Travis County Commissioners Court
July 29, 2008
Item 5
>> number five is to consider and take appropriate action related to the ongoing analysis of implementing a compressed work week for Travis County employees and/or offices.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners. We have been talking about for a number of weeks in the efficiency committee some recommendations regarding compressed work weeks at the request of Commissioner Davis. We also are bringing this item before you today. You have in your backup a number of different pieces of information as it relates to four 10's or compressed work weeks. There's also been a survey completed, and I believe you have that as well. And we'll be happy to answer any questions you might have regarding 4-10's or compressed work week.
>> first of all, I would like to pose a couple of questions here to kind of get this thing kicked off. There had been I guess a few modifications in the survey that was done earlier and then the latest survey, it just appeared that we had more respondents in the second time around as far as the survey is concerned. But within that particular latest survey, it suggests that 71% of the respondents that were surveyed cannot quantify a cost savings. And I guess I'm trying to look at this and saying how do you quantify? Let me ask this question. When we look at cost savings and we're looking at not only -- and we're not talking about mandating. And I want the public to understand this. We're not really saying we're mandating or forcing anyone to go to a compressed work schedule, but what we are proposing is that we already have policy under chapter 10.02 that there is a lot of flexible options that are available to the departments to consider going into a flexible type work schedule. But when the results come back and they suggest that the person cannot quantify the cost savings, can you basically show me, explain to me what that entails and maybe a department -- it probably varies from department to department. And there may be cost savings in some and not others. Can you explain that to me?
>> sure. With a compressed work week of some sort, much like with our fuel discussion last week, the ability to quantify savings for the county -- it is a little bit difficult to do and it takes a little bit of time to quantify those savings. Primarily on the side of utilities, but it also could have an impact on fuel usage as well depending on how trips are scheduled, things of that nature. In other words, if trips are clustered together, let's assume it's a 4-10 schedule. If trips are clustered together during that 4-10 period we could potentially see savings as a result of that. It is very, very difficult to say that we definitely would or would not see savings as a result. And it would take time to quantify those types of savings. From my perspective as more of a -- I look at the citizens that we serve, the external citizens and then we in pbo serve more of an internal clientele if you will. And that is through a support of internal operations. And so from my perspective, if we, for example, said we were going to close our suite one day a week, then how much of an impact would that have in terms of overall utility usage? I don't know at this point, but I suspect it would have some impact be. Is it significant enough to say that a compressed work week is worth it? It would be very difficult to say at this time. So there are a number of factors to take into consideration, all of which I think have been very well pointed out in the backup information that you have. It is both an internal and external customer-related discussion. I think sheri has pointed out her planning division like pbo serves more of an internal clientelable so there are some differences between the types of services that are provided, I guess.
>> let me ask this question. And I guess at this point the departments actually being aware of the opportunities to participate in a type of flexible schedule, I'm just wondering has that been exhausted enough to whereby we could garnish a savings overall? And I think earn person -- as an example that you just stated, rodney, in your shop dealing with the internal mechanisms, maybe not be as critical as the external nature of having to provide the services out to the community, such as an hhs or other departments that have -- the tax office, for example. They have a hand's on dealing with the public, but I think overall generally every little bit helps as far as saving. Now, again, quantifying and putting an amount of money on that is probably kind of hard to put your arms around, but I do not want anyone to suggest or think that we're trying to mandate or force anyone to adhere to a compressed work schedule, but I think there are some benefits in that. And it's really left to the department heads to see if they would like to maybe go that route without sacrificing any services to the community. So that's really the bottom line for me on a lot of this. And of course as I stated before, my office is going to go into some type of a compressed work schedule or flexible schedule because there are a lot of options I think that's made available to us so that we could not be using a room or lights. I think all the other other utility effects could be a cumulative effect as far as savings are concerned across the board. I think those are some good examples. There may be other examples that may be expanded on that maybe reveal a lot of things in this particular survey. I would like to thank staff for doing this. You did a great job, and the respondents out there. I think it's a good tool for us to look at. I didn't mean to cut you off, rodney, if you were trying to say something else. I just wanted to hit on that point.
>> no. I think there are certainly -- as we've tried to point out, pros and cons to it. And there are policy issues. There are circumstances for individuals. And some departments may feel that they absolutely could not do anything in terms of a compressed work week, it 410's or #-80's or whatever it may be. So what we've tried to do is to present both sides of the information to you, and we do have a current policy in place that does allow elected officials and department heads the flexibility to do compressed work weeks if they choose to do so. So the ability to do it is currently there today if the departments choose to make that decision. I think all of this discussion has at least brought to light the fact that we do have a current policy and it does allow for a compressed work week if they choose to do so. And so it's an individual choice of those department heads or elected officials.
>> thank you.
>> we think that the policy in place now was adopted back in 1990? That's the date on the cover of the code that pertains it.
>> the original policy would have been adopted in 1990. It will have been put into the code in about '94. And it depends on which date you want to use.
>> okay. If I can read those three sentences into the record here. It says regular, this is 10.002, hours of work subsection c, regular county office hours are from eight a.m. To five p.m. Monday through Friday with the compensation of those departments or offices whose mission requires 24-hour operations or alternate work schedules. However, the Commissioners court urges elected officials and department heads to implement flex time schedules for their employees where it is feasible and can be done within the operating budget, without impacting service delivery, only with written authorization and instructions from the elected official or department head can an employee do a flexible work schedule. And some departments in fact take advantage of this provision. Not only flex in terms of number of days, but from eight hours a day to 12 hours, which I guess I was familiar with in corrections. But some of the other departments have been doing this already and I think the authorization is there. No matter what we do in the end, I think we'd have to defer to the manager of the department to try to figure out what's best for the department and the public. So I think the correct wore are here. And the authorization that the managers need to go to flex time if they can do so and keep operating in their budget, keep operating their department without a budget impact be and without adversely impacting service delivery. I'm right on that, aren't i?
>> I sent memos to you. We instituted a flex time type of schedule in our office some years ago and it was very consistent with what you said. And what we did was in order to give people the opportunity to minimize their take in rush hour, they could start at 7:00, 7:30, 8:00, 8:30 or 9:00 and then they would work their regular eight-hour day five days a week and end 4:00, 4:30, 5, 5:30 or 6:00. That has worked well. Our caveat, an important thing that you said, judge, and that is that the county's standard operational hours are #k to 5. So what we said to our division chiefs is we want no impact on that. So all the people in your division, for instance, can't work 7:00 to 4:00 because from 4:00 to 5 the office is expected to be open and divisions are expected to serve internally for the public. So that was one of the caveats that we put on that flex time, which also rowed people to accommodate -- which also allowed people to accommodate taking children to school, day care, things of that sort. Some of them it really execute suited them to work earlier and some later. It did help at first. That's what we did. The 4-10's is really a didn't kind of flexibility in many respects because if in fact you're going to close a building, that's one thing. But if you can't close a building and if you're alternating those, now you've got air conditioning and heating in the building for 5-10's instead of basically 4-8's. So that looks to me like an increase. Now, the lights would be off part of that time, but that's what the issue would be. The other thing to consider is that if in fact offices are closing down a day a week, then as, for instance -- I'll use my own office because that's the one I know best. We contact people if there's a problem with accounts payable in payroll. We can't do that one day a week. That impacts productivity. The other thing that would impact productivity and y'all didn't make that decision is if in fact people who work 4-10's now for their personal holidays get 10 hours off, that's a cut in productivity because everyone else gets 8. If their holiday is 10 hours instead of 8, that's a productivity cut because you're now saying certain groups of people get two hours more off in their benefit package. That's a key thing, but you can develop policies that don't allow that to happen. From a payroll perspective, and Commissioner Davis asked this, can we handle these many flex schedules? The answer is question; however, what it -- the answer is yes, however what it does is really compresses the amount of time the dents have to get information out for us to get payroll out. So there's a heavier work burden on those offices that have a lot of flex time out there. In our office we went through kind of an extensive thing like y'all are thinking about and one of the things that I said is just what rodney did in my office. I said if y'all want to four 410's, you show me how productivity will stay the same and I'll buy into it. And we couldn't do that. The other thing is that offices that work overtime -- and we have that because of the nature of our work. We don't work overtime all the time, but like when we close and things like that our people are putting in 5-10's. It's hard to put in after a 10, three or four more hours, they're probably not going to be as prone to come in. So my own office, my very own office with the nature of our work, I would tend not to go to 4-10's. It would not be something I think we could do and maintain productivity. That doesn't mean there are not offices out there that could. So for my two cents, that's --
>> I move that we continue to rely on section 2.552 had 2.552-cof the Travis County codo grant managers appropriate authority to go to any flex hours that they deem necessary and appropriate for their department, providing they do not have a budget impact and that they do not adversely affect service delivery.
>> and for sake of discussion, I think Commissioner Gomez already seconded the motion. For sake of discussion, in the survey itself, did anyone detect any manager that may not have been aware of flexibility options that are available? For example, you heard the 9-80, you heard the 10 hour shift. Were there any managers that may have this available to them and just weren't aware of the opportunity to venture into it? Was there anything in that mix that was revealing?
>> alicia perez, manager for administrative operations. No, sir. I think there were about -- of the 67 respondents, we only had two that said they were not familiar with that sort of work schedule. So about a three percent. I think most of the managers are aware of their ability to use that policy, but if you would like us to, we can send out a reminder to individuals about the policy.
>> I would want to make sure I guess with this motion today that it's revealed throughout -- county-wide that this is available with this particular chapter, the section that the judge just read into the record, 10.002. I just think it need to be exposed to any and nerve everybody in the county to let them be aware of this, of what we're doing and that availability. I really would appreciate that.
>> any more discussion of the motion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank y'all.
>> Commissioner Davis' suggestion was that we sort of renew the notice of the provision. We may as well send it to -- we can do that fairly easily, right?
>> yes, sir.
>> why don't we do this just as a reminder.
>> we will.
>> thank you, judge.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 2:51 PM