The Carroll School's Center for Work & Family recently celebrated its 10th anniversary with the release of a two-year study on workplace flexibility. More than 1,500 employees and managers at six corporations -- Amway, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Honeywell, Kraft Foods, Lucent Technologies, and Motorola -- were surveyed. Researchers spoke with daily flextime users (those with the broadest discretion in their work hours), traditional flextime users (whose schedules include certain core hours), telecommuters (who work off-site for some portion of the week), and traditional 9-to-5 employees. Here's how the new flexibility is working out.



Hours worked per week:
Daily flextime users: 49.5
Traditional flextime users: 48.1
Telecommuters: 50.5
Traditional employees 51.3



"Satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their lives:
Daily flextime users: 65.4%
Traditional flextime users: 60.9%
Telecommuters: 46.3%
Traditional employees: 57.6%



Worked while on vacation last year:
Daily flextime users: 30.3%
Traditional flextime users: 27.6%
Telecommuters: 46.3%
Traditional employees: 33.9%

Flextime workers who say the arrangement has a positive effect on:
Productivity: 87.4%
Quality of work: 86.8%
Retention: 79.5%

Managers who believe flextime employees are as likely to get:
Good performance reviews: 85.0%
Promotions 73.3%

Say flextime workers are less committed to their jobs:
Managers: 1.1%
Coworkers 12.1%

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