to ask why some employers are so inflexible?

[lessonsintightropes]

And yes this might be fred about a fred but...

I am a Director of a charity which employs a lot of people from different people from different circumstances, in different jobs. We are a homeless charity and try wherever possible to employ 'experts by experience', people who have moved on from living in our hostels, and can help our customers/clients from a place of real credibility as they've done it in terms of becoming successfully off benefits/away from drug addiction etc. We also always employ people on the living wage or above unless they are in a time limited apprentice/trainee role which is above NMW and with paid time off to study.

This means that we employ some people who have some issues sticking to some fixed rules, and we are very clear about those - for example, people working on shifts need to be there at a fixed time, and there's not a lot we can do apart from looking at shift patterns. However, if our head office staff have out of work commitments, as long as they are delivering the fundraising income they need to or other work priorities we are pretty flexible about when and how they do it, if they are meeting deadlines. It means there are different rules for different teams in terms of flexi time etc but everyone seems alright with that from our staff survey, and understand why rules are different in other parts of the organisation.

If you are a stickler for getting your staff in at a particular time and it has no impact on your customer's experience, or what is delivered, I'd love to know why?

I think it's just a lot easier to have one rule for everyone (with shifts where the nature of the work demands it) - I have worked in a few set ups like OP is describing and it tends to lead to never knowing where anyone is and people taking the mickey. And I say that as someone who would do my work & meet my deadlines whatever my employer's approach.

Also, with fundraising you are often dealing with donors from more inflexible places, who expect phones/emails to be answered.

I'm a huge fan of flexible working - more than happy for people to adjust their start/finish times, work from home where appropriate, compress their hours if they wish, make up time for days list to emergency childcare etc. A little understanding goes a long way in my experience, and the flexibility tends to work both ways.

That said, I have disciplined a member of staff for persistent lateness and failure to adhere to core hours. I offered her the opportunity to change her start time but she declined, and whether she recognised it or not, her lateness was impacting on her colleagues - it may well have seemed "quiet" when she arrived, but other people were picking up tasks that would probably have gone to her had she been present as contracted. Her lateness also made it very difficult to schedule meetings for a 10am start, as she invariably wouldn't make it.

My organisation allows staff to work their hours flexibly between 7am and 8pm, but core hours are from 10-12 and 2-4. I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that people respect this, given the flexibility they have throughout the day - it just gives us enough structure to make things work. Staff who need greater flexibility can put in a formal flexible working request if applicable, but if they haven't done this, core hours apply.

Some jobs can't be that flexible... I work in a shop - if I don't turn up on time, someone else cannot go home...

from a previous (before kids) incarnation I used to manage people ON FLEXI TIME - one used to lie... about his arrival time - he got sacked, the others got less flexibility - some people take the piss and ruin it for others...

When there is no impact on customers or deadlines then I completely agree and do not understand why some people still seem so obsessed with 9-5 culture. Where the role permits, outputs and meeting KPIs are a far better measure of a persons worth as an employee than simply being present during set hours.

I used to work on a big site for a global corporation. Although there were core hours you had to be on site, lots of people were working on projects with people located in the US, Japan and Australia. This meant that you'd often have meetings that were early or late.

There was a gym on site - people could use it throughout the day as they recognised that if someone was staying to start a meeting at 5 say so they could fit in with teams on the west coast of the US, then letting them go to the gym from 11-12 worked for everyone. Facilities got used through the day instead of overcrowding before or after work. Happier staff that didn't mind staying later for meetings that were necessary but difficult to schedule in regular hours, fitter healthier staff as it was easy to slot exercise into your working day.

And because everyone liked the flexibility , people didn't abuse it. There was pretty strong peer disapproval if the odd person did try something, way before managers could say anything, as nobody wanted it to be revoked on account of a couple of people selfish enough to abuse a very reasonable, flexible system.

I am very much in favour of flexible working and encourage it.

However, I have a staff member who, despite living relatively close to work ad having no caring responsibilities, can't get to work on time. For example, if she said she would be in at 9am, would be walking in at 9:05 (ready to start work at 9:10). Now, it doesn't impact her work, but it portrays somebody who is has no self discipline and control in their life.

I work in a flexible sector, but totally wrong for lots of jobs, especially in care or service. I think it works well when the work is a vocation or among fairly intellectual professions, where you gain even more (more share options, more publications, more prestige) the more hours you put in.

I personally think people who get that resentful about something getting to work five minutes late need to get out more. I understand that people get irritated by someone who blatantly takes the piss. But who watches the fricking clock to see what time their colleagues get in anyway...

This is all a new world for me. I'm used to environments where you are trusted to get in when you want as long as you work hard. And I promise you, people in environments like this work far harder than people who are counting every minute of their lunchbreak.

I manage a GP practice and employ a lot of (mostly female) staff who have family commitments. Maybe I'm just lucky with my team, but we have some people who are happy to come in earlier and then leave a bit earlier and then people who come in later and leave abit later. It is only on the rare occasion, ie snow, that there are any issues with covering reception and the office and often I tend to muck in as well. I've also been known to bribe my eldest dd to come in and lend a hand if we are desparate - but she's at University now in another town, so I'm grooming the youngest and the DSC!! A lot of my staff have also been known to stay very late in the evening, beyond their hours, to help with things lie the end of year stuff or if there's a flu clinic. As long as the patients are looked after and the appointments booked etc, does it really matter who is doing what?

There are some employers who are jobsworths and can be inflexible for the sake of it. But I think most, particularly in these tough times where things are target driven, are actually interested in the job getting done effectively. I don't know anyone who would seriously prioritise being rigid and inflexible over productivity.

I also agree with what many people say, that its a two way thing and unfortunately some employees take the piss. I haven't had many issues of people turning up late, but where I have had employees being unrealistic is more to do with flexible working requests. Sometimes an employee genuinely doesn't seem to 'get' that the job is there to be done effectively, not to fit around their precise desires. For example, I had a FW request recently where the employee wanted to reduce hours. Fine in theory, but she wanted to drop to 4 days and then insisted that she wanted Wednesdays off so she had a break mid week and never needed to work more than two days in a row!! When it was explained that we were quite happy to consider a job share but that it would be nigh on impossible to find someone willing and able to just work the Wednesday, the employee took umbrage and behaved as if this was a denial of some fundamental right. We actually did strike a deal eventually and she reduced to 3 days and we employed a job share partner to do the other two, with one working mon- wed and the other thur- fri

But my point is, I'm darn sure this employee is still going around moaning about how unfair and inflexible her employer is, just because she didn't get exactly what she wanted.

There are two sides to these situations. Sometimes when employees complain about work being inflexible they've got a genuine point. Other times its because they'd actually like to mould the job and hours into precisely what suits them - which is just as inflexible as those tricky bosses