On a Break, and Working Better for It

More Companies Use Flexible Time To Raise Performance

Employees at Merritt Group in Reston take multi-hour lunch breaks, leave work early the Friday before a holiday and work shorter hours during the summer.

It's not because they're slacking off. Merritt and other employers are increasingly implementing absence policies that give workers greater flexibility in managing their time off.

The company, which handles public relations for technology firms, switched five years ago from differentiating between sick time and vacation time to a paid-time-off model, which lumps all of a worker's off days together. And managers encourage employees to take longer weekends and extended lunch breaks so that they don't burn themselves out, said Patty Groce, the company's vice president for organizational development.

"Merritt Group really feels that ideal performance for the company results in a two-way policy," Groce said. "If we understand that their priorities in life include their work and personal lives, then we can be flexible and be able to meet both the agency's needs and the staff's personal needs."

As the priorities of workers change, the model of separating sick time from vacation time might have become outdated, said Pamela Wolf, an employment law analyst with human resources and law information provider CCH. More accommodating absence policies lead to higher morale and productivity, she said.

Programs that offer more flexibility, such as lumping all leave into paid time off, give workers an opportunity to make sure that workflow isn't disrupted by absences that they can plan for. Buyback programs provide an initiative for employees not to "use up" all their sick days before the year's end. And flexible scheduling lets working spouses plan around each other's schedules.

At companies that differentiate between sick days and vacation days, two-thirds of workers who call in sick haven't actually come down with the flu. They're taking the last-minute time off to deal with personal or family issues, according to the 317 human resources professionals surveyed by CCH. And the unscheduled leave slows down the pace of the workplace for everyone else.

Most of the respondents said they could detect a pattern in unscheduled absences, with the highest incidences on Mondays, Fridays and around holidays. This pattern results in a dip in employee productivity that can be somewhat remedied through absence control solutions such as paid time off, disciplinary action and buyback and bonus programs for workers who don't use all their sick days, CCH reported. Yet 40 percent of workplaces surveyed didn't have paid time off, and fewer had buyback or bonus programs in place.

This points to a need for employers to change their benefits to adapt to the changing demographics of their workers, Wolf said. Younger workers tend to change employment more frequently and are generally more interested in immediate issues, such as reimbursement for time off and year-end bonuses, as opposed to long-term ones such as eventual promotion, she said.

Companies with flexible policies report high employee satisfaction, which in turn leads to lower rates of absenteeism, Wolf said.

"We know that twice as many employers with poor or fair morale in their workplace reported that absenteeism had increased over the last two years, compared with employers with very good morale," she said.

Accountants at Cocke, Szpanka and Taylor in Reston work 50-hour weeks during tax season. The company compensates them by giving them the option of taking Fridays off between Memorial Day and Labor Day and, more recently, between Nov. 1 and New Year's.

"That really helps you mentally to get through a busy tax season, to know that in the summer you have the ability to take a Friday off and save a vacation day," said office administrator Lisa DiGiovanni.

Companies without such flexible policies instead appeal to employees' sense of responsibility. Cooling equipment supplier Boland, based in Rockville, still separates sick days from vacation days, although some departments allow employees to pick their own hours, said Vice President Sarah Heitkemper.

On the first day of orientation, employees must sign their agreement to an absenteeism policy that emphasizes reliability and accountability. And there are penalties for noncompliance: About 30 percent of employees who are fired lose their jobs because of "unreliability and absenteeism issues," Heitkemper said.

Over the years, Boland has seen its attendance policies loosen. Some employees now telecommute and others get to work as early as 6 a.m., Heitkemper said. Workers can use sick leave to take care of family members, as well.

"The workplace has become less formal, less stiff and more flexible in a lot of different ways," she said.