Lighter workloads get heavy praise, poll shows

Companies that permit workers to cut back on hours, share jobs or reduce their workload in other ways are being rewarded with increased productivity, talent retention and improved employee relations, says Ellen Ernst Kossek, a workplace researcher at Michigan State University.

A recently released study conducted over the last six years found that such arrangements increased in 60 percent of firms polled. The study involved interviews with 88 managers and executives in 20 U.S. and Canadian companies in six different business sectors.

Among the findings:

Retention of talent was the main reason companies supported the arrangements.

Reduced-load arrangements spread to new departments and to new groups of people (such as men and single employees) in 50 percent of companies.

Hard economic times and organizational restructuring did not have a negative effect on reduced-load arrangements.

A change in top leadership to a CEO with high commitment to promoting work-life balance had a positive effect on reduced-load work in 35 percent of firms.

The MSU study found creative arrangements allowed valued employees to have greater control over the amount of work they did and also allowed them to be more involved with family and nonwork responsibilities while maintaining their career objectives.

DaimlerChrysler Financial Services in Farmington Hills, Mich., is one company that has embraced the concept of reduced-load work to help retain valuable employees.

Dawn Eaglin was a human resources analyst there for 11 years when she was confronted with a difficult dilemma: quit her job or ask for reduced hours. She had a year-old daughter and was struggling to meet the demands of her job and home life.

Working in human resources, she had granted numerous employees reduced hours but had never considered it for herself.

“I did some soul searching and I realized that I just wasn’t happy trying to balance everything,” she says.

In 1998, she reduced her hours to four days a week. In 2002, after the birth of her second child, she became a part-time employee. She shares her job with another woman.

The MSU study also found that these arrangements improved productivity and improved employee relations.

The study found the spread of reduced-load work arrangements is proceeding at a slow but steady pace and is likely to continue, Kossek says.

“Companies don’t need to think in the black-and-white world,” Kossek says. “The people who make this work are not slackers. They probably get as much or more done as a full-time employee.

“But you’re giving them control to deal with sick parents or years of burnout instead of having them drop out,” she says.