eeded a plan to deal with a new type of workforce. Not only were many more young mothers finding it necessary to work but also workers across the board, including many veteran employees, were being confronted with home situations that were creating powerful stresses on their work performance. The government discovered that a significant majority of workers had children under 18 still at home or were becoming responsible for the care of elderly parents, and most no longer had a stay-at-home spouse to shoulder most of these duties.
After initial experiments showed the feasibility of flextime and other options, the government initiated a three-year experimental program that began in 1979. The success of this initiative led Congress to authorize the federal government to make alternative work schedules a permanent option for workers in 1985, leading the way for private enterprise to consider how they could deal with the same issues within their workforce.
The federal government gives the following definition of flextime:
A system of work scheduling which splits the work day into two distinct kinds of times - core time and flexible time. The two requirements under any flexible schedule are: 1) that the employee must be at work during core time, and 2) the employee must account for the total number of hours he or she is scheduled to work (Ezra and Deckman, 1996, March/April, p. 175).
As the government and other companies began to seriously implement flexible work options, managers started to recognize numerous ways of putting these two requirements into practical action. Technological advances have made telecommuting a viable option, allowing employees to work from home by connecting their computers remotely with those at the office, talking to customers by phone while remaining connected with the workplace, and faxing orders and other information to remote locations.
Employers also began to experiment with offerin...