Staffing Solutions to Replace the 40-Hour Workweek

Companies today are looking for staffing solutions to replace the 40-hour workweek. The workday time clock that was created at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution no longer applies to the workers and employers of 2016. Staffing agencies in Utah believe the standard forty-hour workweek may be out of date for the majority of organizations today. The need for workable staffing solutions will lead to changes in the typical workday from being centered around the workplace to a mix of workplace and home. Even workers who don’t have flexible work options can easily communicate with their work teams or files by using their email or smartphones.

Many assume that technology increases productivity and a better work/life balance, but it turns out that the opposite is true. Placement services have seen that easy access to work from home has created a vicious cycle of stress and burnout that has a negative affect on customer satisfaction and employee retention.

Placement services are taking notice of this trend toward burnout and are creating staffing solutions that benefit employees, customers, and their bottom-line. Companies like Google have childcare on campus to reduce the stress of having to drop off or pick up a child from daycare and still get to work on time. HubSpot’s staffing solution is offering an unlimited vacation policy. Other organizations have given their employees flexible work options that move away from the typical 40-hour workweek, which includes having the option to work from home or working a compressed schedule with longer hours but fewer days.

Moving away from the traditional 40-hour workweek to open work schedules can be scary. Many companies and organizations worry that team members might take advantage of a new policy that doesn’t require workers to observe specific hours. Some employers fear a loss of productivity and worry that little work will get done, but in fact, the opposite is true. Ernst & Young allowed flexible work options in the early 1990’s to help retain more female workers. They discovered that female employees left at a rate 10% to 15% higher than their male colleagues. Twenty years later, the rate of female team members leaving is only 2% higher than males.

A New York stock trading and brokerage firm started a new no-hour workweek: no set hours, no set location for work and unlimited time off. The results have been favorable. HubSpot has experienced similar results with their unlimited vacation policy. The biggest factors to the success of these open work staffing solutions support from the CEO and making sure they have employees who thrive in this type of environment and who won’t abuse the policy.

These examples show that it’s time to rethink the traditional eight-hours per day, forty-hours per week schedule. You don’t have to make dramatic changes to work schedules overnight. By choosing staffing solutions that include flexible or open work hours, any company can make changes to the workweek that can boost morale and retention.