How companies including Workday and Land O’Lakes approach flexible work perks for employees

Offering flexible work perks can be a…well, flex for employers.

When employees have flexibility through arrangements such as remote work, they can see improvements in key metrics, like productivity. Lucky for companies, flexible work doesn’t just mean remote; it can include arrangements like shortened workweeks or flexible scheduling.

Read on to learn about how four companies approach flexible work for their employees.

Workday’s “work from almost anywhere” perk. The software giant introduced its “work from almost anywhere” perk based on worker feedback on its hybrid policy. While employees liked the arrangement, through which non-customer-facing workers were required to spend at least 50% of their time in the office per quarter, they still wanted more flexibility. So, Workday rolled out the “work from almost anywhere” perk, allowing workers to spend 30 calendar days in a 12-month rolling period working from any location, within legal limits like visa requirements.

“It was really just listening to employees and coming up with a solution to something they said was important,” Ashley Goldsmith, Workday’s chief people officer, told HR Brew.

As a result of the program, 86% of managers say their direct reports’ well-being has improved. And productivity appears to have remained consistent: 87% of supervisors reported no disruption to employee productivity, while only 5% said there was a decrease.

Goldsmith told HR Brew that one of the most surprising outcomes was how employees take advantage of it. At the start, she said, they imagined employees would use the benefit to work on far-flung beaches, but many have actually used the time to stay at home or visit family, instead of traveling to a remote destination. “What makes everybody tick is different, and it was rewarding to see it, actually.”

Land O’Lakes’ flexible work scheduling. In February 2022, the agriculture cooperative gave its workers the option to set their own schedules. As of March, it has rolled out its “flex work” program to 60 of its 140 facilities.

Before introducing the program, the company struggled to fill job openings. Workers had to complete 12-hour shifts to support the factory’s 24-hour production.

“We had to think about it in terms of, ‘How do we wrap the work around the employees?’ Not the other way around—that was the traditional way,” Yone Dewberry, Land O’Lakes chief supply chain officer, told the Wall Street Journal in March.

Every few weeks, flex employees work with supervisors to choose their shifts, and managers work with employees to address any gaps in scheduling. There are some costs, Dewberry told the Wall Street Journal. The company, for example, has to hire two to three flex workers for one full-time role, leading to more spending on training, and the time it takes to schedule weekly shifts has also cost the company. But Land O’Lakes has seen a boost in employee retention and applicant interest.

EY’s company-wide shutdowns. Since 2017, EY has given US employees two week-long breaks each year, around the Fourth of July and Christmas holidays. The consulting firm rolled out the perk after a July 2017 pilot, Wendy Edgar, EY’s HR director for the Americas, previously told HR Brew. For employees with obligations that require them to clock in during the shutdown, the firm offers “deferred holiday hours” that an employee can use for up to three months after the break.

Exos’ “You Do You Fridays” Fridays. Phoenix, Arizona-based corporate well-being platform Exos piloted a four-day workweek for six months starting in May 2023. The program, dubbed “You Do You Fridays,” allowed Exos workers to choose how they spent their Fridays, as long as they weren’t interacting with coworkers at the company.

Some adjustments have since been made to the policy: for example, customer-facing employees who have to meet with clients on Fridays can work flexibly on another weekday. But overall, Exos employees were more engaged, energized, and motivated than before the pilot, Greg Hill, Exos’ chief people officer, previously told HR Brew.