This is compulsory reading whether you're a business owner, CEO, general manager or maybe supervisor, and even more important, if you're a lowly member of the workforce. It's about the extraordinary benefits of flexible working hours - and, believe me, these are benefits that apply both to the employers and employees.

The flexitime revolution is sweeping the United States and can be expected to come to Hong Kong (and Asia) anytime soon, albeit there was a half-hearted attempt at its local adoption some years ago. The statistics are compelling - realizing how much better their lives will become, 86 percent of America's workforce now want the option of working remotely and at the times they prefer - in other words, flexiwork.

With the unemployment rate still painfully high in the United States today because of the country's current economic woes, the benefits are so great and obvious in helping to mitigate the jobless rate that it has become not just a wish but almost a must.

Employers now realize that to attract better qualified workers and keeping them, forward-looking modern businesses must today offer flexitime options to help employees achieve work-life balance. If they don't, their best hands will be poached and their workforce will not fully realize potential contributions. Inevitably, productivity will decline and making profit will be a struggle.

Look at how your business operates and see where you can introduce flexitime procedures that will increase efficiency and boost staff morale. It's highly likely that you're using mobile and/or remote technologies, so for openers you can begin by arranging online meetings during non-office hours (coinciding with the office hours of overseas customers), with your staff working from their homes.

Consult staff to establish how far they must travel by car to your workplace - and how much a month does this cost them, quite apart from wear and tear to the car and the time and effort for them to make the commute.

A recently-completed survey of workplaces in the United States shows that people working from their homes saved an average of six hours a week commute time and slashed their gasoline bill by $138.80 a month.

Other benefits from flexitime included managers enjoying an average decrease of 43 percent in interruptions, and supervisors finding they had an hour-and-a-half extra time daily (27 percent) for planning, goal-setting and considering production strategies.

Another saving is possible if, at present, you provide a staff canteen that requires both extra hands and valuable space, although basically used only to provide lunch to employees. Quite apart from the savings you will make from laying off the catering staff, what more productive use could be made of the canteen space?

What's the other side of the coin for businesses that shun flexitime? The above-mentioned survey uncovered this compelling list of minuses:

1. Absenteeism goes up, productivity goes down because workers do not feel any loyalty to their employer.

2. Stress is twice as high among non-flexitime workers compared with others enjoying flexitime.

3. Staff turnover rate is double.

4. Seventy-two percent of job applicants interviewed said they would choose to work with a "modern-minded" company offering flexitime.

5. And no fewer than 86 percent wanted to enjoy flexitime.

And now a big jolt for companies big and small: The same survey revealed a shocking eye-opener that applies across the US and possibly in other countries, too - 18 percent of workers actively and deliberately undermined the success of their co-workers! We're not talking about widespread industrial sabotage, but if you closely study workplace practices in your business perhaps you'll notice how, say, some tetchy old hands make things tougher for newcomers and foul up processes coming down the line from them.

If questioned, they will probably try to laugh it off as being "Just a bit of fun like a kinda initiation thing," but these sly little traps and cunningly laid trip-lines are figuratively lying in wait for the unwary in American workplaces - and arguably they also exist in other parts of the world. The cost in lost productivity must be absolutely staggering.

The answer for employers? Beef up the quality of your teamwork training and supervision. Develop a communication strategy that includes feedback. When a little problem arises, investigate and check if it originated from some deliberate act of mischief. When you have singled out the real culprit, confront him/her in your office. As former US president Theodore Roosevelt said so often: "Speak softly but carry a big stick."

The author is deputy chairman and secretary-general of the China Energy Fund Committee.

(HK Edition 12/19/2012 page3)