Delaware Employment Law Blog

Employers are going green.  Employees are compressing their work weeks and saving gas.  And now, one major U.S. city is mandating employers provide "commuter benefits" to employees.  Will this prompt more employers to adopt a four-day workweek? 

Some key features of the new ordinance: 

Beginning 120 days after August 22, 2008 [December 22, 2008], San Francisco employers with 20 or more employees must provide commuter benefits to employees who work at least 10 hours of work per workweek within the geographic boundaries of San Francisco. This includes offering employees at least one of the following transportation benefits:

1. A pre-tax election of a maximum of $110 per month, consistent with current federal law; or
2. An employer-provided transportation pass (or provide reimbursement for) equal in value of $45 (or more) per month; or
3. Employer provided transportation at no cost to employees.

Is this a prediction of things to come?  If employers are required to pay employees up to $110 per month for the costs of commuting, I'd say that the four-day work week movement would likely explode.  One of the big motivators of the four-day work week has been the high cost of fuel. Employers claim that the compressed workweek will help alleviate the cost of gasoline for employees. 

[H/T to California's favorite HR blogger, HR Lori]

For more on the Four-Day Work Week, the pros and cons, various alternatives, and considerations for implementation, see:

1. Feds Take a Cue from the States and Consider the 4-Day Workweek
2. 35 Questions You Should Ask When Drafting a Compressed Work Week Policy
3. Positive Benefits of a Four-Day Work Week
4. 5 Steps Toward a More Flexible Workplace
5. Should a Four-Day Work Week Be Mandatory*
6. It's Saturday Today in Utah: 4 Day Work Week
7. Alternatives to the Four Day Work Week
8. Popularity of the 4-day Week Continues to Grow
9. Will Four-Day School Week Push the Four-Day Work Week Trend?
10. Utah's Mandatory 4-Day Work Week Will Save the World. Sort of.
11. Alternative Work Arrangement May Soon Become Mandatory
12. I Hate To Say "I Told You So"–The 4-Day Workweek Is a Hot Topic
13. How the Current Economy Could Affect the Future of Flextime
14. New Employer & Workplace Study on Flexible Schedules 
15. The Pros and Cons of a 4-Day Workweek: Cons 
16. New Survey on Workplace Lateness Supports Flextime Initiatives?

Work-life balance, toxic bosses, and generation gaps.  Three of our favorite topics at the Delaware Employment Law Blog.  They're also the focus of a Special Edition of Businessweek.  The magazine, on stands Monday, has a feature called Business@Work.  The workplace special report was created, really, by readers.  In surveys, blogs, and polls, readers talked about their top concerns at work and their strategies and practical tips for how they deal with it all.  The topics covered include, in addition to the ones above, how to stay creative and entrepreneurial in uncertain economic times, time management, and managing the bureaucracy of Corporate America.

There were lots of fascinating tidbits among the nine pages of text.  One of the main articles deals with the initiatives being taken by employers that focus on their employees' "happiness."   Go figure.  A "happiness initiative" is not necessarily a new idea.  After all, that's what employee benefits are, for the most part.  But some of the efforts being made by companies like Safeco, IBM, and BMW N. America, are new to me. 

How would your employees like the idea of being flown to Disneyland for the day--families included.  (If you like it enough to transfer, you'd want to apply at the L.A. office of law firm DLA Piper).  Or maybe you'd be interested in hiring a Chief Happiness Officer, who, if he's like the CHO at London ad agency, iris Worldwide, is in charge of managing regular pub crawls.  And for the academics in the group, there is happiness learning just around the corner.  Companies including Qantas and Sanofi-Aventis have called in experts to assess the emotional health of their employees. 

So are these "perks" really seen as perks by the employees who receive them?  Or does the fact that they occur during working time with coworkers and monitored by management make them any less enticing?

Employers who offer subsidized and on-site day care as part of their employee-benefits plan are very popular.  Employer-sponsored day care is a high-demand employee perk.  It is also a very difficult and costly benefit to implement. Google has recently learned this first-hand.

According to to a Joe Nocera of the New York Times, in an article titled, On Day Care, Google Makes a Rare Fumble, there has been a recent brouhaha about this very topic.  According to the article, Google has implemented a five-quarter plan to raise the cost of company-subsidized day care by approximately 75%.  [Gulp!]

Subsidized and on-site day care certainly aren't yet common but they've been around for more than a decade at many large organizations.  Google's own experience with day care has been a unique one.  Google began offering day care more than three years ago.  After devoting substantial efforts to it, the program offered only 200 (highly coveted) day care spots with a wait list of more than 700--resulting in a two-year wait for new parents and employees.  And the cost was no small thing.  Nocera writes that the cost to the company was $37,000 per child per year, as compared with the industry standard of $12,000 per year. 

The hyperinflation in cost will certainly reduce that waiting list. And if it doesn't, Google's recent practice of charging people several hundred dollars to stay on the waiting list should do the trick.  As a back-up, though, Google is opening new facilities, which should add another 300 spots.