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Jan
05
2015
Report Number:
RARC-WP-15-004
Report Type:
White Papers
Category: Human Resources

Flexibility at Work: Human Resource Strategies to Help the Postal Service

RARC-WP-15-004 – 01/05/2015

Increasingly, companies large and small are moving toward flexible workforce policies, which allow employees, among other things, to adjust their work schedules to their personal lives as much as possible. In general, the strategic value of such policies is that they help employees establish a healthy work-life balance, which can yield benefits all around. Employees tend to be happier and therefore more committed to their jobs, often leading to greater productivity and better customer service. A business relies heavily on the strength and dedication of its workforce, and flexible workforce policies are helping companies both attract and retain the best workers.

Research we conducted and have chronicled in our white paper, Flexibility at Work: Human Resource Strategies to Help the Postal Service, shows that the U.S. Postal Service could similarly benefit by attracting and retaining high-quality employees through adoption of flexible workforce policies. Properly implemented, policies that offer, for example, job-sharing opportunities, compressed work weeks, shift-trades, and self-scheduling – all proving very effective in other industries – could be the proverbial win-win-win for the Postal Service, its workforce, and its customers. We present four high-level suggestions for the Postal Service to consider: create a partnership for flexibility between labor and management; evaluate a portfolio of flexibility initiatives; improve information on workload; and seek continuous feedback from employees.

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