This summer, we’re trying out an alternative work schedule. Instead of our standard Monday through Friday, 7:30am – 4:00pm schedule, we will be working ten-hour days Monday through Thursday. Our office hours will be 7:00am to 5:30pm. We will be closed on Fridays.
On Fridays, if you need us, we will continue to be on call just like we are every weekend and holiday. We also continue to make it easy to handle billing-related services through the 24/7 kiosk at our office or on SmartHub by logging into your account on our website.
We decided to try this schedule for several reasons. First, we anticipate it will improve our operational efficiency. This allows our crews to spend one less day prepping and commuting to a work site and to spend more time on the work sites during the days we’re working. It also allows us to take advantage of the long sunny days and to hopefully avoid some of the worst traffic of summer. Basically, we can get more work done with less time spent driving around.
A second expected advantage of this schedule is that it allows us to offer our members in person hours outside of the normal workday by opening earlier and staying open later. This should help provide options for members who work a traditional 8am – 5pm schedule and struggle to make it to our office during work hours.
Aside from the operational advantages, the biggest driver of this decision is our employees. We work in an industry that requires us to work weekends, holidays and any other time the lights go out. In the summer, our employees often work brutal schedules to keep up with our workload. Studies show that employees who work four 10-hour days tend to be more productive, less burned out, happier, and just generally less stressed.
Offering this adjusted summer schedule for our employees is expected to improve recruitment and retention of our workforce. Today’s workers are looking for flexibility and work-life integration. The work we do at Cherryland can at times limit the flexibility we have to offer and can often interfere in our employees’ home lives. Ask any lineworker and they’ll tell you a story of the storm that hit during their child’s birthday, the big state finals game, and Christmas eve.
We think this new summer schedule will be better for our employees, better for our cooperative and ultimately better for you. It’s a simple way for us to make ourselves more efficient while also protecting our most important asset – the people who work every day to keep your lights on.
This modified summer schedule starts on June 3 and ends on August 30. If it works well, we will likely continue to shift between summer and winter hours on a similar schedule going forward.
Not sure on the new hours. Being open 5 days would be better for customers needing help.
Hi Ron – We get similar feedback from members who wish we were open later in the day with our current hours. Hopefully the ability to stop by before or after work will make it better for our members who work a traditional schedule. And, as always, we will have dispatchers and line crews on call to respond to any emergencies 24/7. As I mention in my column, these hours are just for summer and bring significant operational benefits because our field and operations employees can spend less time driving to and from the job site and take advantage of longer summer sunlight to spend more time on the job site. We’re trying it for one summer and will monitor how it goes. If it doesn’t work for us or it creates challenges for members accessing our office and employees, we will certainly re-evaluate whether we do it again in the future. Thanks for weighing in, I hope you’ll take time to follow up with us after summer to let us know if the summer hours caused problems for you.
IT SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD IDEA..HOPE IT WORKS OUT FOR ALL!
Your Summer hours are AWESOME. Great decision for everyone!
Rachel, not excited about your new working hours. I believe the public would be better served if the 7.5 work hours you previously had over the 5 working days were moved to the right to at least last till 5:30 PM. Understand the desire of the employees to accommodate their schedules, but this is a customer based business. Please keep this in mind in your next decisions.
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts, David. Offering in person office hours 9 – 5:30 M-F isn’t something we are currently considering but we’ll keep it in mind for the future. This summer offers us an opportunity to track how many members visit our office between 4p – 5:30p, it will be interesting to see what we learn about member interest in later hours.
You seem to imply in your comment that this is entirely about accommodating employee schedules and I did want to redirect you to my column. There are several operational advantages of this schedule, particularly as it pertains to field employee efficiency and spending less time driving back and forth to job sites and more time on the job itself. To be frank with you, our employees are somewhat split on whether they wanted alternative summer hours with many preferring the M-F schedule. But, when all of the operational benefits are stacked alongside the opportunity to consolidate the 40-hour work week into 4 days and offer Fridays off in the summer, it seemed like an initiative worth trying. If the employees end up liking it and it helps us attract and retain our talented and dedicated workforce, that’s great for the co-op and the members we serve. Which is, for me, always top of mind in my decisions.