CHAPTER TWELVE

New Scheduling Models for the Workforce

IN THIS CHAPTER, THE MOVEMENT toward newer models and alternative methods of scheduling are presented and discussed. Employee concern for more stability and better work-life balance continues to be voiced in the workplace, so organizations are searching for effective ways to meet this need. Surprisingly, organizations may overlook or underestimate their ability to use workforce analytics and data to predict the scheduling need. Some workforce scheduling needs have changed dramatically in recent years, yet many scheduling models remain the same. This chapter explores the impact of scheduling technology and compiles leading practices for creating schedules that deliver better balance and flexibility for employees and greater productivity and less cost for the organization. A Workforce Asset Management Professional (WAM-Pro) who stays current with new models knows that stable and balanced schedules have tangible, yet sometimes unseen benefits. Their aim is to lift the veil and lead the way by showing how new strategies and practices can achieve the objectives of both employer and employee.

12.1 NEW MODELS FOR SCHEDULING GREATER WORK-LIFE FIT69

Many employers see that something is amiss, complaining of outlandishly high rates of turnover and absenteeism among hourly workers. In some industries, turnover rates among hourly workers as high as 80 to 500 percent are not uncommon.1 Turnover this high is very expensive, given that replacing a single hourly employee can cost 30 percent or more of the employee's annual salary.2 These kinds of costs can jeopardize an employer's attempt to control labor costs—and give first-line supervisors nothing but headaches.

High attrition and absenteeism stem from outdated assumptions, the most basic of which is that any responsible and committed employee is always available for work. This was a reasonable assumption in the 1960s economy of breadwinners married to homemakers. Today it is sorely outdated for three reasons:

One key to schedule effectiveness (a more scientific scheduling process that identifies the work to be accomplished, the employees needed to do the work, and the constraints within which scheduling needs to occur) is to gain an understanding of the constraints employees face as they fulfill their family responsibilities. Employers should consider improving the schedule effectiveness of just-in-time scheduling in order to both provide a close match between labor supply and demand and avoid excessive turnover and absenteeism. A second and different problem is that schedules in many hourly jobs are too rigid. Hourly workers typically cannot decide when to take breaks, typically cannot vary their hours even by a few minutes, and are often on call to work mandatory overtime. These problems, and some proposed solutions, are addressed in this section.

(a) Worker Populations

There are three distinctly different populations of workers in our country today: the poor, the missing middle, and the professionals.

i. The Poor

The bottom 30 percent of American families try to get by on less than $35,000 a year, with a median annual income of $19,000.6 In general, these families get few benefits from their employers to help manage work-life conflict and often hold jobs with inconsistent or unpredictable schedules that exacerbate these conflicts.

Low-wage families also have higher loads of family care. Two-thirds of low-income families have no children under 18 living at home. Many of these are lifecycle poor: students or others whose incomes will rise later in life. Of the remaining third of poor families (those who have children), two-thirds are single parents.7 Forty percent of managers in one study reported having employees with children not yet in elementary school; 55.4 percent had workers with elementary school–age children; 57.6 percent had at least one child in middle school.8

The one-third of poor families who are married typically tag team: One parent works one shift, the other parent works a different shift, and each cares for the kids while the other is at work. Poor couples have the highest level of tag teaming in the country.9 Paying for child care is a big financial hit: of the roughly 40 percent of low-income mothers who do pay, nearly a third spend half or more of their total income on child care.10 This means that parents with unpredictable just-in-time schedules are frequently turning to relatives with equally unpredictable schedules for child care, creating arrangements as “complex and contingent as Rube Goldberg machines.”11 Poor families are also much more likely to be caring for an ill family member: Roughly half of the managers in one study reported having one or more employees caring for family members other than their own children.12

In addition to high loads of child care and care for ill family members, low-income families also are more likely to be caring for elders, and to be providing more hours of elder care. Families living below the official poverty line are more than twice as likely to provide more than 30 hours of unpaid care a week to parents or parents-in-law.13 Of 50- to 64-year-olds needing support for their health and emotional needs, fully 84 percent rely on informal networks of family and friends.14 Nearly 60 percent of working caregivers say that they have had to go to work late, leave early, or take time off during the day to provide care.15

The high attrition, absenteeism, and low employee engagement so common among the working poor stem from the outdated supposition that any responsible and committed employee is always available for work. Indeed, today's workplaces are typically designed for the breadwinner-homemaker households of the 1960s, a model that is profoundly outdated today.

ii. The Missing Middle

Americans who are neither rich nor poor have a median annual income of $64,000, earning between $35,000 and about $110,000 a year. The middle 53 percent of American families typically are high school graduates with at least a few years of college.16 Like low-wage workers, middle-class families also face workplace rigidity; both may face unstable hours (although this problem is not universal among middle-income workers, as it is in the just-in-time sector). The solutions to remedy excessive rigidity are equally relevant to both low- and middle-income employees.

These families are much less likely than poorer ones to be headed by never-married mothers. Married mothers are much more likely to be working: 77 percent are, as compared with 40 percent of poor mothers.17 But families in the middle are much more likely to be divorced than affluent ones. Whereas affluent Americans' divorce rates fell sharply (to 17 percent) as of the late 1980s, among couples without a college degree, about one in three (32 percent) divorce.18

Whether married or divorced, these families often tag team; the line between tag teaming and relative care is often blurred, as parents tag team with grandparents and other relatives in addition to each other. Reluctance to use day care centers probably is influenced by the low quality of center-based care available to a group that has neither the subsidies available to the poor nor the cash available to richer Americans to pay for high-quality center care.19

Middle- as well as low-income workers are disadvantaged by rigid schedules reflecting the assumption that the responsible and committed worker has a spouse at home caring for children and other nonwork responsibilities. This outdated image produces significant costs not only for the employees and their families, but also for their employers: Lack of work-life fit produces costly absenteeism and attrition that could be avoided by increasing schedule effectiveness. Moreover, lack of fit can also produce arbitrations (or lawsuits) and strife among the employer's workforce, that is, where an employee is disciplined or discharged as the result of work-family conflict, and the worker's union takes the grievance to arbitration (something that happens frequently, often resulting in the worker's reinstatement).20

iii. The Professionals

The highest income families, who typically hold professional or managerial jobs, earn above $101,000 a year and have a median annual income of $148,000. One in five such families earns above $210,000, and 1 in 10 earns above $320,000.21 Employers are more likely to offer paid leave and workplace flexibility to these workers, yet require long hours that make achieving a workable balance impossible for many.

Professional mothers are roughly twice as likely as middle-income mothers to work 50-plus hours. In only 20 percent of two-parent professional families does the husband work full-time hours or more while the wife stays home. This is slightly lower than the proportion of breadwinner-homemaker middle-income families (23 percent), and dramatically lower than that in poor families (47 percent). Thus the common claims that professional women are flooding back home, and that only rich women can afford to stay home, are stunningly untrue. In fact, parents in professional families are much less likely to be caring for their own children: only 14 percent are, as compared to 20 percent in middle-income families and 26 percent in poor ones.

And yet the opt-out stories of people who leave the workforce often do contain a kernel of truth, which stems from the labor market patterns of men rather than women: 38 percent of professional men work 50 or more hours a week, as compared with only 23 percent of men in the middle and 9 percent of low-income men. Many of the highest-paying and highest-status professional jobs require very long hours—and, in today's winner-take-all economy, turning them down can extract a sharp wage penalty.22 One study of high earners—defined as the top 6 percent of earners in the United States—reported that over 21 percent had extreme jobs that averaged 60 or more hours a week, a number that grew to 45 percent in a second study of high-earning professionals working for global companies.23

Here's the kernel: It is difficult—and often impossible—for both parents to work such extreme schedules. In only 6 percent of married professional families do both parents work 50 or more hours a week. Typically fathers do, leaving mothers to pick up the pieces. So the crucial point is not that mothers are leaving the workforce but that professional wives find they cannot sustain a highly ramped-up version of full time. Only 11 percent of married professional mothers work 50 or more hours a week. Those who do not are often barred from the fast track. In professional families, the norm is for both parents to work at least full time: 57 percent do, but in a majority of families, or 54 percent, husbands work longer hours than wives—in an employment context where anyone not working full time, which in these jobs typically means very long hours, is pushed off the fast track onto the mommy track.

Many professional women do not cheerfully opt out; they are pushed out by workplaces that define full time as a work schedule so time-consuming that, realistically, it requires a traditional stay-at-home wife. These work pressures among professional families deliver up a different set of work-life conflicts. Life is less precarious than in low- and middle-income families, but it is no less complicated.

(b) Work-Life Balance: New Models for Scheduling Workers

High attrition and absenteeism to some extent stem from outdated assumptions, including the expectation that responsible and dedicated employees are always available for work. This was a reasonable assumption in the 1960s economy of breadwinners married to homemakers. When today's jobs are designed for yesterday's workforce, the uncontrolled turnover and absenteeism that result are costs of outdated schedule design. New models are necessary so that workers are not placed in the position of having to choose between their employers' needs and a family member's immediate and pressing need for care.

i. Workplace Flexibility

Workplace flexibility programs are one way of accomplishing schedule effectiveness by redefining how and when work gets done. Employers may use it as a tool for improving recruitment and retention, for managing workload, and for responding to employee diversity. Flexibility can also improve employee engagement and job satisfaction and reduce stress.24 When employees stay on the job longer and are more satisfied, increased productivity and quality should occur. Ultimately, appropriately designed flexible schedules can be an all-win model benefiting both employee and employer.

Some of the primary options in a workplace flexibility program include the following:

• Flex-time. Flex-time schedules allow workers flexibility in when they start and stop work. Flex-time is something professionals often take for granted; it is a highly prized benefit for hourly workers who can use it, for example, to match their work hours with their partner's work hours when tag teaming, or to enable them to care for an elder before coming to work.
  • Example: A corporation that is a provider of medical services to 85 client companies offers 30-minute flex, which allows associates to start work 30 minutes before or after their designated starting time, and to leave work 30 minutes before or after their designated ending time.25
• Compressed workweeks. Compressed workweeks are full-time schedules compressed into fewer days per week. For instance, an employee may work 10 hours per day over four days, rather than the traditional 8 hours per day over five days.
  • Example: A physical therapy management company that owns and operates 43 outpatient clinics and has over 250 employees offers a full-time schedule spread over 4½ days, with one afternoon off each week.26
• Reduced hours and job sharing. Job sharing is when two employees split one job; typically they work different days, with some overlap to aid coordination. Retention part-time jobs are jobs with benefits where the occupants have chosen to reduce their hours.
  • Example of reduced hours and job sharing: A hospital employing 2,400 people in Lexington, Kentucky, offered experienced nurses job sharing of a 12-hour shift.27
  • Example of retention part-time job: A bank that employs 8,000 people permits any employee who has been with the bank a year or more to request a part-time schedule of 20 or more hours a week, with benefits.28
• Gradual return to work. This policy allows someone returning from childbirth or other health or personal/family-related leave to start part time and gradually increase to a full-time schedule.
  • Example: A large corporation allows employees to return part time and gradually work back up to full time, after a leave.29
• Comp time. Compensatory time programs allow employees to take time off instead of receiving pay for additional hours worked in excess of their normal schedule or the weekly overtime threshold. Employers need to be mindful of relevant state and federal labor laws when setting up these programs; in a handful of states (including Alaska, California, Nevada, and Puerto Rico), state law requires an overtime premium for work in excess of 8 or 10 hours a day, in addition to the federal law requirement for work in excess of 40 hours per week.30 Comp time must be carefully administered and may not cross the defined work week in which overtime is computed. In other words, comp time cannot be “booked” for use in a different pay week.
  • Example: A medical services provider offers variable flex, which allows associates to alter their schedule on an as-needed, infrequent basis to attend a school function, doctor's appointment, or the like.31
• Part-year work. Part-year work means an employee works reduced hours during certain times of the year, such as during school vacations.
  • Example: A corporation with 4,500 employees that sells business services to midsized firms offers flex-year, a program that allows employees to submit a proposal to vary their work hours over the course of a year. A typical arrangement would be full-time work during the company's busiest January to April period, with summers off, and full- or part-time hours for the rest of the year. Salaries and paid time off are prorated, and flex-year workers are eligible for promotions and pay incentives. Benefits are offered to employees who work at least half time.32
• Online scheduling. Online scheduling is likely to be the wave of the future. Employers can use online scheduling services at a cost as low as $1.25 to $5 a month per employee.33 This means that, for the first time, even small employers can shift to online scheduling.

ii. New Models for Just-in-Time Scheduling

Just-in-time schedules, common in retail and elsewhere, attempt to control labor costs by keeping a tight fit between labor supply and labor demand. While this appears to be a step toward scientific scheduling, too often just-in-time scheduling is implemented in ways that reflect outdated assumptions. Managers need to rethink their insistence on 24/7 availability if that is unrealistic given their workforce—as often it will be. To expect total availability, and to ask employees to claim they have it, does an employer no favors when workers later have to call off after the schedule is set. And to insist on open availability from a workforce in which men as well as women—and older as well as younger workers—have significant, ongoing family responsibilities and personal constraints ultimately hurts a business's bottom line, through the increased attrition and absenteeism that result.

Last-minute notice of schedules, with hours whose number and timing vary wildly from day to day, can impede workers' ability to arrange for the child and other family care they need in order to report to work. This can lead to high levels of absenteeism, as well as to high turnover, when employees give up the last-minute scramble to pull care together so they can get to work.

Supervisors often try to control this attrition and absenteeism by hiring larger pools of employees and giving each few hours. This strategy, in combination with unstable schedules, leads to a pattern of serial quitting that is terrible for low-wage workers, who are consigned to permanent poverty as they quit one dead-end job after another and can rarely get ahead. It is also terrible for employers, who struggle with turnover rates as high as 500 percent.34 Since it can cost 30 percent or more of annual salary to replace an hourly worker who leaves, this adds up to a lot of money needlessly spent.35 Over half of managers interviewed for one study said that they had lost at least one associate because he did not get enough hours. Nearly two-thirds had lost an associate to another employer who offered a full-time job.36 More often, low-wage workers have to get a second part-time job. One study of employees in a retail organization found that 40 percent of them also held another job.37 Then, of course, the unstable schedule of one job interferes with the unstable schedule of the other.

Given the important role that metrics around work hours are playing in driving behavior at the frontlines of the organization, employers would be well advised to take a step back and assess whether just-in-time scheduling, as they are implementing it, is saving—or costing—them money. A simple three-part process defines scheduling effectiveness:

Employers can engage in a number of tasks to improve effectiveness depending on their business operations and needs, as follows:

• Survey their employees. An important early step in designing a schedule is to survey employees to ascertain the relevant scheduling constraints. One of the more effective methods is a formal online or paper-and-pencil survey to ascertain the number of hours workers would like to work each week, times when workers prefer to work, when they are not available, and when they prefer not to work but could do so if necessary. The survey should also gather data about how much advance notice of schedule assignments may be required to decrease absenteeism.
• Find the hidden schedule stability. The next step is to identify hidden schedule stability that already exists in an employer's operations. A striking and unexpected research finding when scholars studied just-in-time schedules in the retail sector was that for nearly two-thirds of participating stores, 80 percent or more of the hours stayed the same, week in, week out.38
• Lengthen the time period within which supervisors can “stay within hours.” Another task, for many employers, will be to lengthen the time period within which supervisors are required to meet their supply-to-demand ratios. If a manager consistently fails to stay within hours, for example, by scheduling too many employees to work during a given time period, that is simply a performance problem. The risk of extra labor costs may well be more than compensated for by reduced attrition and absenteeism; this is an empirical question employers need to investigate.
• Determine the needed number of employees. Another important issue is workforce size. Managers tend to keep head count large so that they can schedule workers for shifts during peak business hours and to help compensate for the high level of turnover and absenteeism that typically accompanies just-in-time scheduling. Pause to assess whether this is the leading business model. Lambert and her colleagues found that supervisors who hired fewer workers and gave each more hours were rewarded with 5 percent higher retention on average than supervisors who hired a large pool of workers and gave them few hours.39 As discussed earlier, when employees do not receive enough hours to support themselves and their families, attrition tends to be high.
• Determine the mix of full- and part-time employees. The next challenge is to assess what is the mix of full- and part-time employees. Managers who prefer to keep their staffs large and give them fewer hours have a higher proportion of part-timers, to whom they typically give an average of 10 to 15 hours a week. The Work Scheduling Study found that the cumulative annual turnover rate was much higher among part- than full-timers.40 Employers that can achieve schedule effectiveness may be able to materially enhance their competitive position through increased employee retention.
• Determine the most effective advance notice of employees' schedules. The next step is to experiment with giving workers greater advance notice of their schedules. Posting work schedules a few days in advance of the workweek has become the norm in many industries, a way of business that is rarely questioned.41 Yet it may be feasible—and beneficial—for many businesses to post schedules a few weeks or even a month in advance, which could dramatically reduce unplanned absenteeism. Posting the core hours in advance and updating with a modified schedule (those 20 percent of hours that vary) shortly before the schedule starts may be an option.
• Adopt a formal system for handling scheduling changes. An informal system for handling scheduling changes is both costly in terms of managers' time, and limited in the amount of information that can be processed. The obvious answer is to shift to a more formal system for keeping track of, and responding to, change requests. Using a scheduling software solution is the first step in formalizing the process. The assessment steps listed previously become the business requirements for the scheduling application design. Deployment of an effective scheduling application can enable the employer to establish schedule practices that fit the schedule process needs and are consistent, transparent, efficient, and more able to adapt to last-minute schedule demand changes in keeping with those findings.

No doubt, given that employers currently using just-in-time scheduling today encounter turnover rates of up to 500 percent, businesses that increase scheduling effectiveness can gain a competitive edge.

iii. Other Effective Practices to Improve Work-Life Fit

In addition to the practices described, employers can take a number of steps in order to improve work-life fit through effective scheduling.

First, they can redesign their overtime systems. In many workplaces, one group of workers passionately wants overtime (typically workers with a desire to increase their income and no constraints around personal schedules and responsibilities such as childcare), while for another group (such as workers who carpool, those who have a second job or evening classes, or those who must pick up children from childcare), an order to work overtime at short notice can mean losing their jobs, missing their ride home, missing class, or being fined for late child pickup. Employers can improve morale and decrease costs by taking the trouble to design overtime systems to achieve work-life fit for any type of worker. In taking such steps, employers will need to rely on volunteers to the extent possible. There are alternative ways to handle mandatory overtime when it is unavoidable. One is to give coupons that workers can use to buy out of overtime or to claim additional work hours. A second is to divide employees into four groups, and have one group on call for possible overtime during the first week of every month, the second on call during the second week, and so on. Some employers incentivize or compensate employees for extra shift duty with an added premium of flat hourly rate or percent of base (often paying them time and a half for the extended shift period). This enables workers to arrange for back-up child care during the week they are on call, notify their other employer, or absorb the added transportation or childcare costs.

Once the schedule is set, a number of measures can be taken to effectively handle any changes. Shift swapping is a way hourly workers can shift their working hours so as to respond to family responsibilities, particularly unexpected ones. A survey of five companies that offer workplace flexibility found that 35 percent of hourly workers surveyed swapped shifts with colleagues.42 Obviously, an employer that uses an online scheduling application sets up a much more efficient system for shift swapping. These systems can be accessed remotely by workers via their computer or smart phone. The shift swap request can be routed automatically to the employees' supervisor(s) for approval. Once approved, the system can be designed to automatically notify the employees who are swapping and update the schedule with their new assignments. The more sophisticated scheduling systems also accommodate rules that prevent employees from swapping with workers who do not fit the shift assignment because of skill sets, total hours worked, or other limitations the employer wants to put on the shift swap process.

Allowing employees to shift their work hours is another effective practice. At a large manufacturing plant of a consumer goods manufacturing company, employees, with the approval of their work teams, can adjust their shifts so they begin working up to two hours before they are scheduled to work (and leave two hours earlier than their scheduled end time), or start working two hours later than scheduled, and continue working up to two hours into the next shift. Other members of their team cover the two hours not covered by the employees who are shifting their working time.43 One study found that only 12 percent of hourly workers can choose starting and stopping times daily.44

Similarly, a company may benefit from instituting a float pool. A float worker's job is to cover shifts for employees who are unable to work or to meet an unexpected increased demand for labor. In some industries, such as healthcare, a float pool is staffed full time with employees who have been trained to fill in on several types of care units. If the employer knows from experience that 10 percent of the workforce will call in sick on average or that patient census can vary by a certain factor, the float pool is staffed to meet that need. Float workers may be paid an additional premium or higher rate of pay for their added qualifications and adaptability. The additional costs may well offset the cost of having to pay overtime to other workers to pick up the workload, lost productivity, or not being in compliance with staffing requirements. There are a number of revenue-neutral policies that employers can apply to affirm that conscientious workers are not forced to quit their jobs simply because they need small amounts of time off for limited periods. These include allowing employees to contact children, elders, or caregivers during work hours; allowing time off to attend children's activities, such as parent-teacher conferences (if such permission is not already mandated by law); granting sick leave that can be used for care of dependents (again, to the extent such leave is not already required by law); allowing employees to purchase additional vacation; allowing employees to leave work during downtime; granting personal time that can be used in small increments (e.g., sick time in hourly or partial-day increments); and instituting leave banks, through which employees can donate unused leave to a colleague in need.

Employers should also consider allowing extended unpaid leave (which is particularly important for workers with family in other countries, to enable them to return home for an extended visit without quitting their jobs, or for workers having to nurse an ill family member through an extended recovery period), updating their no-fault attendance policies, allowing workers to telecommute, and training managers to make sure that employees feel their supervisor is supportive of their need to balance family responsibilities with work responsibilities. Given that working remotely is a limited option when it comes to hourly workers, schedule flexibility and revisions to workplace policies are of fundamental importance.

More broadly, employers should also work to disqualify the flexibility stigma, which can negatively affect those who use workplace flex. The first step in disqualifying the flexibility stigma is to determine if relevant scheduling information is widely available. Another step is to investigate whether offering flexibility to some workers is achieved by dumping unwanted extra work on others.

Uncontrolled turnover, combined with high rates of absenteeism, plague employers who often assume that these problems simply are facts of life. They are not. Often they are symptoms of a failure to match today's jobs to the workforce of the twenty-first century. Schedules that worked well in a workforce of breadwinners married to housewives do not work well today. Informal paper-and-pencil scheduling techniques, performed by frontline managers, today signal a lost business opportunity. Very recently, online scheduling has become so inexpensive that it is accessible even to small employers for a fee of only a few dollars a month per employee. Employers who use this technology effectively can have a powerful competitive edge in the coming decade.

And yet, technology is only part of the picture. Businesses are organizations of people. What really matters is whether employers understand their employees' lives well enough to design schedules that do not place workers in the position of having to choose between their employers' needs and a family member's immediate and pressing need for care. Employers who place workers in that position are bound to be disappointed time and again, as employees put family first.45 The logical solution is to increase schedule effectiveness by designing today's schedules for today's workforce.

12.2 DEMAND-DRIVEN LABOR SCHEDULING70

Workforce management (WFM) technology holds enormous promise in balancing employers' needs to make the best use of labor and employees' needs for stable and adequate hours and income. The goal of this section is to understand how workforce management technology can be employed to do just that—to manage labor. A balanced system optimizes the fit between outlays for labor and variations in customer demand (internal or external) at the aggregate level (e.g., firm, department, work unit) while still delivering stable and adequate work hours at the individual employee level. An over-optimized system achieves optimization for the firm at the expense of stable and predictable work hours for employees. The primary route to overoptimization is by shortening the time frame for matching demand to labor. For example, WFM technology may be set up to track variations in customer traffic by hour, sending employees home when traffic or calls wane. This fine-tuned optimization may reduce short-term outlays for labor, but it comes at the expense of unstable and unpredictable work hours that can reduce employee retention and engagement.46 Fortunately, the fit between staffing levels and demand need not match exactly every hour or even every day to achieve optimization at the aggregate level. Rather, the fit needs to balance out over a meaningful accounting period—a week, month, or quarter.

WFM technology can provide alternative routes to balanced optimization. For example, in some industries, it may be possible to predict with precision variations in demand so that staffing needs can be readily anticipated and workers' schedules codified well in advance. In other industries, 80 percent (or 60 percent or 50 percent, and so on) of demand may be predictable, limiting the need for last-minute adjustments to staffing levels and, thus, employees' work schedules. Rather than short-term optimization that leads to higher longer-term labor costs, balanced optimization can achieve optimization for the firm for a meaningful accounting period while increasing the stability and adequacy of work hours for individual employees. The goal of this chapter is to consider the pressures leading to overoptimization, its downsides, metrics that can be used to identify it, and strategies to avoid or reduce it.

(a) Risks for Overoptimization: Business and Policy Context

Labor scheduling is taking place in a business and policy context that heightens the risk of overoptimization. As part of the many transformations that have taken place in the U.S. economy over the past 40 years, U.S. firms have been increasingly adopting business models that give priority to cost containment over quality of goods or services as a route to profitability.47 According to such strategies, payment for labor that exceeds narrow definitions of demand is viewed as an unnecessary expense. Across industries, a tight link is kept between variations in customer demand and outlays for wages, resulting in scheduling practices that increase volatility and unpredictability in workers' hours and schedules. In retail firms, for example, managers are given a total number of hours to divide among staff based on projected sales (or traffic) derived from recent retail trends and last year's sales numbers.48 In food services for airlines, shifts are booked depending on the mix of domestic and international flights, which vary by day of week and can change when flights are delayed or canceled.49 Similarly, hotel housekeeping staff are scheduled based on projected room census, while workers in lock-box jobs in banks are scheduled according to projections of payments to process.50 In restaurants, managers monitor food sales and flow of customers.51

Pressures to stay within hours result in managers feeling constrained in the total number of hours they distribute among their staff and, in turn, in their ability to respond to workers' hour and schedule preferences. The goal of minimizing outlays for labor by holding managers accountable for making sure labor allocations do not exceed ongoing business demand—by week, day, and for some firms, hour—creates a situation ripe for overoptimization in which firms achieve a fit between variations in demand and outlays for labor at the expense of stable and adequate hours for individual workers.

The degree to which the costs of overoptimization affect the organization may be misunderstood by leadership focused only on direct cost. For example, in the retail and restaurant industry there are several symptoms that management should red-flag if noticed:

Symptoms of Scheduling Mismanagement

• People working different hours every day (or most days).
• More on-call workers than part time or full time.
• More exempt workers than nonexempt (i.e., making everyone a manager so that no one gets paid overtime).
• Excessive overtime; not enough hours (employees coming in for only a few hours, then sent home).
• Higher absenteeism.

The policy context in the United States provides few restraints on overoptimization, especially in jobs paid by the hour. Unlike minimum wage legislation, U.S. federal law does not require employers to guarantee a minimum number of hours to workers. Any guarantees of minimum work hours are specified in state law, collective bargaining agreements, or at the discretion of the employer. Although a few employers and some union contracts provide minimum weekly hour guarantees that function to establish quasi-fixed costs per employee, most minimum hour or minimum daily pay provisions impose only variable costs, incurred only on days when employees work. Seven states as well as a range of collective bargaining agreements incorporate reporting pay or minimum daily pay provisions. These provisions require employers to pay workers who report to a shift for a minimum number of hours. For example, in some union hotels in Chicago, housekeeping staff must be paid for a full eight hours any day they work. States with reporting pay or minimum daily pay provisions vary widely in the minimum number of hours for which employees must be paid and in terms of which industries are subject to the regulations. For example, California, Connecticut, and New York cover only nonexempt employees in select industries; Massachusetts and New Hampshire exclude nonexempt workers in public or charitable organizations; and New Jersey and Rhode Island cover all nonexempt workers.

In sum, the U.S. business environment creates pressures for overoptimization while the U.S. policy context provides few obstacles for business to proceed down this path.52 The WAM-Pro is positioned to navigate the suitable options that avoid overoptimization risks by paying close attention to regulatory constraints, market factors, operational factors, and employee dynamics.

(b) Downsides to Overoptimization

The primary route to overoptimization is shortening the time frame for determining whether enough or too much labor has been used in meeting demand. As explained earlier, studies of employer practices in different nations and industries, including retail, transportation, hospitality, electronics manufacturing, restaurants, and financial services, reveal how many of today's employers are striving to contain outlays for labor by maintaining a tight link between variations in consumer demand and employees' work schedules.53 These just-in-time scheduling practices include posting schedules with limited advance notice and varying the number of hours employees work from day to day and week to week.

The downsides of these practices for employees are ample. Research on the experiences of workers indicates that fluctuating work hours and unpredictable work schedules interfere with workers' nonwork activities such as setting up healthcare appointments and securing reliable child care, and create work-to-family conflict and general stress.54 Moreover, studies suggest the increasing bifurcation of the income distribution in the United States may be at least partly due to increased fluctuations in workers' hours in the jobs they hold, with some segments of workers working beyond the hours they want and another segment working too few hours. Thus, fluctuating and scarce work hours can make it hard to earn an adequate living and to make good use of nonwork time.

Overoptimization also creates problems for employers that undermine profitability. For example, research in retail firms indicates that unstable and unpredictable work schedules reduce employee retention55 and employee engagement.56 Reducing short-term outlays for labor may be alluring but may not actually reduce labor costs. Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer's now-classic distinction between labor rates and labor costs makes clear that calculations of labor costs have to take into account productivity. For example, which is more costly? Paying each worker $100 dollars and each produces/sells 200 products on average? Or paying each worker $10 and each produces/sells 5 products on average? The answer is clear, yet many firms pretend as though they can pay workers $10 and get 200 products in return, or close to it. Such logic defies years of research in organizational behavior indicating limits to work intensification. Moreover, shifts in the organization of work have made many jobs more team based so that the start-up costs of short shifts can inhibit productivity by multiple staff.

(c) Monitoring for Overoptimization

Remember that a balanced system optimizes the fit between outlays for labor and variations in customer demand (internal or external) at the aggregate level (firm, department, work unit) while still delivering stable and adequate work hours at the individual employee level. Thus overoptimization is observed at the individual employee level. Following are indicators of potential overoptimization and examples of how they can be monitored. Exactly what information is gathered should depend on the industry in which the firm is lodged, but the logic should hold regardless.

Consider selecting a subsample of workers for the following analyses, especially if the company is large. Be sure to draw a sample that represents different job classifications and provides variation on employee characteristics. For example, you might want to draw a sample of hourly workers and one of salaried workers. You might want to draw a sample of newly hired workers and another of seasoned employees. Draw a random sample so that you do not inadvertently introduce any biases into your analyses. Be sure to select a large but manageable sample of workers representing each distinction.

Optimization Indicator: Variations in the timing and number of employees' work hours that are employer driven. A key marker of overoptimization is that employees' needs for stable and adequate work hours are not being considered when staffing and scheduling work units. Instead, fluctuations in demand drive employee scheduling to the extent that employees' hours vary by day and week. WFM tools, such as scheduling systems and payroll records that document when employees clock in and out, can be used to monitor the number and timing of work hours week to week. The following steps outline how to measure schedule variation.

Step 1: Calculate the mean and standard deviation of number and timing of hours worked. Pull out the payroll hours (when employees clock in and out) for your sample of employees. Begin with a one-month period. For each employee, construct variables of the total number of hours they worked each week of the month, including any overtime. Average these to calculate the mean number of hours worked each week of the month: Mean = Week 1 + Week 2 + Week 3 + Week 4/4. Also calculate the standard deviation (SD) of work hours, which will tell you how much the total number of hours varies on average from week to week, allowing you to compare fluctuations in work hours across workers and across time. Both the mean and the SD are functions included in Excel worksheets, if they are not a part of your WFM system.

You can also make variables capturing fluctuations in timing, such as days worked. For example, if the employee worked four Mondays, four Wednesdays, and four Fridays during the month, then they had a stable schedule, at least in terms of days worked. If the employee worked three Mondays, two Fridays, and one Saturday during the month, then the schedule for this employee varied week to week.

Step 2: Analyze the results. What is the mean and SD of number of work hours for different types of workers (e.g., newly hired versus seasoned workers) and in particular jobs? Are there some jobs in which employees may work very few hours per week or regularly work overtime? Compare standard deviations to see how much the total number of hours varies week to week for workers in different types of job. Which are the jobs in which workers' hours are varying the most week to week? Red flags for overoptimization are when the standard deviation in work hours is high for most everyone in the job classification or when instability is concentrated on subgroups of workers, such as those newly hired by the firm or racial minorities. What is the standard deviation in work hours for these groups as compared to other employees in the same job?

There are no hard and fast rules as to how much variation week to week indicates overoptimization. The goal of this analysis is to consider the practical ramifications of the statistics, that is, of mean hours and variation in hours by employees in particular jobs. For example, if full-time workers in a job average 32 hours per week, this may indicate that some of them are being regularly shorted hours. Is the number of hours enough to provide workers with adequate earnings? If not, they may be more likely to seek additional employment, thus reducing their commitment to and limiting their availability for work in your company. Part of your analysis should be to examine how the average number of hours worked and fluctuations week to week are related to turnover (at the job level), and among groups of workers (newly hired). Because instability is often concentrated on newly hired workers, you may find a relationship between variations in weekly work hours and turnover.

Optimization Indicator: Unpredictability of work hours. Unpredictability of work hours is also a key marker of potentially problematic overoptimization because it indicates that the company is trying to closely match outlays for labor to variations in demand on a short-term, and perhaps even real-time, basis. Unpredictability occurs when schedules are posted with little lead time and last minute changes are made afterward. The following steps outline how to measure the predictability of schedules.

Step 1: Calculate advance notice and discrepancies between the posted and worked schedule. Track the schedule entry dates in the scheduling system versus the actual shift date to derive the advance notice timeline, that is, how far in advance the schedule became available for employees to view. This will give you a measure of advance schedule notice. To calculate schedule discrepancies (differences between posted/announced schedule and employees' actual work hours), compare the hours indicated on the original posted schedule to employees' actual worked hours (as recorded in the payroll system). For example, construct a variable of divergences between the number of hours employees were scheduled to work (A) and the number they actually worked as recorded in the payroll system (B): discrepancies = A − B, and then average across weeks. Also look for “churning,” that is, for multiple iterations of a single schedule that indicates repeat updating.

Step 2: Analyze the results. Again, there are no hard-and-fast rules about what constitutes too little predictability. What you should be looking for are areas of the company or particular kinds of jobs or workers whose schedules are less predictable than others, who, for example, are at high risk of having their schedules changed at the last minute. Are there more discrepancies for certain types of workers than others? In particular jobs? Are there patterns by day of week, type of work, proximity to seasonal events (holidays, weather)?

Part of the analysis should be to examine how the variable of schedule discrepancies is related to turnover and measures of employee attitudes, such as engagement from the firm's annual employee survey (if the firm conducts one). Be sure to include unit turnover, which occurs when employees quit their department but not the firm; it may be an indicator that a supervisor is creating overly optimized schedules within a business unit.

Optimization Indicator: Exit interviews and employee surveys revealing negative comments about work schedules. Ask human resources (HR) staff to begin asking about work schedules in exit interviews and in employee surveys to gain feedback from employees on how satisfied they are with the timing and number of their work hours and the advance notice they receive.

Optimization Indicator: Accountability structures that incentivize frontline managers to reduce work hours and overtime. These structures may create pressures on scheduling that may lead to a shortened time frame for matching outlays for labor. The rewards or penalties for not meeting metrics around work hours and overtime may have negative consequences when it comes to overoptimization.

(d) Strategies for Avoiding Overoptimization by Using WFM Technology

Remember that a balanced WFM system optimizes the fit between outlays for labor and variations in customer demand (internal or external) at the aggregate level (firm, department, work unit) while still delivering stable and adequate work hours at the individual employee level. An overoptimized system achieves optimization for the firm at the expense of stable and predictable work hours for employees. Workforce management technology can track both levels, enabling firms to treat labor as the valued resource that it is. Specifically, as discussed earlier, WFM technology can help to forecast staffing needs so that schedules can be posted with greater advance notice and workers are assigned more stable schedules. Also, data from payroll and scheduling systems can be combined to monitor the relationships among posted and worked hours and employee turnover and productivity, thus providing an empirical basis for achieving balance at many organizational levels. It should be possible to optimize the overall match between labor and variation in demand while still providing individual employees with a stable schedule, or at least one that is at least predictable.

(e) Strategy for Achieving Balanced Optimization at Firm Level

Perhaps the most important strategy for maintaining a balanced WFM system is establishing an accountability period for matching labor to demand that minimizes the need for last-minute and real-time adjustments to employees' daily work hours. Checking demand-to-staffing ratios hourly increases the probability that real-time adjustments will be made to at least some employees' work schedules. If what is important to profitability is that demand ratios are met at the end of the week, does it really matter if they were not met on Tuesday? Enabling frontline managers a longer time horizon to bring their numbers in line with firm accountability requirements can enable them to absorb the need to adjust employees' hours more naturally (such as not calling in a new worker when another worker calls-off if sales are slow).57 Similarly, projecting staffing needs for longer periods of time can enable managers to construct schedules that provide individuals with as much stability as possible while still varying staffing levels throughout the day and week. The firm may need a different number of workers at different times of the day and week, but one worker does not need to work at all those different times and days.

(f) Strategies for Delivering Adequate, Stable, and Predictable Hours to Individual Employees

In addition to establishing a realistic and meaningful time frame for reconciling labor to demand, there is a wide menu of steps for creating balanced optimization that does not sacrifice the stability, adequacy, and predictability of individual employees' work hours to achieve a fit between demand and labor at the aggregate level (firm, department, work unit). Work schedules vary along several dimensions—adequacy, stability, and predictability—each posing unique challenges for workers but also providing distinct avenues for intervention. In Table 12.1 we define these three dimensions of work schedules and identify specific strategies to improve each. In each of these scenarios, using the WFM system to manage and track these plans improves their adoption and sustainment.

Table 12.1 Guide to Delivering Stability, Adequacy, and Predictability to Schedules

i. Stability of Work Hours

Work schedules can fluctuate in terms of the days of the week, time of day or shift, and length of shift or time worked on a given day.58 Fluctuating schedules translate into fluctuating paychecks for hourly workers. Moreover, workers whose schedules change from day to day, week to week, or hour to hour can experience difficulties carrying out their nonwork activities, such as child care, transportation, and school obligations.59 The following schedule components can impact work hour stability.

• Different days worked each week. Although employers may schedule workers for a set number of days each week, the specific days worked may change from week to week (e.g., Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday one week; Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday the next week). This means that although an employee may hold a three-, four-, or five-days-a-week job on paper, often his life must accommodate seven.
• Different schedule on different days. Many employers design hourly jobs in ways that require employees to work different shifts and times during the week (e.g., Monday morning; Tuesday and Thursday evening; Saturday all day). In practice, this often means that employees have to be prepared to work at virtually any time of day, or even at night.
• Different shift length from day to day. In some jobs, employees know the start time but not the end time of their work shift. Employers may require workers to stay until all work (e.g., processing checks, cleaning rooms) is complete or to leave when there is less work than anticipated (e.g., fewer diners, fewer packages to unload). The length of time worked on a given day—and the amount of income earned—can vary depending on the amount of work to be completed and the number of workers scheduled to complete it.

ii. Adequacy of Work Hours

Contrary to popular belief, U.S. employers are more likely to keep hours low in hourly jobs as a result of preferences to keep a pool of workers who can be scheduled for short shifts during peak business times than to avoid paying the benefit costs associated with full-time status.60 As a result, head count, the number of workers on the payroll, tends to be kept high in many of today's hourly jobs. Because the number of hours frontline managers have to assign staff is based on demand (e.g., calls, sales, traffic, orders) and not the number of employees on the payroll, the more workers on the payroll, the fewer hours, on average, for each employee.61 Keeping head count high has been linked to high rates of turnover in retail stores.62 Thus, calculating head count relative to number of hours available for scheduling workers offers useful insight into balancing the needs of employees for adequate hours with the need of managers for a flexible yet stable workforce.

Another related strategy for endeavoring to provide adequate hours is to guarantee a minimum number of hours for workers. As discussed earlier, laws do not require that employers guarantee a minimum number of hours to any workers, either full time or part time, or hourly or salaried, and very few employers choose on their own to guarantee a minimum number of hours to workers in hourly jobs, especially in part-time jobs. Should an employer move in this direction, the considerations of how many hours to guarantee workers in part-time and even full-time jobs are complex. Because full-time employees often come with fixed costs, such as the cost of health insurance and paid time off, they are often scheduled first and are likely to receive the most hours. That said, increasingly, full-time workers are not scheduled for full-time hours.

iii. Predictability of Work Hours

Predictability is the length of advance notice given to workers regarding their work schedules. In many hourly jobs, employers post schedules a few days before the workweek, often the Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday before a workweek that begins on Sunday. Moreover, employers change schedules after posting and make real-time adjustments, in which employers send workers home or keep them on call, as demand exceeds or disappoints expectations. Thus, in many hourly jobs, especially in the service industry, work hours are often unstable and unpredictable.

(g) Choosing a Strategy

It may seem unlikely that firms will be open to the preceding directions given public discourse on the necessity of keeping labor highly flexible in today's economy. Yet, firms' labor costs may be more stable than is commonly recognized, rendering scheduling strategies for achieving a balanced approach to WFM feasible. One point overlooked is that frontline managers should consider factors in addition to variations in consumer demand when staffing their workplaces. Regardless of consumer demand, retail employers, for example, should identify a worker who will open and close a store each day, and they often have minimum staffing requirements (e.g., at least two employees on the floor at all times) to facilitate employees' safety and to reduce theft. The experience of a national apparel women's retailer provides evidence of surprising stability in the demand for labor: The minimum number of weekly hours and the maximum number of weekly hours assigned in stores in a year differed at most by only 30 percent.63 Thus, store managers in this firm had a large base of stable hours throughout the year, opening up the possibility of creating fairly stable schedules for sales associates.

There will usually be a need to adjust employees' schedules, even at the last minute, and to vary the number of hours employees work. The issue is at what point does variation in work hours help or hinder business goals and employee well-being. By capitalizing on the stability that is in the business rather than on its instability, employers can move toward a balanced approach to WFM that meets the needs of both employers and employees.

12.3 SCHEDULE OPTIMIZATION: POSITIONING TIME AS A RESOURCE AT THE LOCAL LEVEL71

For more than two decades, employers have recognized that the ways we get work done have changed, in part due to factors such as technological advances and the globalization of business. Furthermore, there have been important demographic shifts in the workforce that are characterized both by increased diversity (e.g., gender, age, dependent care responsibilities that often extend across the life course) and new cultural expectations about work. For example, a majority of today's older adults report that they expect to postpone their transition into retirement, sometimes indicating that there is a possibility that they may not fully retire.

In response, employers around the world have begun to consider innovative approaches for the management of a resource that is fundamental for productivity and important to both employers and employees: time.

Many organizations have responded by adopting flexible work options. In general, these options give supervisors and employees expanded choice about when they work (schedule of assigned work hours), where they work (places where work could be completed), and how much they work (the number of work hours in a specified period of time, such as a week).

As organizations develop and administer their flexible work initiatives, employers may grapple with concerns, such as: Might employees view flexible work options as an entitlement rather than a viable tool for achieving positive outcomes at work and at home? How can the organization effectively manage and motivate a flexible workforce?

For their part, employees may struggle with another challenge: If they used the flexible work options that are on the books, might their supervisors and coworkers think they are less committed to their jobs than employees who stick to the more traditional, standard work arrangements?

In an effort to address these concerns and reframe some of fundamental assumptions about the business case for workplace flexibility, the Sloan Center on Aging & Work has begun to talk with employers about different ways they can collaborate with their leaders and employees to manage time and place resources through schedule optimization. Supervisors as well as employees want to maximize the benefits they can reap from the time resources available to them to meet both the needs of the business and employees' preferences.

Implicitly, the language of schedule optimization recognizes that the choice fit will need to make sense in the local ecosystem (work team, work unit, department). After all, sustainability is only possible when the resources in the ecosystem are viable and replenished. Flexible work options are the tools; schedule optimization is the desired end state.

(a) Business Case for Flexibility and Schedule Optimization

The business case for workplace flexibility, which is often framed at the organizational level, typically stands on three informational legs.

The business case tripod can guide decision making about whether the organization wants to proceed with the adoption of flexible work policies. Once that decision has been made, managers need to explore how the implementation of a schedule optimization initiative might affect the work being done by work teams and work units.

(b) Six Steps for Customizing a Flexible Scheduling Option

Data about relationships between occasional/semipermanent flexible work option policies and work unit productivity has been assembled in the Time and Place Study conducted by the Sloan Center on Aging & Work at Boston College. This research provides insights about schedule optimization and the local work environment. Employers can follow the six-step assessment process outlined next to customize flexible work options so that they align with work group needs (see Figure 12.1).

Figure 12.1 Decisions for Action

Step 1: Identify scheduling-related root causes of work challenges. While employee surveys can help organizations to identify employee preferences, additional information may be needed to specify the root causes of problems that are related to scheduling. In particular, employers might want to gain an understanding about: pressures that affect employees' ability to meet their work objectives; pressures that may make it difficult for supervisors to staff projects so that the work gets done at the right time; and pressures that affect employees' ability to meet their personal work/life priorities. Employers should expect that the root causes will vary from one department to the next if the type of work done varies significantly.

Step 2: Appraise the strengths and weaknesses of different flexible work options. Different flexible work options may help address different root causes. For example, although the ability to use occasional flex might reduce employee stress related to work-family conflict, it will not address the problem of long commutes (whereas options for remote work or flex schedules could). Since the root causes of scheduling challenges may vary from department to department (even position to position), it is quite possible that at least some of the solutions for scheduling optimization will also vary. A WAM-Pro might suggest integrating workers' commute information into the scheduling application so that schedule flexibility and constraints can be easily identifiable when issues arise.

It can be very helpful for employers to develop a range of work options that give supervisors and their employees some choice for addressing problems.

Step 3: Turn over stones to find examples of positive deviance. In the field of public health, researchers are trained to look for positive deviants: people who have adopted behaviors that deviate from the norm but who achieve positive outcomes as a result of the so-called deviant behavior.

It is not uncommon to find pockets of flexibility at organizations that do not have any formal policies. Business leaders can learn a lot from supervisors who have used specific flexibility options (such as shift swapping) to meet schedule-relevant business needs and employee priorities. Of course, if the company wants to surface the effective practices of the flex-positive deviants, it is important that the examples of informal flexibility are acknowledged as being innovative practices rather than as rule-breakers. WAM-Pros might be able to identify these pockets of innovation with data analytics looking at time and schedules.

When positive flex deviants are located, employers will want to examine the processes and systems the local supervisor has created and employed. Getting a good understanding of the tools used may give managers new ideas for WFM systems that all work units across the organization could use.

Building upon the positive outcomes not only can be instructive, it can build courage or resolve for other creative attempts.

Step 4: Identify constraints at the local level. Since there is compelling evidence that flexible work options can be beneficial for organizations (overall), HR leaders are often supportive of workplace flexibility. However, at the local level, supervisors (and even coworkers) might raise concerns or barriers that reflect situations in their specific work units. There are many ways to think about possible constraints; they may be structural (e.g., jobs designated for specific shifts), fiscal (e.g., restrictions on prorating benefits), cultural (e.g., emphasis on face time), functional (e.g., direct service work), procedural (e.g., the process for requesting and accrediting is ambiguous), or developmental (e.g., supervisors might not know how to plan and monitor the implementation).

When attempting to identify constraints, it is important that the organization encourages work teams to identify the disincentives that discourage supervisors and employees from working together to find solutions that make flexible schedules possible.

Step 5: Establish the conditions for success at the local level. Employers need be sure to facilitate positive outcomes at the local level by establishing the leading conditions for success:

• Supervisors and employees need to have opportunities to fully understand the rationale for the policies (that is, how the policies can affect root-cause problems they might be experiencing).
• All members of the work team need to become familiar with the resources and technologies that can help them request/plan for/implement/monitor the use of.
• Supervisors and employees need to view flexible work arrangements as a partnership, with both taking ownership of any new arrangement and being accountable for its success.
• Checkpoints should be built in during the initial launching of the new processes and WFM systems to identify/address issues or concerns that may arise.
• Ongoing communication should reinforce the positive messages about schedule optimization, celebrating the successes of different work units. WFM system user groups can be a community of adoption advocates and champions.
• Flexibility introduces increased complexity into scheduling processes and often requires a technology with the appropriate functionality to provide efficiencies and requisite communication into the processes at the right time, place, and level. A condition for success may be aligning new flexible schedule models with new WFM applications and devices. Technology may provide remarkable incentives and help alleviate the impact of disincentives. For example, intelligent scheduling software and smart phone applications may reduce paperwork and the supervisor's time spent in the office—pushing information to portable devices.

Organizations need to spend time developing clear communications that support supervisors and their employees who utilize scheduling optimization options.

Step 6: Pilot, tweak, and redesign for improvements. Supervisors and their work teams may need to periodically make adjustments to gain the maximal benefits from schedule optimization. At the same time, it is important that work units are clear about the metrics they will use to gauge success. Practical indicators of success will make it possible for the work teams to keep their flexible work options on track, even if the work units make changes in the policies so that they are more effective. These indicators could include:

• Measures of productivity and performance (e.g., absenteeism, retention of employees in specific groups such as with specific job functions or at particular career stages, assessment of work unit productivity, amount of idle or nonproductive time).
• Measures of transactions and interactions at the workplace (e.g., assessments of communication flow and information sharing, measures of the number of edits to schedules and timecards in the system, measures of system-based workflow events—e-mails, notifications, comments appended to data, etc.).
• Measures of employees' commitment to their job and organization (e.g., employee reports of their intent to leave, employees' willingness to go the extra mile for the organization, compliance with policy as exhibited in audit trails).
• Measures of satisfaction (e.g., satisfaction with their own performance, satisfaction with their relationships with their coworkers, satisfaction with their supervisors, as well as attendance as a possible indicator).
• Measures of cost (e.g. fluctuations in overtime, use of time off, indirect costs due to turnover, impact on revenue, return from investments in technology, etc.).

Employers will want to have procedures in place so that employees can give feedback about their satisfaction with the schedule optimization policies and how these policies are put into practice. Regular assessment of employees' suggestions for improving the tools and technologies used for schedule optimization will help the company to improve these resources on a timely basis—before people get discouraged and stop using them. Feedback may indirectly be gained from WFM system data such as absenteeism, tardiness, turnover, labor cost, and productivity.

While the adoption of flexible work policies typically happens at the organizational level, the action steps occur at the work team and work unit level. Engaging supervisors and employees in a schedule optimization initiative requires that they have been prepared, are empowered to take action, equipped with the proper technology, and recognized for their accomplishments. Ongoing assessment of the process and actual outcomes from schedule flexibility initiatives should be a permanent part of the effort to continually monitor how changes in workplace and personal constraints are impacting schedule flexibility effectiveness.

12.4 WORKPLACE FLEXIBILITY RELATED TO PEOPLE WITH COMPLEX EMPLOYMENT SITUATIONS72

Current employer workplace flexibility policies and practices primarily revolve around time and place (when and where work is done). An emerging workplace flexibility strategy involves how work is done. This workplace flexibility strategy can assist people with complex employment situations, such as parents of young children; single parents; caregivers to other family members; mature workers; at-risk youth; ex-offenders; and individuals with disabilities, including veterans with disabilities and people with HIV/AIDS.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) defines workplace flexibility as a universal strategy64 that can meet the needs of all employers and employees, which includes when, where, and how work is done. ODEP's mission provides national leadership by developing and influencing disability employment-related policies and practices to increase the employment and advancement of people with disabilities. Aligned with this mission, ODEP's workplace flexibility initiative incorporates when and where work is done, as well as how.

Through the evidence-based employment outcomes of ODEP's customized employment research and demonstration projects, customized employment 65 was recognized as another form of workplace flexibility—focused on how work is done. These projects proved that flexibility through job-task negotiation was found to be a powerful work strategy for recruitment, retention, and productivity to address the need for a diverse talent pool. This research changed previous workplace flexibility practices by adding a third dimension of flexibility around job-task negotiation as a means to employ many diverse individuals who otherwise might not be able to participate in employment or were assumed by employers and the workforce development system66 to be unable to be employed at all. Using this evidence-based data, ODEP discovered a clear connection between job-task flexibility and Universal Design strategies for individuals perceived as unemployable or hard to serve within employment-development systems—education, workforce, and economic development.

Moreover, another federal agency, the National Council on Disability, recognized that “the movement for flexibility in the workplace brings people with disabilities to . . . the discussion in which the workplace needs of all employees are taken into account.”67

Recognizing the importance of the workplace flexibility movement and aligning ODEP's workplace flexibility initiatives with that of another Department of Labor (DOL) agency, the Women's Bureau (WB), these DOL agencies have collaborated on many workplace flexibility initiatives. These initiatives build upon President Obama's 2010 message that workplace flexibility is critical to strengthening our nation's economy and families. In January 2011, ODEP and the WB sponsored a workplace flexibility forum, designed to develop concrete recommendations for the advancement of workplace flexibility policy and practices for employees, including individuals with disabilities. Invitees consisted of workplace flexibility and disability employment specialists. In designing the forum, ODEP and the WB sought to blend the ODEP's evidence-based strategy of job-task negotiation with the WB's goal of promoting workplace flexibility for workers. These efforts support DOL Secretary Hilda Solis' strategic goal of workers having fair and high-quality work-life environments, including workplace flexibility options that help workers balance their work, personal, and family obligations.

The forum report, Advancing Workplace Flexibility Policy and Practices, discusses key findings from the forum, research on the impact of flexible workplace strategies, employers' innovative practices, and resources that support employers and employees, especially those with complex employment situations.

Additional workplace flexibility ODEP-WB initiatives include the Workplace Flexibility Toolkit68 geared to employees, employers, policy makers, and researchers related to time and place, but also around task. The Toolkit provides case studies, fact and tip sheets, issue briefs, reports, articles, Websites, other toolkits, and a frequently asked questions section.

Lastly, ODEP is funding the Workplace Flexibility–Universal Design Employer Demonstration Project that provides training and technical assistance to a small cohort of employers who will document policies and practices related to workplace flexibility of time, place, and task. According to Elaine Ostroff, founding director, Institute for Human Centered Design (Adaptive Environments), “Universal Design is not a trend, but an enduring design approach that assumes that the range of human ability is ordinary, not special.” There are numerous benefits of Universal Design that can be enjoyed by both the employer and employee, as Gregg Vanderheiden, Ph.D. and Director at Trace Research and Development Center, explains “…in the workplace, tangible results of Universal Design can include reduced human errors, increased productivity, fewer sick days, and lower employee turnover.”

Since ODEP's mission focuses on the employment of people with disabilities, the agency addresses the poor employment statistics of this population and funds and documents effective practices and policies that improve these statistics. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) consistently reports that the unemployment rate of people with disabilities is close to twice that of people without disabilities. In addition, what is most significant is that BLS reports that the labor force participation rate for people with disabilities is only about 20 percent in contrast with a 70 percent rate for people without disabilities. As per Kathy Martinez, DOL Office of Disability Employment Policy assistant secretary, “Adopting a Universal Design approach can benefit all staff, improving overall productivity and morale, and providing an inclusive business environment for customers of diverse backgrounds, needs, and abilities—ultimately resulting in increased profitability and success.”

These BLS statistics for people with disabilities can be attributed to several barriers that include, but are not limited to, the following factors. Many employers lack knowledge about how to provide reasonable accommodations and have low expectations about the abilities of people with disabilities. Other factors include inaccessible public transportation in many areas of the country, especially in rural and subrural communities, and the workforce development system's need for better education and training on how to work with multiple employment partners that serve individuals with disabilities.

In conclusion, ODEP posits that a universal design approach to workplace flexibility employment policies, offered to workers, should incorporate not only the time and place for work to be accomplished, but also the job tasks to be performed, and that together this approach can be a cost-effective policy and practice for WFM.

12.5 SCHEDULING AS A FORM OF COMPENSATION AND RETENTION73

When considering change overhaul and new models of scheduling, it is important to recognize and share what this change will offer. Compensation comes in many forms during employment. Perhaps to the surprise of some, effective scheduling can be as tangible a benefit as a paycheck. People appreciate being recognized and rewarded for their value and efforts. Scheduling can be a form of accolade as well. Good scheduling requires that employers invest more in implementation than just the technology. A scheduling system based on mathematical analysis may be effective for modifying the schedule for business needs, but it may not take into consideration work-life balance, potential gaming of pay, and unexpected consequences such as turnover.

(a) Pay Pyramiding

There is a hidden danger in poorly managed schedules in highly complex organizations. Scheduling becomes a direct driver of compensation where there are many types of shift-based premium pay policies. These pay policies can include additional pay based on time of day, day of the week, weekends, holidays, worked hour thresholds, incentives to work additional shifts, and shifts where the employee's responsibilities are increased or special skills are required. It is not hard to imagine that several of these conditions can occur at the same time. For example, an employee could work an evening shift, on a weekend, that falls on a holiday, when he has already worked over 40 hours and he is taking on a leadership role (supervisor in charge). If policies are not written carefully, the employee may qualify for multiple premiums during a single shift span. In the preceding case, the employee might earn $3 for evening shift pay, $8 for weekend pay, half his base rate for working on the holiday, overtime because he has already worked more than 40 hours, and $10 for supervisor pay—all paid simultaneously for that shift. It is clear that being scheduled for this situation is a huge financial bonus for the employee. This is called pay pyramiding. It may not be this egregious, but overcompensating employees for worked time is a costly practice. In addition, employers with hourly workers run the risk of schedule habits that increase overtime, which is a common form of schedule compensation.

The WAM-Pro should suggest pay rule designs that avoid, limit, or flag high-cost shift conditions in the schedule. The WAM-Pro should work closely with the workforce management office to bring these opportunities to the attention of the compensation manager, who is often unaware of how automated WFM timekeeping systems and schedules translate pay policies into unexpected windfalls for employees. Pay careful attention to how policies stack under similar work conditions, making employees eligible for more than one incentive or premium payment, and how hours are counted or double-counted in the design of timekeeping and scheduling modules. Overtime management also relies heavily on effective scheduling tools and practices. WAM-Pros have the responsibility of bringing schedule tools and education to supervisors and schedulers to support all types of premium pay.

(b) Scheduling to Mitigate Turnover

Scheduling also correlates to turnover rates. If the employee feels that he is not working enough hours to pay his bills, or is working too often to spend time with his family, then he is much more likely to pursue a different job. Poor scheduling manifests itself in other ways as well—apathetic or nonproductive behavior, absenteeism, time theft, and so on. Hiring and training new employees is expensive and time intensive. Maintaining tenured, happy employees on the frontline is therefore a cost savings to the employer. Some people do not want to work weekends or nights. If those days are a part of the everyday job expectation, but this was not disclosed in the interviewing process, it is likely that the employee will not perform well or will leave. The right schedule fit is nearly as important as the right salary range, especially to those with families or other commitments. WAM-Pros can enhance the organization's ability to improve retention by designing the system to create and report workforce data that relates schedules to turnover. Work rule configuration may also help manage and flag work hour thresholds to sustain a minimum number of hours. Each employer's workforce and situation is particular and the data may reveal patterns that are more or less likely to contribute to high turnover. This information can then be built into WFM scheduling tools and staffing models.

As workforce analytics continue to evolve, there will be increased opportunity to translate schedules into financial and operational metrics by:

• Being aware of and using the WFM system functionality that helps to balance what employer and employee need from schedules such as core and minimum hours, limits on total hours worked, and availability.
• Designing access, visibility, and stability into the scheduling process.
• Creating meaningful data that helps everyone manage the important outcomes from pay rules and schedules.

Today, there is an increasing demand on people's time and wallets. Time is money, as they say, but money does not necessarily make up for lost time. To show employees that their time is valued, use the WFM tools that take into account their perspective and preference when creating the schedule. Of course, there are concerns that remain crucial to business sustainability, such as coverage during periods of high volume versus low volume, employee skill sets, and so on. Workload—volume, tasks, timing (demand), and qualifications—labor skills, preferences, and availability (supply) demand can be integrated into WFM systems to create effective schedules. Simple, small adjustments like posting schedules further in advance and establishing and designing around core hours improves schedule stability and transparency and allows employees to better balance and budget their lives. Introducing WFM systems and policies for self-scheduling, shift swapping, and shift bidding can make employees feel more autonomous and increase attendance and retention. Having flexible and predictable schedules improves employee satisfaction and efficiency. Without a good schedule, an employee's ability to stay in that job, work enough hours, access benefits, or even make good use of off time is diminished. When employees can trust their employer to treat them fairly and respect their need for hours and for off time, then the employees come to work more satisfied and motivated to perform.

NOTES

1. Susan J. Lambert and Elaine Waxman, Survey of Employers, “Leadership Greater Chicago,” Working Group on Improving the Quality of Hourly Jobs, 2009 (on file with author).

2. Lisa Disselkamp, No Boundaries: How to Use Time and Labor Management Technology to Win the Race for Profits and Productivity (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009).

3. Sara McClanahan, “Diverging Destinies: How Children Are Faring under the Second Demographic Transition,” Demography 41, no. 4 (2004): 607–627; Karen Kornbluh, “The Parent Trap,” Atlantic Monthly 291(January/February 2003), 111–114.

4. Peter Berg and Ellen E. Kossek, The Use of Work-Life Flexibility Policies and Practices by Middle-Class, Unionized Workers (Sustainable Workforce Issue Brief) (East Lansing, MI: The Initiative on Workplace Flexibility and the Employment Relationship, MSU School of Human Resources and Labor Relations, n.d.), retrieved June 7, 2012, from www.thesustainableworkforce.org/index.php/researchoutputs/issue-briefs; M. J. Gibson, Beyond 50.03: A Report to the Nation on Independent Living and Disability (Washington, DC: AARP Public Policy Institute, 2003), http://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/il/beyond_50_il_1.pdf.

5. Disselkamp, No Boundaries, 157; André Houde, “Schedonomy Science,” retrieved May 11, 2012, from www.schedonomy.com.

6. Joan C. Williams and Heather Boushey, The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict: The Poor, the Professionals, and the Missing Middle (San Francisco, CA, and Washington, DC: Center for WorkLife Law, UC Hastings College of the Law & Center for American Progress, 2010), www.worklifelaw.org/pubs/ThreeFacesofWork-FamilyConflict.pdf.

7. Ibid.

8. Susan J. Lambert and Julia Henly, Managers' Strategies for Balancing Business Requirements with Employee Needs; Manager Survey Results (Work Scheduling Study, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago SSA, 2010).

9. Williams and Boushey, The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict.

10. Hannah Matthews, Child Care Assistance Helps Families Work: A Review of the Effects of Subsidy Receipt on Employment (Washington, DC: Center for Law and Social Policy, 2006), www.clasp.org/admin/site/publications/files/0287.pdf.

11. B. Thorne, “The Crisis of Care,” in Work-Family Challenges for Low-Income Parents and Their Children, ed. Ann C. Crouter and Alan Booth (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004), 168.

12. Lambert and Henly, Work Scheduling Study.

13. Jody Heymann, “Inequalities at Work and at Home: Social Class and Gender Divides,” in Unfinished Work: Building Democracy and Equality in an Era of Working Families, ed. Jody Heymann and Christopher Beem (New York: The New Press, 2005), 89–121.

14. Gibson, Beyond 50.03.

15. Ibid.

16. Williams and Boushey, The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict.

17. Ibid., 7, Figure 2.

18. Naomi Cahn and June Carbone, Red Families and Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture 2010 (New York: Oxford, 2010).

19. Williams and Boushey, The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict.

20. Joan C. Williams, “Work-Family Conflict: The Arbitrator's Role,” in Arbitration 2005: The Evolving World of Work; Proceedings of the Fifty-eighth Annual Meeting, National Academy of Arbitrators, ed. P. F. Gerhart and S. F. Befort (Washington, DC: Bureau of National Affairs, 2006), 20–84.

21. Williams and Boushey, The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict.

22. Robert H. Frank, The Winner-Take-All-Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us (New York: Penguin, 1995).

23. Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce, “Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of a 70-Hour Workweek,” Harvard Business Review 4 (December 2006).

24. Dana Friedman, Workplace Flexibility: A Guide for Companies (New York: Families and Work Institute, n.d.), http://familiesandwork.org/3w/tips/downloads/companies.pdf (retrieved May 11, 2012).

25. Jennifer Swanberg, “Employers Who Give Flex to Low-Wage Workers,” e-mail from Jennifer Swanberg to Joan C. Williams, November 2010 (on file with author) (San Francisco, CA: Center for WorkLife Law, UC Hastings College of the Law).

26. Jennifer Swanberg, Diane Loeffler, and Mac Werner, Making Workplaces Work: Employer Best Practices in Kentucky (Lexington, KY: UK iWin, 2007), www.uky.edu/Centers/iwin/workplace_research/BestPractices07.pdf.

27. Ibid.

28. Jean Flatley McGuire and Phyllis Brashler, Flexible Work Arrangements: Selected Case Studies (Washington, DC: Workplace Flexibility 2010, Georgetown University Law Center, 2006). Available at http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/legal/9.

29. Leon Litchfield, Jennifer Swanberg, and Catherine Sigworth, Increasing the Visibility of the Invisible Workforce: Model Programs and Policies for Hourly and Lower Wage Employees (Boston, MA: The Center for Work & Family, Boston College Carroll School of Management, 2004).

30. U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, Minimum Wage Laws in the States—July 1, 2010 (Author: 2010).

31. Swanberg, “Employers Who Give Flex to Low-Wage Workers.”

32. Ken Giglio, Workplace Flexibility Case Study: RSM McGladrey and the Flexyear Option (Boston, MA: Sloan Work and Family Research Network, Boston College, n.d.), https://workfamily.sas.upenn.edu/sites/workfamily.sas.upenn.edu/files/imported/pdfs/RSM_McGladrey.pdf (retrieved June 4, 2012).

33. Lisa Disselkamp, telephone interview with Joan C. Williams, November 19, 2010 (transcript on file with author) (San Francisco, CA: Center for WorkLife Law, UC Hastings College of the Law); J. R. Durmick, e-mail to Lisa Disselkamp in response to a question by Joan C. Williams, December 21, 2010 (on file with author) (San Francisco, CA: Center for WorkLife Law, UC Hastings College of the Law); D. Higbee, e-mail to Lisa Disselkamp in response to a question by Joan C. Williams, December 21, 2010 (on file with author) (San Francisco, CA: Center for WorkLife Law, UC Hastings College of the Law).

34. Susan J. Lambert and Elaine Waxman, “Organizational Stratification: Distributing Opportunities for Work-Life Balance,” in Work and Life Integration: Organizational, Cultural, and Individual Perspectives, ed. Susan J. Lambert and Ellen Ernst Kossek (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005).

35. Disselkamp, No Boundaries.

36. Susan J. Lambert, Anna Haley-Lock, and Julia Henly, “Work Schedule Flexibility in Hourly Jobs: Unanticipated Consequences and Promising Directions” (working paper of the University of Chicago Work Scheduling Study, University of Chicago SSA, 2010).

37. Lambert and Henly, Work Scheduling Study.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid.

41. Susan J. Lambert, “Passing the Buck: Labor Flexibility Practices That Transfer Risk onto Hourly Workers,” Human Relations 61, no. 9 (2008): 1203–1227.

42. Corporate Voices for Working Families and WFD Consulting, Innovative Workplace Flexibility Options for Hourly Workers (Washington, DC: Corporate Voices for Working Families & WFD Consulting, n.d.), www.cvworkingfamilies.org/system/files/CVWFflexreport-FINAL.pdf (retrieved May 11, 2012).

43. Ibid.

44. James T. Bond and Ellen Galinsky, “What Workplace Flexibility Is Available to Entry-Level, Hourly Employees?” (Supporting Entry-Level, Hourly Employees, Research Brief No. 3). New York: Families and Work Institute, 2006, http://familiesandwork.org/site/research/reports/brief3.pdf.

45. Joan C. Williams, Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).

46. Susan J. Lambert and Julia R. Henly, “Frontline Managers Matter: Labor Flexibility Practices and Sustained Employment in Hourly Retail Jobs in the U.S.,” in Are Bad Jobs Inevitable? Trends, Determinants and Responses to Job Quality in the Twenty-first Century, ed. C. Warhurst, F. Carré, P. Findlay, and C. Tilly (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 143–159.

47. Arne Kalleberg, Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and precarious Employment Systems in the United States, 1970s to 2000s (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2011).

48. Lambert, “Passing the Buck.”

49. Susan Lambert and Elaine Waxman, “Organizational Stratification: Distributing Opportunities for Work-Life Balance,” in Work and Life Integration: Organizational, Cultural, and Individual Perspectives, ed. Ellen Kossek and Susan Lambert (Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005), 99–122.

50. Lambert, “Passing the Buck.”

51. Anna Haley-Lock and Stephanie Ewert, “Waiting for the Minimum: US State Wage Laws, Firm Strategy and Chain Restaurant Job Quality,” Journal of Industrial Relations 53, no. 1 (2011): 31–48.

52. See Susan J. Lambert, Anna Haley-Lock, and Julia R. Henly, “Schedule Flexibility in Hourly Jobs: Unanticipated Consequences and Promising Directions,” Community, Work & Family 15, no. 3 (2012): 293–315 for more details.

53. Eileen Appelbaum, Annette Bernhardt, and Richard Murnane, “Low-Wage America: An Overview,” in Low-Wage America: How Employers Are Reshaping Opportunity in the Workplace, ed. Eileen Appelbaum, Annette Bernhardt, and Rirchard Murnane (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2003), 1–32; Francoise Carré and Chris Tilly, “America's Biggest Low-Wage Industry: Continuity and Change in Retail Jobs” (Working Paper: 2009-6, Center for Social Policy, University of Massachusetts–Boston, 2009, www.mccormack.umb.edu/centers/csp/documents/working_papers/2009_6_Carre_and_Tilly.pdf); Jerome Gautie and John Schmitt, eds., Low Wage Work in the Wealthy World (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2010); Irena Grugulis and Odul Bozkurt, Retail Work (Hampshire, England: Palgrave, 2011); Anna Haley-Lock, “Place-Bound Jobs at the Intersection of Policy and Management: Employer Practices in Seattle, Chicago and Vancouver Restaurant Chains,” American Behavioral Scientist 55, no. 7 (2011): 823–842; Lambert, “Passing the Buck.”

54. Julia R. Henly and Susan J. Lambert, “Schedule Unpredictability and Flexibility in Hourly Retail Jobs: Contributions to Work-to-Family Conflict, Work-Life Interference, and Employee Stress” (paper presented at International Labour Process Conference, Rutgers University, 2010); Julia R. Henly, H. Luke Shaefer, and R. Elaine Waxman, “Nonstandard Work Schedules: Employer- and Employee-Driven Flexibility in Retail Jobs,” Social Service Review 80 (2006), 609–634; Maureen Perry-Jenkins, “Work in the Working-Class: Challenges Facing Families,” in Work, Family, Health, and Well-Being, ed. S. Bianchi, L. Casper, and R. King, (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005), 453–471; Isik U. Zeytinoglu, Waheeda Lillevik, Bianca Seaton, and Josefina Moruz, “Part Time and Casual Work in Retail Trade: Stress and Other Factors Affecting the Workplace,” Relations Industrielles-Industrial Relations 59, no. 3 (2004): 516–544.

55. Lambert and Henly, “Frontline Managers Matter.”

56. Jennifer Swanberg, Sharon McKechnie, Mamta Ojha, and Jacquelyn James, “Schedule Control, Supervisor Support and Work Engagement: A Winning Combination for Workers in Hourly Jobs?” Journal of Vocational Behavior 79, no. 3 (2011): 613–624.

57. Lambert, “Passing the Buck.”

58. Lambert and Waxman, “Organizational Stratification.”

59. Henly, Shaefer, and Waxman, “Nonstandard Work Schedules.”

60. Susan Houseman, “Why Employers Use Flexible Staffing Arrangements: Evidence from an Establishment Survey,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 5 (2001): 149–170; Lambert and Henly, Managers' Strategies for Balancing Business Requirements with Employee Needs.

61. Lambert, Haley-Lock, and Henly, “Schedule Flexibility in Hourly Jobs.”

62. Lambert and Henly, “Frontline Managers Matter.”

63. Henly and Lambert, “Schedule Unpredictability and Flexibility.”

64. Universal strategy or universal design (UD) refers to making products, environments, operational systems, and services welcoming and usable to the most diverse range of people possible. Its key components are simplicity, flexibility, and efficiency. Originally developed to address the needs of an aging population and people with disabilities, UD has much broader applicability. It increases ease of access to products, places, and services for multiple, diverse populations. Using UD means that facilities, programs, and services take into account the broad range of abilities, ages, reading levels, learning styles, languages, and cultures in their diverse workforce and customer base. For more information on universal strategies, see ODEP's Universal Design Website at: www.dol.gov/odep/topics/UniversalDesign.htm.

65. Customized employment is a flexible process designed to personalize the employment relationship between a job candidate and an employer in a way that meets the needs of both. It is based on an individualized match between the strengths, conditions, and interests of a job candidate and the identified business needs of an employer. Customized employment utilizes an individualized approach to employment planning and job development—one person at a time . . . one employer at a time. (Office of Disability Employment Policy Website: www.dol.gov/odep/categories/workforce/CustomizedEmployment/what/index.htm)

66. The workforce development system is a network of state and local systems funded mainly by the U.S. DOL as mandated by the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). The term workforce development is used to describe employment initiative services offered by agencies and government programs. Each state has workforce investment boards (WIBs), composed of the governor; those appointed by the governor, such as local business leaders; and other stakeholders in the community interested in employment training and services. The direct delivery services to consumers are usually provided through what are known as One-Stop Career Centers (also referred to in the past as unemployment centers/offices). The comprehensive state plan developed by each state's WIB describes the workforce development activities to be undertaken in the state, how the state will implement the key requirements of the WIA, and how special populations, including welfare recipients, veterans, and individuals with multiple barriers to employment (which includes people with disabilities), will be served. One-Stop Career Centers work with employers and multiple employment partners, and provide training, benefits' counseling, and services to job seekers. Mandated partners are: adult, youth, veterans' workforce, dislocated workers, Native American, migrant seasonal farm workers, and Job Corps programs; and the vocational rehabilitation, welfare-to-work, Housing and Urban Development employment and training services, community services block grants, adult education and literacy, postsecondary vocational education, and Trade Adjustment Assistance programs.

67. Implementation of the Americans with Disabilities Act: Challenges, Best Practices, and New Opportunities for Success, July 26, 2007.

68. The Workplace Flexibility Toolkit is located at: www.dol.gov/odep/workplaceflexibility/.

69. This section was contributed by Joan Williams.

70. This section was contributed by Susan Lambert.

71. This section was contributed by Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes, Jacquelyn James, Steve Sweet, Kevin Cahill, David Snow, Kim DeAngelis, Suzanne Lawler, Danielle Hartmann, and Maureen O'Keeffe.

72. Contributions by the Workforce Policy Systems team, U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy.

73. This section was contributed by Lisa Disselkamp.