Great Place To Work published its “Best Small & Medium Workplaces” list in a recent issue of FORTUNE Magazine. Leslie Caccamese, Senior Strategic Marketing Manager with the Great Place to Work Institute, recently wrote a post providing a number of insights about the 50 organizations that made the list.
In this list was the slightly more-progressive idea regarding time spent in the office: 20 of the 50 Best Small & Medium Workplaces offered employees the ability to work compressed work weeks.
Compressed work weeks require employees to work a full number of hours but provides them with the ability to move around those hours more freely. For example, an employee may work 80 hours in two weeks, but move all of his or her hours up so that he or she can take that second Friday off for a three-day weekend (without having to worry about using any vacation time or PTO).
Just as there are arguments for a compressed work week there are arguments against it. Employers may want to have X employee regularly available. Certain employees may be tempted to stack hours Monday-Thursday fairly regularly and aim for that three-day-weekend. Depending on the nature of the business and the nature of the position, compressed work weeks could either make a lot of sense, or very little. With the right guidelines in place however, a compressed work week can be a great benefit for many people.
