Life No Longer Runs on the Employer’s Clock

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Work scheduling can be a considerable source of agency and freedom for you and your team or a constant source of dread and conflict. Mastering a schedule that works for your portable sanitation business in this day and age requires you to accommodate the valid individual needs of everyone who works for you. It can be challenging at times, but there are several handy tips for managing your workers’ hours to take some of the stress out of scheduling in today’s business climate.

Trust your team to help

In this modern age, you cannot reasonably expect employees to devote time beyond their workday to your business for free. It wasn’t fair in the 1980s, and it’s not acceptable now. As an employer, you must ensure your team can focus on the task at hand during work hours. How can you do that? Flexing to the best of your ability, so the imminent needs of your team are met. And how can you possibly do that? By enabling your team’s flexibility. They need to be able to organize daily schedules to suit their needs.

When you empower your teams to make the best decision on how to plan and carve out their workday, you’re allowing them to flex their integrity. When you place that power and responsibility on your team, they will prioritize their workload beside their family and personal commitments and set themselves up for success. Don’t be afraid to trust your team with that level of control. It’s also a quick way to see which team members shine when weighted with real responsibility and which ones falter.

Be judicious about scheduling staff meetings

Discussions and meetings are inevitable, but they’re not the be-all-end-all for solid communication, team-building or task management. If your business requires a hands-on session regularly, it is essential not to confuse absence from those meetings with a lack of interest, integrity or competence. Life does not run on the employer’s clock anymore.

Families are working multiple jobs to make the same money (counting for inflation) that a single breadwinner used to supply for their families 30 years ago. The more accommodating you are to your workforce, the more present they can be when they’re in the trenches with you.

Allow employees to work different hours

Let your night-owls work late and sleep in, and the parents of sports kids flex their days off around their kids’ games. Let your office staff who would prefer not to commute work from home. There’s no valid reason to keep up the appearance of a functioning workplace by forcing everyone to their desks. We waste a national average of an hour daily just getting to and from work.

What difference does it make to productivity in your workplace, whether someone would instead work five eight-hour shifts or four 10-hour shifts? What does it matter if they split their workday into four two-hour chunks between personal errands and responsibilities as long as you can find ways to cover the phones and service routes?

Respect workers' time off

When you chase team members with questions that can wait until tomorrow, you’re wasting their time and stunting their recovery from the workday. By showing your workers their time is sacred and respected, you can expect the same respect during the workday. People with integrity naturally want to bring their best to their work and deserve the chance to recoup free from work stress during their off-hours. Hounding people after they’ve clocked out is the quickest way to lose talent to competitors with a culture of respecting their employees’ downtime.

Outsource mundane or unpopular tasks

Sometimes it’s challenging to accommodate flexible scheduling when too many tedious, repetitive-yet-necessary tasks fill the workday. It might be time to consider outsourcing some of those tasks — such as social media marketing or truck-washing, for example — to free up time within your schedules and help you build flexibility. 

Change your approach

Take a look at your workday. Whether you are the sole employee in your restroom business or you have a dozen people working under you, take a look at how you structure your typical work week and use the “magic wand” approach: If you could wave a magic wand, what would your ideal work week look like?

Are there personal joys, errands or relationships that you constantly push to the side to accommodate your work schedule? What would your schedule look like if you allowed yourself to work around the events and people you are so used to pushing aside?

What are the takeaways?

• Setting rigid schedules is a source of unnecessary workforce stress.

• Empowering your team to make their own schedules improves productivity during the workday.

• Taking advantage of digital connectivity is useful, but only when team members are “on the clock.”

• Scheduling in-person meetings are rarely for the benefit of team members.

• Outsourcing repetitive tasks sometimes allows for flexible scheduling. 



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