It sneaks up on you like a virus, surfacing first in small symptoms–an extra hour at work here, a weekend worked there. Then suddenly you’ve got it bad:
Schedule creep.
Schedule creep is the nasty tendency of work to expand beyond allotted hours and fill all available time, with no corresponding increase in your paycheck. It’s a big problem for people on part-time schedules in particular, who often find themselves working 100 percent time for 75 percent or 80 percent pay. Worse yet, part-timers are often sidetracked in their careers, on the assumption they aren’t dedicated to their jobs.
Now, some creative remedies are coming from an unlikely front: law and accounting firms. Battling above-average attrition rates, firms are using new tools to ensure fair treatment of part-timers, such as appointing in-house monitors to make sure that they aren’t overworked. More employees are working part time at these firms and getting promoted while they do so.
The tactics can teach all employers. More U.S. workers would like to work part-time than actually do. Among full-time wage and salary employees, 18 percent would prefer to work part-time; 44 percent of those say their employers wouldn’t let them, according to a 2002 study of 2,810 workers by the Families and Work Institute, New York.
To make part-time setups work better, some law firms are taking tips inspired by an unlikely source: teen magazines. Attorney Joan Williams modeled a “usability test” after the rate-your-boyfriend quizzes in her daughter’s magazines. “We refer to it as ‘the boyfriend test,’ ” says Williams of the Project for Attorney Retention at American University, Washington, D.C., which researches ways to improve work schedules. One issue the test measures is “schedule creep,” a term she borrowed from the construction industry, where it denotes contractors’ tendency to work past deadlines. Among other criteria: How do part-timers’ assignments, promotion rates and attrition compare with those of full-timers?
In another move, some accounting firms are assigning coordinators to monitor the welfare of part-timers and others on nontraditional schedules. PricewaterhouseCoopers, New York, named a “flexible work arrangements coordinator” 18 months ago.
“We don’t want people getting sucked into working a 95 percent schedule and being paid for 80 percent,” says Jennifer Allyn, a human resource manager with the firm. The coordinator’s quarterly audit of employees’ time sheets helped Allyn diagnose schedule creep in a part-timer on her own staff, who was working five days a week for four days of pay. At the employee’s request, Allyn gave her full-time pay.
Ernst & Young, New York, has employed a flexibility director since 2001 and has an in-house consultant who tracks part-timers’ pay and assignments.
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Rate your boss
Signs that your employer’s part-time policy is flawed:
– Only 3 percent or fewer of all employees work part time.
– Only women work part time.
– Part-timers work full time for part-time pay.
– Part-timers get assignments full-timers don’t want.
– Part-timers quit at higher rates.
Source: The Project for Attorney Retention
