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FINDING PEOPLE TO WORK FOR YOU

A recent report of the National Institute of Business Management predicts that labor shortages will worsen rapidly. Who will be hardest hit by increased competition for workers? You guessed it - small businesses.  The reasons for an impending nationwide shortage of workers are both demographic and economic.  The work force that has grown at as much as 3 percent per year is expected to grow at the rate of only 1 percent per year.   Many of the young people entering the work force will have poor education and limited skills. Don't be surprised if many can't read or write. The long and short of our "labor crisis" is that attracting and retaining good workers will be increasingly difficult in the future. If you own or operate a small business and you don't want to be stuck with hiring illiterates (if you can find anyone to work at all) or paying two to three times the minimum wage to attract young workers to entry-level jobs, you should take steps now to expand the pool of applicants for jobs with your company.  You should also adopt personnel policies and practices to make your business a "good place to work" so that you can retain your best employees.

One way to expand the pool of applicants for positions in your business is to offer prospective employees an alternative to a standard eight-hour-per-day, forty-hour-per-week job. Many older workers, and adult women with young children who might not otherwise apply for a full-time forty-hour-a-week, eight-hour-a-day job may be attracted to your business if you can offer them more control over their working hours. Obviously, making part-time work available is an alternative. But suppose your business is such that you can't survive with just part-time workers? Here are some alternatives that allow you attract capable workers with good skills and a strong work ethic who might not otherwise apply for positions with your company.

Job Sharing
With job sharing, two employees share the same job and job responsibilities. One might work in the mornings and one in the afternoons. Or one might work from Monday through Wednesday morning while the other takes Wednesday afternoon through Friday. Or the two employees might rotate the number of days they work each week. For example, employee A works two days the first week and three the next while employee B works three days the first week and two the next. Regardless of the arrangement you have someone occupying the position a full forty hours each week while the employees who share the position each get to work only half-time. In addition to being able to offer what is really part-time work for a full-time job (and therefore attract applicants who might not be interested in full-time work), there are several other advantages for your business that can occur as a result of job sharing. First, with two employees working the position, a "fresh" person is always available - there is no afternoon or end of-the-week letdown in performance. Second, since the two employees are normally only working twenty hours per week, they may be much more willing than a regular forty-hour-per-week employee to do more than their normal hours in periods of peak work loads. Finally, with two employees working the same job you have a built-in, fully trained replacement who might be willing to work a full-time schedule on a temporary basis, should one of the two go on vacation or be out due to sickness or for personal reasons.

If you do decide to provide job sharing as an alternative work arrangement, recognize that filling such a position is more complicated than hiring someone for a regular full-time job. In job sharing, two people are involved, and they must be compatible.  Matching a "neatnik" with someone who thrives in clutter just won't work. You'll have nothing but continuous arguments. In addition, job sharing places an increased demand on the employees involved to communicate and coordinate their activities. They must leave messages for each other about the status of projects or work activities; agree upon one standard system for organizing work so the job-sharing partner can find what he or she needs; and decide who will perform periodic functions such as end-of-the-day or end-of-the-week reporting or record keeping. An additional issue you must resolve is how you will handle benefits such as life insurance, health insurance, sick pay, and vacations/holidays. If you provide such benefits for job-sharing employees (and most companies with job sharing do), then you must decide whether full benefits will be provided to both employees or split between the two the way pay and working hours are split.

Job Splitting
Job splitting is an alternative to job sharing that retains many of the benefits of job sharing while minimizing the amount of communication and coordination required between the two employees. Essentially, with job splitting two employees share the same job, but duties and responsibilities of the job are "split" rather than just the hours. With job splitting, you are dividing one full-time position into two distinct parts. The division may be according to when the work must be performed - for example, morning or afternoon, first of the week or end of the week. Or, and more likely, the division can be by job function or skills required.  The advantage of this latter approach is that you can seek out persons with skills more closely matched to the specific job requirements or you can allow the two employees who will be splitting the job to divide up the job functions according to their own preferences and skills.

Flextime
Job sharing and job splitting involve two employees dividing up one full-time job so each employee can work part-time while the company retains the benefits of a full-time employee. Under flextime, employees work a full forty-hour week (or eighty hours over a period of two weeks), but gain some degree of control over their starting and ending time. Normally, under flextime the company adopts a "core" time when all employees must be at work - for example, 9:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M.  However, employees are allowed to adjust their starting and ending time around those core hours.  For example, one employee might come in at 6:30 and leave at 3:00 while another might come in at 9:30 and leave at 6:00. Under flextime, the only requirements are that all employees work their
full eight hours and that they are present during the core hours.  Additionally, under some flextime plans, employees are allowed to "bank" hours. Thus, an employee who wanted a half-day off with pay could work twelve hours one day and only four hours the next. The advantage of flextime for employees is that they can adjust their working hours to meet their own personal needs and desires. Morning people can come in early. Night people can sleep late. Employees with children have a few extra hours to get them off to school in the morning or can arrange their work hours so they can be home before their children in the afternoons. In addition to advantages for employees, flextime also has at least one advantage for your business. With some employees coming in early and others coming in late, you can extend the hours your business is open and serve customers earlier in the morning and later in the afternoon without having to pay for overtime.

As in the case of other alternative work schedules, flextime does present some issues you have to resolve. For example, how will you provide supervision over the longer workday? Your alternatives are to provide no supervision during certain hours, split the workday with an assistant manager so a manager is always present, or make one of the employees coming in early and one staying late acting supervisor during the non-core hours. A second issue you will encounter with flextime is how to keep track of the hours employees actually work. You can place employees on their honor to work their full eight hours; install a time clock and have employees clock in and out; or create a sign-in/sign-out sheet where employees record their time of arrival and departure. A third flextime issue is how much freedom employees will have to set their own hours. For example, will they be able to change their working hours daily (i.e., no one is tardy until core time begins) or only periodically (i.e., once a month, once a quarter, etc.)? A frequent problem with flextime is that many employees may elect to come in early. Consequently, you may find yourself with less coverage in the late afternoon. To avoid such a problem, it may be necessary for you to restrict the number of employees who can come in early and require employees to rotate their hours periodically to give everyone who desires it a chance at the early arrival time.

Compressed Workweek
A compressed workweek is similar to flextime in that it gives employees the ability to work a full-time job while still having time off during the normal workweek (Monday through Friday) to take care of personal business. Under a compressed workweek, employees may be allowed to work four ten-hour days; three twelve-hour days; or alternate weeks working four nine-hour days one week and five nine-hour days the next.  Thus, employees get one to two days off every week or every two weeks. For your company, longer workdays may mean that you can make more efficient use of equipment (for example, your delivery trucks stay out an extra hour or two each day) and/or extend your business hours during most days of the week. Compressed workweeks also have the advantage of typically reducing absenteeism, since employees have time to take care of personal business such as routine doctor/dentist appointments, and employees soon recognize that a nonpaid absence costs them not just eight hours' pay, but ten or twelve hours pay. The main disadvantage of adopting a compressed workweek is that by doing so you place your company on a work schedule at odds with other businesses and what customers have come to expect. Your competitors are probably on a five-day week (or even six- or seven-day week), while your business would be on a shorter workweek. One way to overcome this limitation is to vary the days of the week your employees work. For example, some might work a compressed workweek that begins on Monday and ends on Thursday while others work a Tuesday through Friday or Wednesday through Saturday schedule. If you can tolerate a reduced staff during certain days of the week (for example, those days of the week when sales are slow), a compressed workweek provide your employees with a flexible work schedule and allows you to increase staffing and have your business open for longer hours on those days when you are likely to have the most customers.

The key to making alternative work schedules work for your business is to match your business needs and staffing requirements with the needs and desires of a pool of workers you are trying to attract. With the shrinking supply of qualified young worker to fill entry-level positions in your business, you need to find creative alternatives to the standard forty-hour-per-week, eight-hour-per day, nine-to-five job. No longer will it be enough just to place a sign in your shop window to attract the work force your business requires.  In the next decade, "good" workers will be in great demand. To compete in a tight labor market, you will need to make your business a "good place to work." One way lo do that is to offer your employees an alternative work schedule.  Such a schedule meets an increasing need of the workers of tomorrow - the ability to exercise more control over their working hours.

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