Start When You Please

Ellen Dye, an administrator for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in Chicago, takes a 4 p.m. swim in the glass-enclosed pool of her apartment house and watches commuter traffic build up outside. One of her bosses, Lee Feldman, gets up early and jogs along Chicago's lakefront. In Palo Alto, Calif., Ted Stephens, an executive of Alza, a pharmaceutical firm, fixes a leisurely breakfast for his two children, drives them to their school, goes back to bed and shows up at his office as late as 11 a.m.

For all three, the enjoyment of these routines is sharpened by the knowledge that they are relaxing while colleagues are working; yet they are not goofing off. They are benefiting from an idea called Flextime, which is loosening the rigidity of the 9-to-5 day for a growing number of workers in the U.S.

Plans vary, but the basic idea is that employees can arrange their own work hours around a "core" time. At the Chicago HEW office, employees must be on the job between 9 a.m. and 3:30 p.m.; but they can come in as early as 7, and stay as late as 5:30. Under some Flextime plans, workers choose a starting and a quitting time and have to stick to it. Under others they can, with their bosses' permission, come in at different times each day. Says Katy Westlund, a switchboard operator for Hewlett-Packard, which has adopted Flextime for employees at all 19 of its U.S. manufacturing plants: "You just tell your supervisor the day before when you're coming in in the morning." Nor do Flextime employees always have to work the same number of hours each day. At Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance in Milwaukee, a few workers put in extra hours Monday through Thursday, then knock off at lunchtime Friday.

Imported Flexibility. Introduced in Germany in the late 1960s, Flextime was imported by U.S. multinationals that had first tried the idea in Europe. Some 70,000 Government employees, including HEW workers in Boston, Denver, Seattle and Chicago, are now on Flextime. Government officials estimate the plan has been adopted by 40 to 50 companies in the U.S., including such giants as Control Data (20,000 workers on Flextime) and Metropolitan Life (15,000).

Flextime is especially appreciated by working parents, who can choose either to see their children off to school in the morning or to pick them up after classes, and sports enthusiasts, who can play golf or tennis in the early morning or late afternoon. Supervisors report that productivity generally improves under Flextime--since employees can work at the hours when they feel most alert--and that absenteeism drops. Workers no longer call in sick for an entire day in order to get a couple of hours to attend to personal business.

On the minus side, Flextime makes it tougher for supervisors to coordinate the work of employees who start at different times. It also increases utility bills of employers who have to keep offices open longer. But managers and workers agree that the freedom gained is well worth the problems. Says Ellen Dye: "It has changed my whole attitude toward work. People feel trusted."

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