Time is money, they say, and at many top firms that means that employees get to spend time like it was cash.
To start, many of our 2015 Best Firms to Work For make sure to offer money or extra paid time off to staff when they are required to travel overnight; and still others let staff trade in unused vacation time for cash at the end of the year.
Still others allow staff to donate vacation or sick days to colleagues in need, while some offer extra time off beyond the normal allotment for charitable or community activities.
And there are yet other ways to get creative with time. At CCK Strategies, a 75-person Best Firm to Work For in Tulsa, Okla., eligible employees can accrue any time worked over the standard eight-hour day over the course of the year, and have it paid out as a bonus or use the hours as additional time off.
At Camp Hill, Pa.-based Brown Schulz Sheridan & Fritz, meanwhile, the firm’s 81 employees get 16 hours of “snow time” a year to use in case of inclement weather, to give them extra time to get into work due to road conditions or deal with their childrens’ school closings or delays. Stff can also use sick days to take care of sick dependents or parents.
And at Burr Pilger Mayer Inc., a Best Firm to Work For with 375 employees spread around the San Francisco Bay area, the firm is experimenting with a flexible approach to the eight-hour day. Staff need to release their time every day, but what matters is the total at the end of the week – so they spend more time at the gym on Monday, say, and make up the time on Thursday. As long as the work gets done, employees are relatively free to allocate their hours as they like.
Time, in the end, is a form of compensation – and there are plenty of opportunities to give your employees more of it, without spending any actual money.
