Page 140 - Retaining Top Employees

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128 Retaining Top Employees

1. Many people are
Cut Commute Burnout
becoming accustomed
Compressed workweeks
can be great where employ- to working longer: 10-
ees face particularly brutal commutes. and 12-hour days are
Where I live (just outside San now becoming much
Francisco),the Friday evening com- more common.
mute is especially severe and begins 2. Coupled with this
as early as 2:30 p.m. Many organiza-
lengthening of the
tions here use a variant of the com- workday, there’s an
pressed workweek to help their
employees escape that particular almost contradictory
form of purgatory! desire to attain a better
work-life balance, to
have more opportunity to enjoy leisure time.
Compressed workweeks allow reconciliation of these para-
doxical pressures. Employees are then much more likely to
“feel at home” and so more likely to stay in their jobs.

Resources to Help with the Flexible Work Model. The Internet
has become useful for employers deploying and managing flexi-
ble workers. There are many great Web sites that provide excel-
lent resources for using the flexible work model. Here are some
of the most popular Internet resources at the time this book
went to press:
• www.executiveworks.com. Internet-based software that
provides comprehensive tools to allow employees (as
well as contractors and vendors) to manage themselves,
including collaboration tools for project management
and reporting purposes.
• www.workoptions.com. A great site covering all aspects
of flexible working, this is a particularly interesting
resource as it’s written from the employee’s perspective.
• www.knowledgepoint.com. This division of professional
mega-publisher CCH offers all the tools you need to pro-
duce policies and procedures to cover flexible work.