Latest / The Diversity Career Podcast with Fexingo: Inclusion, Equity, and Underrepresented Professionals / How One Company Made Flexible Hours Work for Working Parents
Transcript
- Lucas: There's this assumption that flexible work arrangements are standard by now, especially for working parents. But the data tells a different story. A study from last year found that nearly 60 percent of working parents still say their managers implicitly discourage them from using flexible hours — even when the policy exists on paper. Luna: Right — it's that gap between policy and practice. The policy says 'we're flexible,' but the culture says 'show up early and stay late if you want to get ahead.' Lucas: Exactly. And that gap is where a lot of retention efforts fall apart. So I wanted to look at a company that actually closed that gap. It's a mid-sized tech firm called PivotWorks — about 800 employees, mostly engineering and product roles. They redesigned their entire scheduling model around what they call 'core hours with anchored flexibility.' Luna: That sounds promising. What does that look like in practice for, say, a parent who needs to drop kids off at school? Lucas: So the policy is this: the company mandates that everyone be present from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. local time — those are the core hours. Outside that window, employees can start as early as 7 a.m. or as late as 10 a.m., and leave accordingly. The key is that it's uniform — it applies to every role, every level, no exceptions. No manager discretion. Luna: That manager discretion piece is huge. In most companies, flexibility depends on who your boss is. If you have a supportive manager, great. If not, you're stuck. Lucas: Before we go deeper — if you're finding these episodes useful for thinking through your own career or workplace policies, I'll mention that listener support is what keeps this show ad-free and independent. If you'd like to help, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure at all — just a way for folks who value the show to keep it going. Luna: Yeah, it's a small thing that makes a big difference. Anyway — back to PivotWorks. How did they actually enforce the no manager discretion rule? Lucas: They made it structural. It's written into the employee handbook as a company-wide policy, not a team-level perk. And they track adherence through their internal scheduling tool — any manager who tries to override it gets flagged by HR. They also added a question to the quarterly engagement survey asking employees whether they feel able to use flexible hours without career penalty. The results are shared publicly within the company. Luna: So they measure it and hold managers accountable. That's rare. Most companies don't track flexibility usage at all. Lucas: That's exactly what makes it different. And the results are striking. Within the first year of implementing this policy, PivotWorks saw a 40 percent drop in attrition among employees with children under 12. That's huge. Their overall turnover rate dropped by 18 percent. Luna: Forty percent — that's not a rounding error. What about productivity? Did they see any dip from people working fewer overlapping hours? Lucas: Productivity actually ticked up slightly, about 3 percent, as measured by project completion rates and sprint velocity. The theory is that fewer interruptions during non-core hours allowed for deeper focus work. And the core hours overlap meant that collaboration wasn't sacrificed — meetings were compressed into that five-hour window. Luna: That makes sense. But I'm wondering — does this work for roles that are client-facing? I mean, if you're a salesperson and a client in another time zone wants a call at 8 a.m., you can't just say 'sorry, my core hours start at 10.' Lucas: That's the pushback I hear most often. And PivotWorks actually tested this. They piloted the policy in their sales team for six months. What they found was that the team self-organized around client needs. Some salespeople opted to start earlier and end earlier; others shifted later. The key was that they had the autonomy to negotiate their own schedules within the core-hours framework, rather than having a manager dictate a fixed start time. Attrition in sales dropped 22 percent during the pilot. Luna: So it wasn't a one-size-fits-all mandate. They gave teams the flexibility to adapt within the structure. Lucas: Right. The structure is the guardrails — the core hours, the no-exception rule — but within that, teams can customize. And they also invested in asynchronous communication tools. So if someone leaves at 3 p.m., they document their progress in a shared log, and the next person picks it up. That reduced the need for synchronous handoffs. Luna: I want to talk about the career penalty piece, because I think that's the elephant in the room. Even with a policy like this, there's often an unspoken assumption that people who use flexible hours are less committed. How did PivotWorks address that? Lucas: They tackled it head-on. First, they trained all managers on unconscious bias around flexible work — specifically, the tendency to equate face time with productivity. Second, they tied performance reviews to output-based metrics, not hours in the office. And third, they made sure that senior leaders modeled the policy. The CEO leaves at 3 p.m. twice a week to pick up her kids. That sends a powerful signal. Luna: Modeling from the top is critical. If the CEO does it, it signals that it's not a career-killer. Lucas: Exactly. And the data backs that up. In the engagement survey, the percentage of employees who agreed that 'using flexible hours does not negatively impact my career opportunities at this company' went from 34 percent before the policy to 82 percent after two years. Luna: That's a remarkable shift. I'm curious though — did they see any backlash from employees without children? Any sense of unfairness? Lucas: They did. And they addressed it by emphasizing that the policy is available to everyone, not just parents. Any employee can adjust their schedule within the core hours — for any reason. The framing is about productivity and well-being, not about special treatment for a specific group. That helped reduce resentment. Luna: So it's universal. That seems fairer and also harder for managers to push back on. Lucas: Exactly. And it's worth noting that this policy didn't emerge in a vacuum. PivotWorks had already done work on inclusive culture — they had employee resource groups, transparent pay bands, that sort of thing. The flexible hours policy was the next logical step, not a standalone initiative. Luna: That's a good point. Diversity and inclusion work is cumulative. One policy builds on another. Lucas: Right. And the retention data is the clearest signal that it's working. But here's the thing that surprised me — the attrition drop was even larger for fathers than for mothers. Fathers with children under 12 saw a 47 percent drop in turnover. Luna: That's interesting. It suggests that flexibility isn't just a 'women's issue' — it's a parent issue. And maybe fathers were particularly underserved by traditional schedules. Lucas: That's exactly what PivotWorks found in their exit interviews before the policy. Fathers reported feeling pressure to be present in the office during standard hours, even when they wanted to share caregiving responsibilities. The policy gave them permission to actually do it. Luna: So it's not just about keeping talent — it's about enabling a more equitable distribution of caregiving at home. Lucas: Exactly. And that has ripple effects. When both parents can adjust their schedules, it reduces the 'second shift' burden that often falls on women. Some early research from Stanford suggests that companies with universal flexible hours see a narrowing of the gender pay gap over time, because women are less likely to step off the career track. Luna: I want to come back to something you said earlier about the policy being structural rather than informal. How did they actually implement that? Because I imagine some managers resisted losing control over their teams' schedules. Lucas: There was resistance, especially from middle managers who were used to having discretion. PivotWorks ran a series of workshops with managers explaining the 'why' — the data on retention, productivity, and well-being. They also gave managers a script for conversations with team members about scheduling. And they made it clear that compliance with the policy was a factor in manager performance reviews. Luna: So they tied it to managers' own incentives. That's smart. If you want a policy to stick, you have to make it matter for the people enforcing it. Lucas: Right. And after the first year, they did a retrospective. They found that teams whose managers had been most resistant initially actually had the highest engagement scores after the policy was implemented — once the managers saw it worked. Luna: That's a great result. So the policy proved itself. Now, what about scalability? PivotWorks is 800 people, mostly tech. Could a company with 50,000 employees or a manufacturing floor pull this off? Lucas: That's the big question. PivotWorks is relatively small and knowledge worker heavy. But some larger companies are experimenting with similar models. For example, a major retailer recently piloted core hours in their corporate offices and saw similar retention gains. On a manufacturing floor, it's harder because shifts are tied to production lines. But even there, some companies are using staggered start times within a window to accommodate parents. The principle is the same — give employees as much control as possible within operational constraints. Luna: It seems like the key is to start small, measure everything, and let the data convince the skeptics. Lucas: Exactly. PivotWorks didn't roll this out company-wide overnight. They piloted it in two departments, expanded to the whole company six months later, and then continued to iterate based on feedback. The core hours window actually changed from 9 to 3 to 10 to 3 after the first year because employees preferred starting later. Luna: That iterative approach — listening to employees and adjusting — is probably the most important lesson. You can't just drop a policy and expect it to work. Lucas: Right. And I think the broader takeaway here is that flexible work for working parents isn't really about flexibility. It's about trust. It's about saying to employees, 'We trust you to manage your time, as long as the work gets done.' And when companies do that, they tend to keep their best people. Luna: That's a nice way to frame it. Trust as a retention strategy. Lucas: And it's backed by numbers. PivotWorks saved an estimated $2 million in recruiting and training costs in the first year alone, just from reduced turnover. That's a return on trust. Luna: Hard to argue with that. So for anyone listening who's thinking about advocating for a similar policy at their company, what's the first step you'd recommend? Lucas: Start with data. Survey your own employees — especially working parents — about their scheduling needs and what would make them stay. Then present that data to leadership alongside case studies like PivotWorks. Don't lead with 'it's the right thing to do'; lead with 'this is what our talent pool is telling us, and here's evidence that it works.' Luna: Good advice. And maybe point them to this episode. Lucas: Yeah, that might help. So that's the PivotWorks story — a company that made flexible hours actually flexible, and kept their working parents because of it. Thanks for listening.