Snips and Snails and Puppydog Tails

No, I’m not talking about the kind I had back in my high school and college dance team days. I’m talking about work flexibility. Since I started with my company over a decade ago (yes, really), we’ve had a pretty flexible work schedule. The general understanding is that an employee works out a schedule with his or her manager that best fits the employee’s needs and the department’s needs (within reason). That includes arrival times between 6 am and 9 am, with a corresponding flexibility in departure times. Most weeks we can also work ahead up to 4 hours and leave early on Fridays.

For over a year now, my department has had the option of working from home one day a week. It might seem like a small thing, but that one day/week of working from home has been amazingly helpful in so many ways. Busy weekend and no time to do laundry? I can get caught up while working in my pjs (trust me, nobody needs to see that). School function in the middle of the day on the opposite end of town from work? Work from home and don’t miss a minute of it. Oh, and did I mention gas savings? I was surprised to see how much further my gas tank went just cutting one day of commute (I have about a 28 mile round-trip commute).

And, it turns out the once-weekly work from home schedule has proven helpful for the department’s productivity. Not surprisingly, employees are getting more work done without the interruptions of the office. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know I roll in the time I’d spend commuting to my work-time each work from home day (and I know I’m not the only one), which means I happily work more than 8 hours that day. The one day a week work from home system has worked so well, an announcement was recently made that we’re expanding the program – now we can work from home 2 days each week! Do the math – if nothing else, that’s saving nearly 60 miles of wear and tear on my vehicle EACH WEEK. On a more personal level, that’s two days each week that I’m not going crazy tearing out the door to get Sam to school AND me to work by 9. And, while we set standard work from home days on our calendars (mine are Monday and Thursday), we also still have flexibility to change them if something out of the ordinary comes up.

There are many perks to my job other than a steady paycheck–free sodas and popcorn (yes, really), coworkers I’m proud to call friends, summertime “free” or “shorts” Fridays–but the flexibility extended to employees in my department that allow us to take care of our LIFE as well as our job…that’s what might keep me here forever.

Edited to add link to some more thoughts on this flexible arrangement and how it affects our childcare here.