NEW YORK — Many employers who embraced telecommuting, job-sharing and compressed workweeks in the competitive job market of the 1990s are cutting back such "work/life" programs now.
The programs, designed to give workers more flexibility, are seen as easy items for financially strained businesses to eliminate, analysts said, although some added that the popular programs benefit companies and employees alike.
"It’s hard economic times," said Lori Rosen, a workplace analyst for CCH Inc., a Riverwoods, Ill.-based business information publisher that released a survey on work-life programs Wednesday. "People are saying where can I cut? And it’s looking like they’re saying, well this is a benefit. I gave it. I can take it away."
The survey of more than 400 employers found that companies offering job-sharing dropped from 37 percent in 2002 to 30 percent this year. Those offering compressed workweeks — programs that let workers put in their hours over four days rather than five — fell from 49 percent to 40 percent. Telecommuting fell from 47 percent to 45 percent.
The survey, conducted in June, echoes findings by other workplace experts.
When the Society for Human Resource Management surveyed its membership of personnel executives earlier this year, 55 percent said their companies were offering flextime, in which employees can shift their day-to-day work hours. Last year 64 percent of the companies offered flextime.
The number offering telecommuting, job-sharing and compressed workweeks also declined, but to a much smaller degree. It marked the first decline in family-friendly benefits after surveys chronicled their popularity rising through most of the 1990s, said Frank Scanlan, an Society for Human Resource Management spokesman.
Meanwhile, some companies are continuing to offer such programs but devoting much less money and manpower to running them, according to a survey of personnel executives earlier this year by the Alliance for Work-Life Progress and the newsletter Work/Life Today.
"The work-life area is sometimes considered something of a soft benefit, so it’s often the first to go. It’s expendable," said Sharon O’Malley, the newsletter’s publisher.
Among the companies cutting back is Merrill Lynch &Co., which had helped its employees make the switch to working from home through a special Telework Lab — a cluster of desks and computers set up to mimic the dynamics of a remote office.
Merrill shut its labs last year, about the same time it cut all the staffers in charge of administering such work-life programs.
"Our head count has been significantly reduced. … The human resources function kind of went through a transformation," said Selena Morris, a spokeswoman for the brokerage firm. But she added that the company continues to offer workers all its flexible-work benefits.
The CCH survey also examined absenteeism, finding that workers’ rate of unscheduled absences declined slightly in 2003, from an average of 2.1 percent to 1.9 percent.
Work-life benefits remain popular methods for combating absenteeism. Rosen said she worries that reducing the programs will come back to bite employers by driving up absence rates.
But Scanlan said the benefits probably will rebound as the economy recovers and employers reassess matters.
"These are benefits that do wonders for morale, and employees love them," he said. "And they don’t cost the organization a lot of money."
Copyright ©2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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