Comment
Rate
A four-day work week?
 |
| Across the nation, soaring gas prices have prompted some businesses to help their employees cope with the pain at the pump. |
Helping workers cope with high gas prices
By Adolfo Mendez | Associate Editor
When Ryan Dillman, digital media manager for the Noblesville (Ind.) Daily Times, calculated how much he was paying in gas to get to work, he thought he had the answer: telecommuting.
Dillman found he could save about $100 a month on fuel if he didn’t have to drive the nearly 100 miles to and from work every day. His boss agreed, so now Dillman works from home two days out of the week.
“There has to be a lot of trust between the employee and the manager for this to work,” Dillman said. “They have to know that you’re going to do your work.” In his case, that’s easy to determine: he’s responsible for updating about 15 Web sites.
Is working from home distracting? “Not really,” said Dillman, who’s married. “We don’t have any kids. My wife works the opposite shift, so she’s home but she’s sleeping.” Across the nation, soaring gas prices have prompted some businesses to help their employees cope with the pain at the pump.
A survey conducted in May by the Alexandria, Va.-based Society for Human Resources found that 26 percent of businesses are offering a flexible work schedule to help employees with higher gas prices. The survey also found that 18 percent of employers are offering telecommuting from home. (The most common tactic — 42 percent — was to raise mileage reimbursements to the IRS maximum.)
Mike Corbett, publisher of the Noblesville Daily Times, said that so far only Dillman telecommutes. “If there’s a way we can meet our employees needs and still get the job done, we’re open to it,” Corbett said. “Ryan would not be able to do this every day, but he has a long commute and this does help him save money on gas. He drives a considerable distance and not everybody does.”
Newspaper companies, like some local governments, are also offering employees the option of a four-day workweek to save on gas.
Jonathan Crawford, director of human resources at the Sierra Nevada Media Group, said some employees had been on “4-10s” prior to rising gas prices. However, employees are now citing concern about rising fuel costs as the reason they’d like to switch work schedules to four 10-hour days instead of five 8-hour days per week.
The company has accommodated employees that commute long distances from a resort community around Lake Tahoe. “For our papers in California, we have not done the same since wage and hour laws there require an extensive process before that can happen,” Crawford said. “The employees there don’t travel as far to work, either.
“The employees who now work four days are happy, and I haven’t heard a single complaint — yet — from anyone else,” he added. “I think everyone understands the reasoning.”
Currently no employees work from home, but Crawford said the option remains open. “We already do that for some during the harsher winter driving days,” he said.
In general, offering a flexible work schedule helps businesses earn the label of “preferred employer,” Crawford said. “Besides pay and job security, employees want training — ‘Am I working for an employer that’s going to give me training and give me more value?’ — and they want to know that the company promotes from within,” he said.
“I think employees understand that even when employers can’t provide, say, pay increases, but the employer is willing to change work schedules, they’ll see that at least employers are doing what they reasonably can,” Crawford said.
Maria Liggin, Gannett’s director of human resources, said about 175 of the company’s 600 employees at its corporate headquarters in McLean, Va., are on some type of flexible work plan.
“We’ve seen just in the last couple of weeks more requests for compressed workweeks — due to the fact of rising gas prices — here at corporate and at our newspapers,” Liggin said. Compressed workweeks could mean working four 8.5-hour days and then working a half day (3.5 hours) on Friday at home, she said.
The specific arrangements are left up to individual newspapers to decide, Liggin said. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, she said, because not everybody can work a 10-hour, four-day workweek. “One of the cons of the 4-10s is getting people accustomed to working longer work days,” Liggin said. “You may end up fatigued and just plain tired because the body isn’t used to working that long.”
Not every newspaper company is seeing an interest in a shortened workweek, however. Tom Riebock, director of human resources at Wick Communications, a family-owned newspaper company in Sierra Vista, Ariz., said most of the company’s 32 newspapers in 13 states are in small communities where long commutes are not the norm. “There are a few exceptions,” Riebock said. For instance, one weekly has a four-day, 10-hour schedule in the pressroom because of the production demands. “We have not seen in our group any strong demand for it. We have in our policies that ability to schedule flex time, so it would be something we would consider if the circumstances dictated.”
A bigger issue for his company is raising the mileage reimbursement for delivery carriers. “That’s really been the greatest impact for fuel costs that we have had,” he said. “It’s just an added expense.”
There’s also been no demand for a shortened week at the Courier-Express in Brookville, Pa., according to Robin Duttry, human resources manger. “Our newspaper has no plans to convert to a four-day workweek,” she said. “Our departments are relatively small, some with as few as four employees. If we were to split one of those departments in half with two working Monday through Thursday and the other two working Tuesday through Friday and one employee calls off sick on, say, a Monday or a Friday, that would leave one person to handle the workload of all four on that day.”
In that situation, Duttry said the other option would be to “call someone in to work for the person who’s off sick.” However this employee would have to be paid overtime, she said.
Still, the convenience of flex schedules can go a long way to boosting morale at a time when many newspaper employees are uncertain about their futures. The digital media manager at the Noblesville Daily News wouldn’t have it any other way. “It’s very nice,” Dillman said of his ability to work from home. The company equipped him with a Sony Vaio laptop, although he often works from his own desktop PC.
Because it’s the middle of summer, Dillman said he prefers to wear shorts and T-shirt when he’s working from home. But the lifestyle isn’t as glamorous as it might sound, he quickly points out. “When people end up working from home, they actually put in more hours and do more because they don’t want to lose the privilege of working from home,” he said.
Dillman found he could save about $100 a month on fuel if he didn’t have to drive the nearly 100 miles to and from work every day. His boss agreed, so now Dillman works from home two days out of the week.
“There has to be a lot of trust between the employee and the manager for this to work,” Dillman said. “They have to know that you’re going to do your work.” In his case, that’s easy to determine: he’s responsible for updating about 15 Web sites.
Is working from home distracting? “Not really,” said Dillman, who’s married. “We don’t have any kids. My wife works the opposite shift, so she’s home but she’s sleeping.” Across the nation, soaring gas prices have prompted some businesses to help their employees cope with the pain at the pump.
A survey conducted in May by the Alexandria, Va.-based Society for Human Resources found that 26 percent of businesses are offering a flexible work schedule to help employees with higher gas prices. The survey also found that 18 percent of employers are offering telecommuting from home. (The most common tactic — 42 percent — was to raise mileage reimbursements to the IRS maximum.)
Mike Corbett, publisher of the Noblesville Daily Times, said that so far only Dillman telecommutes. “If there’s a way we can meet our employees needs and still get the job done, we’re open to it,” Corbett said. “Ryan would not be able to do this every day, but he has a long commute and this does help him save money on gas. He drives a considerable distance and not everybody does.”
Newspaper companies, like some local governments, are also offering employees the option of a four-day workweek to save on gas.
Jonathan Crawford, director of human resources at the Sierra Nevada Media Group, said some employees had been on “4-10s” prior to rising gas prices. However, employees are now citing concern about rising fuel costs as the reason they’d like to switch work schedules to four 10-hour days instead of five 8-hour days per week.
The company has accommodated employees that commute long distances from a resort community around Lake Tahoe. “For our papers in California, we have not done the same since wage and hour laws there require an extensive process before that can happen,” Crawford said. “The employees there don’t travel as far to work, either.
“The employees who now work four days are happy, and I haven’t heard a single complaint — yet — from anyone else,” he added. “I think everyone understands the reasoning.”
Currently no employees work from home, but Crawford said the option remains open. “We already do that for some during the harsher winter driving days,” he said.
In general, offering a flexible work schedule helps businesses earn the label of “preferred employer,” Crawford said. “Besides pay and job security, employees want training — ‘Am I working for an employer that’s going to give me training and give me more value?’ — and they want to know that the company promotes from within,” he said.
“I think employees understand that even when employers can’t provide, say, pay increases, but the employer is willing to change work schedules, they’ll see that at least employers are doing what they reasonably can,” Crawford said.
Maria Liggin, Gannett’s director of human resources, said about 175 of the company’s 600 employees at its corporate headquarters in McLean, Va., are on some type of flexible work plan.
“We’ve seen just in the last couple of weeks more requests for compressed workweeks — due to the fact of rising gas prices — here at corporate and at our newspapers,” Liggin said. Compressed workweeks could mean working four 8.5-hour days and then working a half day (3.5 hours) on Friday at home, she said.
The specific arrangements are left up to individual newspapers to decide, Liggin said. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, she said, because not everybody can work a 10-hour, four-day workweek. “One of the cons of the 4-10s is getting people accustomed to working longer work days,” Liggin said. “You may end up fatigued and just plain tired because the body isn’t used to working that long.”
Not every newspaper company is seeing an interest in a shortened workweek, however. Tom Riebock, director of human resources at Wick Communications, a family-owned newspaper company in Sierra Vista, Ariz., said most of the company’s 32 newspapers in 13 states are in small communities where long commutes are not the norm. “There are a few exceptions,” Riebock said. For instance, one weekly has a four-day, 10-hour schedule in the pressroom because of the production demands. “We have not seen in our group any strong demand for it. We have in our policies that ability to schedule flex time, so it would be something we would consider if the circumstances dictated.”
A bigger issue for his company is raising the mileage reimbursement for delivery carriers. “That’s really been the greatest impact for fuel costs that we have had,” he said. “It’s just an added expense.”
There’s also been no demand for a shortened week at the Courier-Express in Brookville, Pa., according to Robin Duttry, human resources manger. “Our newspaper has no plans to convert to a four-day workweek,” she said. “Our departments are relatively small, some with as few as four employees. If we were to split one of those departments in half with two working Monday through Thursday and the other two working Tuesday through Friday and one employee calls off sick on, say, a Monday or a Friday, that would leave one person to handle the workload of all four on that day.”
In that situation, Duttry said the other option would be to “call someone in to work for the person who’s off sick.” However this employee would have to be paid overtime, she said.
Still, the convenience of flex schedules can go a long way to boosting morale at a time when many newspaper employees are uncertain about their futures. The digital media manager at the Noblesville Daily News wouldn’t have it any other way. “It’s very nice,” Dillman said of his ability to work from home. The company equipped him with a Sony Vaio laptop, although he often works from his own desktop PC.
Because it’s the middle of summer, Dillman said he prefers to wear shorts and T-shirt when he’s working from home. But the lifestyle isn’t as glamorous as it might sound, he quickly points out. “When people end up working from home, they actually put in more hours and do more because they don’t want to lose the privilege of working from home,” he said.
 |
||
| Inland study: healthcare costs increase for papers |
Article Rating
Reader Comments
The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of inlandpress.org
