08:20
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    @Robin Bennett notice that's why I mentioned we use the RFIDs for Access control, not only as a clock in/out method so whenever you go through a door you actually have to use it to get through – Max Rasguido Jun 27 '19 at 11:36
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    Depending on the jurisdiction, using access control logs to find out when and where people enter and leave work without proper cause (criminal investigation, resolution of insurance claims etc.) might be illegal. – NotTelling Jun 27 '19 at 12:48
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    @NotTelling That's interesting, can you provide examples of some places where this would be the case? – Myles Jun 27 '19 at 15:17
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    @NotTelling couldn't you just have people agree to use of that data as part of their onboarding paperwork? – jayce Jun 27 '19 at 15:23
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    Not a bad idea, but if the field and company also allow for remote work, then hours in office no longer necessarily correlate to time worked. Being performance oriented may still deal with that problem effectively, though. You could make having the employee spend more time in the office be part of the efforts to "get the performance back to normal" if they're physically out a lot. – jpmc26 Jun 27 '19 at 20:42
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    @jpmc26 we actually allow remote work, normally that's a perk for more senior employees though as they're already used to the company culture and are less prone to abuse that perk. And as you mentioned asking someone to spend more time in the office until their performance is back to normal is one way we deal with those kind of issues – Max Rasguido Jun 27 '19 at 20:48
  • @Myles Germany does not allow this, for example – NotTelling Jun 28 '19 at 05:54
  • @jayce Maybe, but IANAL – NotTelling Jun 28 '19 at 05:55
  • @NotTelling it doesn't need to be based on access control, in my workplace it works that way but it's effectively the same as clocking in and out signing a paper at the door or whatever method works for the legal system where you're at ¯_(ツ)_/¯ – Max Rasguido Jun 28 '19 at 15:13
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I have a hard time seeing the correlation between enforcing 40 hours and not clocking people in - such a system is probably being "misused" as it is and you can't tell because of the scale.

You're either enforcing hours or you are not.

Mind that clocking people is not a mere nuisance or a sign of distrust, it is an administrative tool that gives you information to act upon when taking decisions.

How will you be able to tell if someone is even in the office until they are needed, and then you uncover that this person has in fact not been coming into the office for a while and been getting paid for it? If someone in a team needs someone present and they aren't there but there is no record of this?

You're going to have to choose whether a minor inconvenience of having to push a couple buttons compares to something more serious where you need proof and logs over "trust". There is no real way around it if the enforcement of those hours is important to your administration.

lucasgcb
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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – Neo Jun 27 '19 at 18:00
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    Nothing like that should be done without consideration for company culture. If OP is working to build a company culture contrary to this - one based on intrinsic motivation and responsible autonomy, say - he could bring it all crashing down at great cost with something like this, especially if it's done badly. Besides, how will your employee feel if he spends 12 hours visiting a customer or a week on a business trip only to find a great big zero against his name? – Alex Hayward Jun 27 '19 at 19:02
  • @AlexHayward Trips and external affairs are obviously reported to and treated by the administration as working hours; rectification processes should always be a thing in the case there are slips. I'm not sure what you're imagining clocking is when it is about getting information, not some dystopian game of sorts to keep people miserable. – lucasgcb Jun 27 '19 at 20:12
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Joe Strazzere has an excellent answer.

I will add this answer in case you find that your system doesn't scale.

I have no desire for them to 'clock' in or out

I will mention that clocking in/out is (to some people) a "factory" thing for low skilled workers that aren't trusted. I can see why this might be distasteful.

There are other methods of time accounting though.
Having a spot for them to write in the hours they work each day and give that to their manager weekly is pretty normal in my opinion - especially since they don't have a set schedule.

  • It lets you see when they say they worked, and...
  • It trusts them to fill it in (it is just them writing in numbers... isn't a time clock).
V2Blast
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J. Chris Compton
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    +1 This formalizes the process more, bringing in the ability to monitor times while keeping the trust in my employees in place. This also has the benefit that if a worker were to intentionally abuse the system they would have to lie in writing. Thanks! – Sam Jun 26 '19 at 15:20
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    @Sam Further, it's ugly, but if they are abusing the system, ti makes them a bit easier to catch, because it forces them to commit to "I worked this many hours on this day" before anyone's raising any questions at all... rather than letting them wait until someone starts accusing them, and then coming up with the dodge that they'd somehow worked more hours on some other day that week. It also lets you have better control of how many hours are spent on which projects, once you become large enough that organizing that sort of thing is useful. – Ben Barden Jun 26 '19 at 18:14
  • There are several "status report" style systems, like idonethis or Jell. At the lowest end of the spectrum it's just managers sending out an email asking what people did. – Wayne Werner Jun 26 '19 at 21:55
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    I have used both systems, and I prefer just clocking in /out. If it's well done, it's minimum hassle, and you never need to worry about whether you are meeting your hours. Keeping time sheets is a major PITA in my opinion. – sleske Jun 27 '19 at 06:52
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    Please don't do this. I have this in my company, and it is incredibly annoying. It's not a way to show trust at all : You are basically asking them to confirm they are not abusing the system every single day. – Spectantibus Jun 27 '19 at 09:53
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    +5 to @sleske comment. In fact, "does this employer require time clocking or time sheets" is actually on my list of things to judge a potential employer by. They are a huge nuisance, and I even got a reduced raise because of a negative review once when I was surpassing all real work expectations but I kept forgetting to do my timesheet. The manager at the time ignored my productivity (even though it was found to be excellent) and focused my review on the missed timesheets. I would take a small hit to salary just to do away with time sheets, and it does affect my employment decisions. – Aaron Jun 27 '19 at 16:18
  • Clocking in/out doesn't need to require employees to physically use a clocking in machine. Any access control system which requires employees to scan their ID to enter/exit the building will allow you to report on entry/exit times. – timbstoke Jun 28 '19 at 15:08
  • @timbstoke True, and since you mention that I'll say that knowing who is in your building (and exactly when) can be an advantage in the event of an unfortunate experience. (It is also helpful to the employees that were not in the office at that time) – J. Chris Compton Jun 28 '19 at 15:40
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    In addition to hours, the log sheet should also specify what project is being worked on. In that way, you can track where money is being spent on a project by project basis (and it implies that the purpose is not only to make the employee show up or lie). – Matthew Grivich Jun 28 '19 at 22:00
  • Agree with @MatthewGrivich, but strongly suggest that you don't require the project hours add up to their working hours. When you do that you get bad numbers - you need an "other" project that they can code to training others, learning, meetings, lounging in the break room, etc. If they code 40 hrs expect to see only about 20-30 coded against specific projects. – J. Chris Compton Jul 01 '19 at 13:59
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It depends why you want it not to be abused.

If you're worried about employee not working enough you'll have to put in place performance indicator. Then it'll be another discussion if you let employee come and go as they want as long as performance target are met or not.

If you want employee to be on site around the same time and a minimum of time to promote team cohesion and have people available in case they're needed to answer questions or whatever, then you'll either have to trust them or put in place some device to ensure it. One way is clocking in. Another is to prevent entry after a specific time.

JayZ
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Trust, but verify.

Broadly speaking, you want to trust the people under you. If all of the work is getting done, and there are no complaints, there's NOTHING to investigate/look into. Might be worth asking about people's bandwidth, to see if there's a case of "I have very little to do" or "I'm about to burn out under this workload", but generally, if everything's getting done, there's no reason to look too hard - it will only cause problems.

That being said, if problems do start to emerge, it's worth (quietly) looking into. Perhaps a 1 on 1 meeting with the person involved ("Hey, we're not quite meeting all of our deadlines, what's going on?").

None of this requires knowing exactly what hours people are working - to take an extreme example, if someone's successfully automated their entire job, and they spend 5 minutes a day checking that their program is running and doing their 60 hours of work, you're getting the full value of what you pay that person out of the work they do - even though they're not spending the full time. (This is assuming a salaried position, instead of hourly, where wage fraud could be a factor - but you didn't mention this as a concern)

The last thing to be careful of is a morale/perception issue. If Joe thinks Bob is working half the hours and getting the same pay, it might not be obvious, but that's where talking with your team regularly comes in.

TL;DR: If the work's getting done, no need to dig into it. If it's not getting done, ask why, and try to figure it out.

Selkie
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How can I ensure that this policy is kept to/isn't abused

The simple is, you can't. You have to trust your employees, that's how the flexible working system tends to work.

I have no desire for them to 'clock' in or out

This is pretty much the only way to ensure that nobody is abusing the flexible working and that everybody is doing the time that they are supposed to. Although you trust the employees, it's really not going to cause them much inconvenience by doing something as simple as clocking in and out.

Twyxz
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    "This is pretty much the only way to ensure that nobody is abusing the flexible working" - My question doesn't seek 100% assurance, I just need a better system that can scale further once the company is over a handful of people I can roughly keep track of myself. – Sam Jun 26 '19 at 10:22
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    @Sam But there isn't a better system, hence why companies clock in and out all over the world. It's well known, easily implemented and very effective. Another way of dealing with it is keeping staff happy and just hoping they respect the company enough to not mess with the rules. – Twyxz Jun 26 '19 at 10:26
  • Companies that use time clocks are usually paying hourly. They need an accurate record to pay overtime. – Robin Bennett Jun 27 '19 at 08:26
  • @RobinBennett, depends. In Spain, as of last month, every company with employees is required to log accurate hours so that the Ministry of Work can check that they're not making people work overtime. – Peter Taylor Jun 27 '19 at 10:29
  • This is the correct answer. You have to decide what metric is most important and then measure that metric. If you want to evaluate employees on how long they kept the seats warm, then measure that. If you care more that they are completing 15 TSB Reports and 2 IYH Memoranda per week, then measure that. If what matters is that they are receiving favorable reviews from customers, then measure that. It's not rocket science, only brain surgery. – Robert Columbia Jun 28 '19 at 12:33
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IMO the answers to this question and similar on workplace are missing a significant point – Health & Safety.

In the USA & UK, H&S regulations require that in the event of a site evacuation all personnel on site need to be accounted for. I assume many other countries have similar legislation.

Ref. USA OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) & OSHA - How to Plan for Workplace Emergencies and Evacuations(PDF) page 4 Quote “and: A system for accounting for personnel following an evacuation.”

Ref. UK Disappointingly I’m unable to find the actual UK regulation at the time of writing, but am 100% sure it exists. Edit. Following a discussion with @motosubatsu and my own research; the current UK regulations do not explicitly state that an employer needs to account for all personnel following an evacuation. However you may be liable to prosecution should an employee be injured/die as a result of you the employer not being able to account for all personnel after an evacuation.

The USA example above does not state how you have to account for all personnel; only that you have to. So in order to comply with these regulations, an employer would need to devise a robust system that records all employees, site visitors and contractors arriving and leaving the site: obviously this needs to include the time.

So regardless of trust, company culture, etc. You as an employer may:-

  • a)have a legal requirement to know which employee is onsite at any given time.
  • b)be liable to prosecution if in the event of an evacuation you cannot account for the whereabouts of all employees.

And on an ethical level you do have a duty of care to all your employees whichever country your business is based in.

Of course as an employer whatever else you would like to do with these records is up to you.

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My UK government employer has "flexitime" for all grades. Core time (when staff must be present) 10:00 AM to 3:30 PM, working week 37.5 hours (5 notional days of 7 hrs 24 min). Workplaces are open from 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM. At the end of each four-week period, staff are allowed to carry over three days "up" or two days "down", and may take accumulated "up" time, or borrow time from the future, as additional leave, in half or whole days. Attendance is recorded by staff personally on a custom Excel four-week spreadsheet, which shows accumulated credit or debit time day by day. At the end of the period, it is printed, signed off by the staff member's line manager, and kept in a folder for six months. The manager is expected to be alert enough to spot abuse. "Flexi abuse" is very rare and generally noticed by team-mates before management. They feel that the scheme is a privilege and a benefit and that they are being let down by abusers. It is this latter aspect that I feel helps the system to be self-policing to a large extent. Staff are happy to record their hours if, by so doing, they can accumulate extra leave days, or borrow them. The supervision is usually nominal and very light-touch, which makes people feel trusted and valued. If a manager was concerned about a particular individual, they could note his or her arrival and departure times, and everyone knows that. Bottom line, if people feel valued, trusted, and "looked after", they tend not to abuse the system.

Michael Harvey
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There are two issues you are facing.

One is how to check 40 hours a week and obligatory hours to be present in the office. This can be easily enforced by simply calculating time "logged in". It may of course require some more paper work on your side (depending on country and legislature) but it will just work as backup. Your company state "we trust you but if there will be some issues with deadlines or quality, time spend will be the first thing to look at".

Because, your second issue is: Does everyone in your company should be using this policy?
There are some departments that cannot have such luxury. Your IT would either need to be staffed to support people coming in at 8am but also leaving at 7pm or be set strict hours to be reliable.
Second sub-question - Does people really need to have clocked 40 hours a week, so be managed in time-table manner or should be switched to tasks? From personal experience, you cannot have task quality with time spend on-clock quantity.

SZCZERZO KŁY
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    The flexible nature of the hours is due to the nature of the work. It is not really dependent on any schedule at all which is why the policy is in place. People don't rely on each others work in small scales or concurrent time. This is apart from meetings which would occur during the 'always in time'. +1 good answer. – Sam Jun 26 '19 at 11:48
  • @Abigail Working 4 day a week from home is not flexible work hours. – SZCZERZO KŁY Jun 26 '19 at 12:47
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"Work from home" is also called "going to university". It's a natural extension of the workplace for people who have shown they can be trusted to produce without direct supervision.

As someone suggested, have middle managers monitor this; preferably those with experience managing remote teams. Just periodically review performance, and ensure they understand it is a privilege to be earned, not a right.

Steve J
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    You might want to consider revising the first sentence. I was completely confused, didn't understand what you meant until after I read the answer multiple times over. At first I thought you meant that you were a student and doing employment work and school homework from home at the same time. Perhaps "Working from home is just like going to university. Home is a natural extension of the workplace for people who have shown they can be trusted to produce without direct supervision." – Aaron Jun 27 '19 at 16:26
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Let's get it straight: not every person is able to work in "flex hours" environment. Sooner or later, you'd hire someone who will abuse the system. And the bigger the company is, the more of that "incompatible" people would be hired in. So, performance tracking is your #1 choice. If there are too many people do not match the tracking criteria, it is a big chance the criteria is incorrect. Otherwise, just use it as is (and tackle others who're not matching the criteria).

Next step: your company became big enough to have two brunches (in different cities, sic!). You can't physically be in both places same moment, quickly you'd be bored traveling between the cities daily basis, so let people just do their work. Performance tracking is still your #1 choice.

Next step: your company is big enough to step out of a single timezone (let say, 12h difference, so there is no any chance 100% all workers are at their desks within a same moment). What is your #1 choice still? You know the answer.

P.S. Several thousand people, multiple brunches around the globe, working environment still the same. Yes, it's possible.

Yury Schkatula
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