Be flexible: changing the shape of the work week with flexibility plans.

• Author: English, Damien B.M.
• Position: Professional Issues

Times, they are a changin'. And with that, so is the average workweek. From the Millenial generation demanding a flexible workweek to cater to their lifestyle, to employees starting families and balancing a career at the same time, to technology tools enabling remote work in different shapes and forms, one can understand why some firms are trying to implement a flexible structure in the hopes of retaining and attracting talent.

To get us started in finding out what sort of flex plans are out there and what we can learn from them, we talked to David Jorgensen, CPA, and Paul Nienow, CPA, co-chairs of the CalCPA Management of an Accounting Practice Committee.

Jorgensen says his firm, Kramer & Olsen Accountancy, has had flexible situations for more than 20 years. A driving force behind this has to do with one of the partners being a woman, and the firm wanting to keep her as an employee throughout the process of her having children. "It has worked out extremely well," he says.

The flexibility plan is customized to each employee, with a requirement being that the employee work at least 20-30 hours a week in the office, which boils down to being in the office every day for a few hours, or for three full days in the week.

"This means there isn't more than a day when they aren't present in the office," Jorgensen says. In turn, this would impact the clients that the employee was assigned to.

Jorgensen says this was pretty straight forward when labor law issues weren't as prevalent, but today, with regulation like the Affordable Care Act, employees are required to work 30 hours for benefits, such as insurance so the plan has had to change slightly. But it has still worked well.

"It allows people to grow their family while still have a career, which may not be growing at the same pace as it would be if they were working full time, but we're finding some of the best employees we have are those same women whose children are now going off to college allowing them to come back to work for us full time," he says. "It's a way to retain a really high quality staff person."

Nienow says his firm, Nienow & Tierney LLP, has a flex schedule plan during the slower months, which allows employees to select whether they're going to leave in the middle of the day on a Friday every other week, or if they're going to shave a few hours here and there and make it up some other time.

"We'd like to expand the plan and make that time off more substantial," he says. "One of...