Abstract

Abstract (Limit: 250 words) Market research conducted through the Urban Partnership Agreement (UPA) project on telework shows that employers need to be convinced of the economic benefits of telework before they will embrace such a policy. If telework is to gain widespread support in government and industry, employers need to be presented with strong evidence that telework is good for their bottom line and industry productivity. It is not clear that previous research has documented the impacts of telework from an employer perspective. This research project proposes to investigate what are the bottom line (and economic) advantages to employers of telework policies in order to fill this gap in the literature and to provide evidence to employers considering telework policies. Understanding the Economic Effects of Flexibility through Three Employer Case Studies Final Report Prepared by: Humphrey School of Public Affairs University of Minnesota February 2013 Published by: Minnesota Department of Transportation Research Services 395 John Ireland Boulevard, MS 330 St. Paul, Minnesota 55155 This report documents the results of research conducted by the authors and does not necessarily represent the views or policies of the Minnesota Department of Transportation or the University of Minnesota. This report does not contain a standard or specified technique. The authors, the Minnesota Department of Transportation, and the University of Minnesota do not endorse products or manufacturers. Trade or manufacturers' names appear herein solely because they are considered essential to this report. Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank the three organizations involved in this study for their generosity of time and willingness to share with the research team. The authors would also like to acknowledge the following research assistants: Lindsey Wollschlager, Rebecca Orrick, and Rachel Simmons. Thank you for your excellent work. Finally, the authors would like to thank the Minnesota Department of Transportation for its interest in this issue and for its generous funding of this research project. Executive Summary Market research conducted through the Urban Partnership Agreement (UPA) project on telework shows that employers need to be convinced of the economic benefits of telework before they will embrace such a policy. If telework is to gain widespread support in government and industry, employers need to be presented with strong evidence that telework is good for their bottom line and industry productivity. It is not clear that previous research has documented the impacts of telework from an employer perspective. This research project proposes to investigate what are the bottom line (and economic) advantages to employers of telework policies in order to fill this gap in the literature and to provide evidence to employers considering telework policies. This project was a case study of three organizations that varied by size and sector and that currently offered some form of workplace flexibility program or policy to some or all of its employees. The organizations were identified and recruited by the research team with help from a third-party organization that a member of the research team had previously worked with on implementing telecommuting programs. Using a survey instrument, in-depth interviews with management-level employees-and where possible-data collected by the organization on employee-and department-level outcomes, a profile for each organization was created to explore the impacts of flexible workplace policies on the organization as a whole. Our goal was to test for a causal relationship between flex work policies and the economic bottom-line for an organization. However, it became apparent as we worked with each organization, that flexible workplace policies are defined and operationalized differently and there are multiple influences on an organization's bottom line that make it near impossible (absent the ability to create an experimental intervention) to isolate the economic effects of flexible workplace policies on an organization. However, our findings do reveal management-level buy-in of flexible workplace policies and how leadership influences this buy-in; employee-level satisfaction with existing policies; and high employee usage rates and employee self-reflection on the influence flexible workplace policies have on their work productivity. Our recommendation for future study into the economic impacts to employers implementing flexible workplace policies would be to conduct a quasi-experimental design where the research team implements methods to longitudinally collect data on productivity, employee retention, and facility costs. Ideally, only portions of an entire organization would be implementing a flexible workplace, creating experimental and control cases. If this is not possible, collecting baseline data and following an organization over time may suffice. If such a study were possible, we would also strongly recommend that a research team spends time interviewing and collecting other qualitative data to more deeply understand the culture and history of the organization. 1 Chapter 1. Introduction According to a report from the Boston College Center for Work and Family, "Flexibility is a new business imperative" (Van Deusen, James, Gill & McKechnie, 2008). The word, imperative, invokes a sense of urgency and necessity for today's businesses to adopt flexibility in the workplace. But the way in which flexibility in the workplace manifests varies by company, by department within the company, and by the individual themselves. It can be difficult to pinpoint a definition when multiple terms for flexibility abound (e.g. telework, flex-work, telecommuting, flex-time, work-family initiatives, eWorkplace, alternative work arrangements, etc.); as well as multiple ways to implement flexibility in the workplacefrom individual employee arrangements to department-or organization-wide policies or programs; in addition to defining and implementing, there are many different motivations of employers to adopt these policies (e.g. "It is the 'right' thing to do," "It is how to stay competitive," "It improves the bottom-line," etc.). And, in the end, many employers are left wondering the value of implementing workplace flexibility without concrete evidence to prove its worth. In the authors' experience, successful implementation of workplace flexibility is often the result of someone in a leadership position working to champion its adoption. In the absence of a champion, policies may never coalesce or existing flexible workplace policies or programs may fade. This research project was an attempt to better understand the economic impacts of flexible workplace policies on organizations in order to attempt to answer for employers the question of their worth. Our motivation to pursue this study was due to our own anecdotal evidence from employers who want policies that will retain talent and promote productivity, but need clear and convincing evidence of their benefits before implementing such policies and programs. Some employers are early adopters, willing to try because they think it is the right thing to do, but most are waiting for proof to begin, or enough proof to sustain a pilot program beyond its original champion. To our knowledge, there is not yet clear and convincing evidence in scholarly literature of the economic costs and benefits of workplace flexibility to employers. In the transportation literature, great attention is paid to the potential benefits of telework (i.e. conducting work from home or from an alternative location than the traditional workplace) to the greater society through congestion reduction and lower carbon emissions (see for example, Kitou & Horvath, 2008; Shafizadeh, Niemeier, Mokhtarian, & Ilan, 2007; Choo, Mokhtarian & Salomon, 2005; Yen & Mahmassani, 1997; Sullivan, Mahmassani & Yen, 1993). Other literature pays particular attention to the conditions necessary for the adoption of telework, but mostly from the employee's perspective (see for example, Mokhtarian & Bagley, 2000; Mokhtarian, Bagley & Sullivan, 1998; Mokhtarian & Salomon, 1997; Bernardino & Ben-Akiva, 1996). Still more literature identifies the need for quantifying and communicating the benefits of flexible workplace policies for optimal acceptance by employers (see for example, The authors believe that flexible workplace policies are a win-win-win for employers, employees, and communities. For employees, they save time and money in commuting, and they 2 experience greater work-life balance, and greater quality of health and well-being (which also has implications for public health benefits). Communities experience a decrease in traffic congestion and thereby a decrease in overall pollution (see previous documentation reported by eWorkPlace and the Urban Partnership Agreement that shows teleworkers report less vehicle miles traveled). The objective of this research study is to contribute to the sustainability of telecommuting initiatives, specifically, and to flexible workplace policies, more broadly, by exploring the employer-level impacts. To achieve this, we set out to understand through case studies the perspectives and experiences of employers currently implementing flexible workplace policies. Our findings both confirm previous research as well as indicate directions for future inquiry into the impacts of workplace flexibility on employers: • Employers fall along a spectrum of definitions and adoption of workplace flexibility; • confirmation of previous findings of benefits/limitations to flexibility; • direct measurements by employers of worker productivity, facility costs, and retention are rare; • culture change is a key to long-term implementation of flexibility; and • employees want a flexible work environment and when they get a "taste" of it, they want more. The following section provides a summary of the literature on workplace flexibility and its impacts on worker productivity, satisfaction, absenteeism, and facility cost savings. This is followed by a description of the study's methods and findings and concludes with a discussion of the findings, study limitations, and recommendations for future study. The Work-Life Field The last two decades has seen a new field of research emerge on workplace flexibility (PittCatsouphes, Kossek & Sweet, 2005). Most research on workplace flexibility focuses on the adoption and implementation of policies and programs within organizations as well as the effects these policies and programs have on employees and employers 4 Disciplines & Definitions This burgeoning field has caught the interest of a variety of disciplines: business and management, human resources, information systems, industrial relations, economics, psychology, public health, sociology, engineering, and transportation. This multidisciplinary interest, in turn, has created multiple definitions of the issue, multiple theories to understand the issue, and multiple veins of research to examine the issue (for recent reviews of the work-life field, see Telecommuting & Workplace Flexibility Telecommuting (also commonly referred to as telework) is an alternative work arrangement that is a type of flexible workplace policy. Its origins date from the late 1970s-before the larger movement toward workplace flexibility emerged. Telecommuting has been used as a workplace strategy to respond to a variety of organization and employee needs, including decreasing realestate costs, promoting work-life balance, adhering to the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, and reducing air pollution and traffic congestion Our research study identifies four key approaches to examining the economic benefits of flexible workplace policies for employers: Productivity, Retention/Job Satisfaction, Absenteeism, and Facility Costs. The following four sections provide an in-depth look into the literature-with a particular focus on telecommuting-for each topic. Productivity Our review of the literature on the effects flexible workplace policies have on employee and organization productivity left us with more questions and issues to consider than replicable answers. The first, and we would argue most important, question is how to define and measure productivity. Most employees with access to flexible work are knowledge workers and measuring the output of knowledge creation is complex and often intangible. Most research-todate uses employee self-reports on their perceived productivity and there is little evidence for the relationship between perceived productivity and business outcomes 5 Retention/Job Satisfaction The literature generally suggests that telecommuting increases employee retention through increased job satisfaction Absenteeism Research on the relationship between flexible work policies and employee absenteeism has evolved alongside shifting cultural attitudes about when and where work can be performed. To place this research in context, many familiar workplace policies were just being implemented 20 years ago. Baum (2003) reminds us, for example, that the first state-level maternity leave laws were introduced in the late 1980s, while the federal Family and Medical Leave Act was not signed into law until 1993. These laws marked a large shift in how work absences were considered. Mitra, In the 1990s, researchers considered the impact of flexible scheduling policies that allowed employees to choose when to start work but kept intact the requirement for an 8-hour workday. Research specifically focused on the connection between absenteeism and telework emerged in the late 1990s Facility Costs When flexible work policies are adopted on a widespread basis within a firm, companies realize budgetary savings in the form of reduced square footage-per-employee, utility costs, IT infrastructure and parking facilities. A growing body of corporate case studies suggests a wide range of expected savings depending on the size of the company and the number of employees who telecommute on a part-time or full-time basis. With 17,000 employees telecommuting, Sun Microsystems reports an estimated annual savings of $96 million (Lister; 2010, p.8). Another popularly cited study finds that AT&T has reduced office space costs by 50 percent since 1995 (Telework Australia, 2010). The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reports being able to avoid $11 million in new facilities costs by shifting 70% of staff to full-time telecommuting status (Lister, 2010, p.9). Reconciling these documented savings into an average per-employee estimate is daunting. Telework Australia suggests that telecommuting cuts office space by 33 percent, though this figure is scale dependent and is achievable only when enough employees transition to telecommuting to allow the firm to eliminate entire suites of offices and common-spaces like hallways and break rooms. The Telework Research Network suggests that having all employees telecommute half-time results in office space savings of 18 percent a year (Lister, 2010, p.7). This translates into an expected annual savings of $56,700 for every 50 employees that work from home on a half-time basis (Lister, 2010, p.9). The EEOC Division of the Office of Inspector General achieved a 35 percent reduction in total infrastructure costs over 5 years when telecommuting became an agency-wide requirement (Kacmarczyk, 2004, pp.119-120). The scale of the initiative matters, as does the location and time period. Depending on the location of a firm, the relative cost of rent to energy costs can vary widely (Kacmarczyk, 2004). Additionally, wide fluctuations in the cost of energy over the past ten years limit the general applicability of past case studies in estimating office space savings that could be achieved in the future. Despite the breadth of case studies, few academic studies have delved into this subject. This literature review only found 6 peer-reviewed journal articles discussing employer-level real estate savings from telecommuting or other flexible work polices Chapter 3. Methods This project was a case study of three organizations that varied by size and sector who currently offered some form of workplace flexibility program or policy to some or all of its employees. The organizations were identified and recruited by the research team with help from a third-party organization that a member of the research team had previously worked with on implementing telecommuting programs. Using a survey instrument, in-depth interviews with management-level employees--and where possible--data collected by the organization on employee-and department-level outcomes, a profile for each organization was created to explore the impacts of flexible workplace policies on the organization as a whole. The survey instrument was administered to employees by the research team via SurveyMonkey (See Appendix for a copy of the survey instrument) to two of the three organizations. The third organization shared the results of two waves of survey data administered by a separate organization. In-depth interviews were conducted in person, most often in the employee's office, by a member of the research team. Any data on employee-and department-level outcomes were distributed by the organization directly to the research team. There were two versions of the SurveyMonkey survey instrument, one for employees and one for managers. The manager survey contained additional survey questions on their experiences supervising employees who utilize flexible workplace policies. The survey was administered twice over a four-month period to the same employees and managers in each organization. Analyses of the survey data were conducted using Microsoft Excel and R software. Open-ended survey questions and in-depth interviews were analyzed with NVivo, a qualitative data analysis software. The initial goal of the study was to measure the following elements as organizational-level indicators of the effect of flex policies on organizational outcomes: However, the availability of data collected by an organization on employee-and departmentlevel outcomes was almost non-existent. This meant that the in-depth interviews became an important way to understand how the above elements were defined and evaluated by an organization. 10 Chapter 4. Findings Our goal was to test for a causal relationship between flex work policies and the economic bottom-line for an organization. However, it became apparent as we worked with each organization, that flexible workplace policies are defined and operationalized differently and there are multiple influences on an organization's bottom line that make it near impossible (absent the ability to create an experimental intervention) to isolate the economic effects of flexible workplace policies on an organization. However, our findings do reveal management-level buy-in of flexible workplace policies and how leadership influences this buy-in; employee-level satisfaction with existing policies; and high employee usage rates and employee self-reflection on its influence on their work productivity. The following are case profiles for each of the three organizations studied. Case Profile 1 Case 1 is an administrative department within a statewide public agency that is implementing its statewide telecommuting policy. Championed by the department head, telecommuting is available to all employees in the department; however, individual use of the policy occurs on a case-by-case basis depending on the employee's supervisor. Interviews Definition of flexible workplace policies: The common vernacular for flexible workplace policies was flextime and was discussed in terms of the time and place where an employee conducts their work. For example, an employee can work longer days and take a "day off," or the employee can "work from home." Both of these options are available through a formal agreement between the supervisor and employee, leaving the discretion of who gets to flextime to the immediate supervisor. The supervisor discretion means that some employees do not get flextime if their supervisor does not like the concept or if the supervisor does not trust the employee (distrust was reported as due to poor past performance determined by the supervisor). There is a common desire among employees for broadening flextime to create a cultural shift within the organization that would allow employees to determine their own work schedules and work locations, as long as they accomplish pre-determined work results. However, managers speculated that the organization was not ready for this kind of a cultural shift because of its accountability to the taxpaying public who would not understand that work is not defined only by the time employees spend in the office at their desk. The interaction of productivity with flextime: There was no single definition of worker productivity, but typical answers had to do with the speed of task completion and whether customer feedback was positive. There was general recognition of the difficulty in objectively measuring productivity and that current practice is for the supervisor to comment on productivity during the employee's performance review. Despite the lack of a common definition and 11 objective measurement, managers were still able to comment that they believed there was a neutral to positive influence of flextime on worker productivity. Specifically, there was mention of less interruptions, as well as high worker satisfaction due to lower stress from not having to commute, the feeling of being trusted enough to be able to use flextime, and that flextime felt like a "soft perk" when pay increases were not possible at the organization. Limitations to implementing flextime: There were multiple mentions that given the type of work conducted by this department required frequent interactions with other employees in the organizations and historically, there has been the expectation that these interactions happen inperson (even though it is not required). Therefore, to accommodate working remotely, employees were challenging the organization's culture and expectations by working in a different location than the office. 12 employee health or disability needs, ability to avoid bad weather, spend more time with family, increased employee work satisfaction, increased employee productivity, lower stress levels, reduce absenteeism. 13 As In addition to the above results, 93 percent (Time 1) and 90 percent (Time 2) of employees would ideally work both from home and at the office and the majority of employees at both survey times agree or strongly agree that their work is of higher quality in a flexible environment. One hundred percent of managers at both survey times agree or strongly agree that a flexible work environment enhances employee job effectiveness and the majority (80 percent at Time 1; 100 percent at Time 2) agree or strongly agree that a flexible work environment encourages employees to do higher quality work. In the open-ended portion of the survey, respondents reported a range of experiences with flexible workplace policies from citing positive benefits (e.g. decreased commuting costs, an increased sense of engagement, feeling more productive because of reduced interruptions) to expressing frustration over inconsistent implementation, because those who could use flextime "depended on who you knew" or that certain job duties were determined unsuitable for flextime by their supervisors. In comparison to the above survey findings, the organization shared data with this research team from a survey conducted in 2010 with employees in the same department who were using flextime. The survey found that of employees using flextime, 94.7% felt they were more productive when using flextime than before they had the flextime option. For employees who were supervising flextime workers, 28.6% reported they saw a difference in the performance of the flextime worker, with 2/3 of these supervisors seeing an increase in productivity. In addition, 81.6% of flextime workers reported they were less likely to leave the organization because they have flextime. Case Profile 2 Case 2 is a department within a local government agency that is implementing a formal program to shift to a results only work environment (ROWE). Concurrent with the shift to ROWE, the department is undergoing a fundamental shift to the way in which employees perform their job duties, including where and with whom they work. As 14 15 Respondents shared in the open-ended portion that some employees choose to work away from the office to minimize the stress levels that they associate with the office environment. However, by working away from the office, it seems that in some cases the employees that work remotely do not feel as responsible for shared team responsibilities. As a result, more work falls on those who choose to stay in the office. This breeds resentment, distrust of team members, and a greater desire for all to work out of the office, even when there are duties that need to be accomplished in the office environment. Some individuals also felt stress due to feeling like in order to meet their results they had to put in more than 40 hours a week and to work on weekends. Many respondents also mentioned that under ROWE they felt less connected to their peers, and felt a reduced sense of having a team that they cared about and wanted to help out. Some of this had to do with feeling like it was more difficult to get in touch with other staff members or their supervisors when they had questions or needed advice, since everyone was working different schedules. Employees also expressed appreciation for most of the aspects of ROWE, especially feeling like their employer trusts them and treats them as a professional. Many employees like the reduction of a commute, and the freedom to organize their lives in a way that works for them. While some employees mentioned they were more distracted when they worked at home, the majority commenting on this topic mentioned that they were less distracted when working from home since they could work for longer periods of time uninterrupted. Many felt that ROWE made the multiple changes and stressors that they face in their work lives easier to deal with, and one person even mentioned that in their opinion flexible work policies was an adequate compensation for not having a pay raise in several years. In the ROWE environment, many reported sleeping more, and having more time to take care of their health, as well as more time to juggle other responsibilities in their lives. Employees and managers also reported less absenteeism under ROWE since they could work from home when they were sick or make time up later in the week. Many mentioned that ROWE eased their stress since they could organize their schedule in a way that worked for their unique circumstances, and alter it week by week. At the time of the survey, employees were undergoing a transition to shared workspaces and to a decentralized organizational model. Many respondents mentioned the impacts of these organizational transitions, including feeling underappreciated by leadership. Employees felt that their opinions were not being solicited when changes were being made, and that even when they spoke out, their voices did not make a difference. Many respondents mentioned wanting to leave the organization. In the in-depth interviews, managers felt their employees were more productive because they had less interruptions working from home and worked longer days because they begin earlier and end later without a commute. Managers also reported that with ROWE, their employees feel like they are treated as adults because they are trusted to do their work through results rather than by clocking in or out. One manager reflected that when she began with the organization years earlier, employees were required to sign in and out for the work day and for breaks and employees were reprimanded for being five minutes late. 16 Case Profile 3 Case 3 is a mid-size private manufacturing firm that offers a menu of flexible workplace policies focusing on promoting the health and well-being of its employees. More than two-thirds of its workforce are in hourly wage and nonexempt roles. The firm has two work locations: one is the production setting; the other holds more of the administrative functioning. One administrative department within the company is implementing ROWE, a Results Oriented Work Environment. The human resources department leads the effort to create and formalize the myriad policies, but individual employee use of policies like work location and schedule is negotiated with an individual's supervisor. The company implements multiple surveys per year to gauge employee health, engagement, and satisfaction with their work, pay, and benefits. The research team and the company agreed not to implement the survey instrument as was done for the other two case sites due to survey fatigue among its employees. The company shared survey results from its own surveys with the research team. In a survey given once in both 2010 and 2011, the average response--on a scale from disagree to agree--employees gave to the following statement, "I have the flexibility I need to balance my work and personal life" was agree. In the same survey, the average employee response agreed that their benefits package is good compared to others in the same industry. Seventy-five percent in 2010 and 84 percent in 2011 answered positively to, "I want to stay with this company for more than a year." In another survey administered in 2011, 98 percent of employees somewhat or strongly agreed to the statement, "I have the schedule flexibility I need at work to manage my personal and family responsibilities." See 17 In interviews with managers, leadership from the company CEO set the tone for flexibility. Interviewees pointed to the recent change in CEO as a catalyst to changing the workplace culture to one that valued flexibility, however, the discretion for any individual employee to have flexibility was still left to supervisors and interviewees indicated that this created different standards and practices by department and even within departments depending on who was in charge. One interviewee reflected that within their department, employees had to be encouraged to take breaks or work less hard because their commitment to the company was leading to lower work-life balance. This interviewee attributed the employees' high commitment and hard work to workplace flexibility. In juxtaposition, another interviewee expressed concern about the effects of workplace flexibility on employees; in this person's opinion, employees have lost a sense of urgency in their work due to flexibility. This interviewee concluded that employees may be happy with the flexibility, but the company's business suffers. Despite this perspective, organizational data collected on retention, paid time off (PTO), and health plan utilization show bottom line benefits to the organization in recent years. The firm remains below the industry standard in turnover: in 2010 voluntary turnover was 4 percent; in 2011 it was 2 percent; and in mid-2012 it is trending at 1.2 percent. Since opening an on-site health clinic, over 9,700 PTO hours have been saved as employees use paid work time to visit with a health professional. In this same period, he firm has seen an overall reduction in health insurance claim costs and its worker population achieved better-than-average risk stratification when compared to national norms. This has resulted in over $1.2 million savings in direct medical costs. 19 Chapter 5. Conclusions These case profiles show variation along a spectrum of flexibility and shifting work culture that could be plotted along a scale from simple to complex definitions of flexibility and from low to high integration within an organization. Case 1 is implementing a telecommuting policy without change to the rules and norms of the existing work culture. Employees at Case 1 voiced a desire for more flexibility options, but recognized that it cannot happen without a larger cultural shift within the organization, and perhaps in the greater public because it is a public agency. Case 2 is undergoing a significant work culture shift to a results-only work environment, attempting to transcend formal policies to embrace a culture of flexibility that puts control in the hands of employees over not just their work schedule, but in defining their work results. Case 3 sits between Case 1 and Case 2 as a company implementing a full menu of formal policies to support the health and well-being of its employees. Company leadership embraces a philosophy of flexibility, but the implementation of flexibility is still in the hands of management, creating both pockets of a flexible workplace culture and pockets of a more traditional workplace. These three cases confirm findings in previous studies that show high worker satisfaction with a flexible workplace, but there is a subtle-yet significant-difference in how employees in this study express their satisfaction. Some employees are satisfied because they feel like they have earned a 'perk' outside of the norm of the workplace (this is true for Cases 1 and 2) where others are satisfied because they feel like they are being treated as an adult capable of being responsible for their work results (this is true for Cases 2 and 3). Placement along a spectrum of flexibility is not static, and movement along, or off, is a constant reality for organizations. For example, when first recruiting for organizations to participate in this study, we began working with a local government agency that was implementing a resultsonly work environment while simultaneously downsizing their offices because employees would be spending time working from home. Our work with them began in the late summer as they were about to begin ROWE, but after election day that fall, leadership within the local government changed, and from one day to the next, the plans for ROWE ceased to exist. This highlights the instability of these policies that seem to live and die by the whim of management and leadership. Across all three case sites, employees and managers expressed high satisfaction with a flexible work environment and survey respondents at Cases 1 and 2 reported their work to be of higher quality and performed with greater effectiveness in a flexible environment. Interviews with managers at all three case sites reiterated the survey findings, reporting that workplace flexibility had either a neutral or positive effect on employees' work. Inferring from these reports, we believe there is a net benefit to organizations implementing a flexible workplace. However, without concrete data, this conclusion remains inferred from self-reported data. Therefore, an additional finding from this study is that direct measurements of worker productivity, facility costs, and employee retention are low due to a lack of available data within organizations. Future research will need to take this into consideration. Our recommendation for future study into the economic impacts to employers implementing flexible workplace policies would be to conduct a quasi-experimental design where the research team implements methods to longitudinally collect data on productivity, employee retention, and 20 facility costs. Ideally, only portions of an entire organization would be implementing a flexible workplace, creating experimental and control cases. If this is not possible, collecting baseline data and following an organization over time may suffice. If such a study were possible, we would also strongly recommend that a research team spends time interviewing and collecting other qualitative data to more deeply understand the culture and history of the organization. As in most research endeavors, the final set of data does not often match the researchers' original intentions. Such was the case with this study. Our most difficult challenge was in the recruitment of employers to our study. Although there were many employers interested in participating, this interest was not sustained to actual participation. And for those employers who participated, our ability to time our various data collection methods was subject to the employers' timeline, not that of the researchers. Not surprisingly, each organization is unique and holds its own set of idiosyncrasies, which ultimately led to inconsistency in data collection across each case. Additionally, the research team attempted to identify a set of metrics with each case that could assess organization-wide economic benefits along productivity, absenteeism, retention, and facility cost measures. The reality the research team faced in uncovering these kinds of metrics revealed both their complexity and how little is formally tracked and recorded by organizations. All of this is to say that our findings should be held in context to these limitations. We but only glimpsed into the complex nature of employee and employer relationships, bringing to the foreground the negotiations of flexible workplace policies while attempting to understand and incorporate the myriad background of factors that affect organizational outcomes. Thank you for your willingness to participate in a research survey about work practices, workplace culture, and work attendance. Our study's objectives are 1) to identify employee perceptions of work practices, workplace culture, and work attendance and 2) to identify how flexible workplace policies and programs may be beneficial if implemented by Minnesota employers. We define "flexible workplace policies" as policies and programs implemented within organizations that provide employees with more control and discretion over the timing and other conditions of work, such as work location and scheduling. Flexible workplace policies are also sometimes called flexwork, alternative work arrangements, eWorkplace, telework or workfamily initiatives, among other terms.