Time Tracking, The Key To Flex Time In Creative Agencies

The concept of flex time provides creative agency employees with the opportunity to work an alternate work schedule within specific limits dictated by the needs of the job, and is subject to management review and approval.

The idea is simple: as long as the employee completes the 40 hours a week he/she committed to provide, life is good! This can be monitored using time tracking software for creative agencies like we have in Function Point. Employees can utilize a time tracking system to see how team members are spending their time each day, whether they start at 7am or 12pm.

Benefits of Using Flex Time

Not only is this useful for owners, but it can be extremely beneficial for employees to see exactly how much time they’re spending on certain tasks. Two main benefits of flex time include:

1. Feel the Love

If implemented correctly, your employees are sure to love you! Flex time allows employees to take their kids to school in the morning, or leave early when an emergency presents itself.

2. The Right Time and Place

It also allows your creative ad agency to cover more hours of the day across your many different departments. For example, if your company is based in the west coast, and you have clients on the east coast, flex time means that some of your staff will be able to come in earlier, and some will stay later, which will give you a more complete cover of the hours of operations of your clients.

Downsides of Using Flex Time

This doesn’t mean that there aren’t potential obstacles that implementing flex time at your agency may cause. Make to sure to avoid these 3 potential roadblocks:

1. Communicating Workload

If you have a really small team, you may find that you need your colleague to take care of something for you, but because of their unique schedule they have not yet arrived or they have already finished their day and gone home.

2. Meeting Times

Meeting times can be more difficult to schedule with everyone at your agency operating on a slightly different schedule.

3. Keeping it All Equal

Unless implemented properly, some people may feel that they are forced to come in at certain times while others are not.

How to Implement Flex Time

First and foremost, the needs of your creative agency need to take priority above flexible scheduling for employees. There also has to be a certain level of trust among employees in that they are working the number of hours expected of them each day. If you need to micro manage people and second-guess them, then something is not operating as it should.

Flex time should have clear rules. For example, Function Point has a morning meeting every day at 9:45am, and everyone is expected to be available for that meeting. This meeting is a great opportunity to touch base, but also marks the cut off point for staff members to begin their workday.

Flex time should be fair. For example, if you have two staff members in a role and one of them keeps coming in late (thereby forcing the other person to come in early in order to take care of client needs), you will need to make sure that it is rectified (maybe a round robin should be implemented for example).

Finally, employees should understand that flex time is “a bonus”. It is not something that the employer is required to provide, and everyone has to understand that at times of need it may not be possible to follow.

Summary

Flex time can work very well as long as it meets the needs of the agency, is well defined, and is fair to all participants. Flex time has been a roaring success at Function Point, due in part to FP’s Cloud-based Productivity Software. This allows everyone to stay in touch and up-to-date on the latest information, regardless of who is in the office and when. Further more, the ability to track time with the FP system can offer some reassurance to employers that work is still being completed and employees consistently are working to meet the agency’s expectations.

If flex time sounds like a good fit for your agency, then the Function Point system is a great addition. If you would like to know more about what FP can do for your firm, book a demo with us and we will be happy to help you out.