Meet flex-hour requests with consistency

Practice Management. By Mike Norbut, AMNews staff. Aug. 25, 2003.

The end of August means it's time for kids to head back to school, and it also may mean that parents are juggling their work schedules so they can accommodate school plays, soccer games and parent-teacher conferences. How well you handle staff members' requests for flexible schedules or early departures from work can be an important factor in determining your practice's efficiency and financial viability.

Flexible hours can present challenges, both in terms of covering office hours and paying benefits to employees. Physicians have to be able to bend if they want to keep their best employees, but they can't let the practice suffer as a result. The best way to handle the issue, consultants said, is to have policies set up before any requests arise and to be consistent with your employees.

"You need to have a uniform application of rules," said Bob Priddy, president of the Denver-based consulting firm e-Advise.org and executive director of the Physician Career Network, an affiliate of CareerLab, a career strategy and leadership development firm. "Put them in writing. If you don't have the ability to support the rules evenly, at some point, you're going to have a problem."

An employee who wants to cut back in hours can be a cost-saver, especially if you have a policy regarding the number of hours necessary to qualify for benefits. If someone wants to cut back to 20 hours a week, for example, you could add another part-time worker to cover those hours without having to pay for the worker's benefits.