Overview
Welcome to the Maxiflex Work Schedule! This toolkit is for Institutes, Centers, and office of the National Institutes of Health that are implementing the Maxiflex work schedule for their workforce.
What is Maxiflex?
Maxiflex is a type of Flexible Work Schedule that contains core hours on fewer than 10 workdays in the biweekly pay period and in which a full-time employee may, within the limits established for the organization,:
- vary their start and end time each workday,
- vary the total number of hours worked each workday,
- split their schedule up to 3x in one workday, and/or
- vary the total number of hours worked each week.
What are the benefits of Maxiflex?
Maxiflex isn’t just about offering flexibility to our employees; it’s an effective business strategy too. Maxiflex can help NIH achieve our goals while meeting our employees’ need for flexibility and more control over their lives. Some common benefits employers get from flexible work arrangements, including Maxiflex, are:
- Reduce turnover costs
- Make it easier to recruit
- Reduce callouts / absenteeism
- Improve morale, engagement, & satisfaction
- Increase productivity
- Improve customer service
- Improve employee well-being
- Reduce overtime costs by having employees work only when needed
- Reduce congestion during peak hours and support sustainability goals
- Reduce distracting life stressors
- Recruit from a wider geographic area
- Maintain operations during disasters
NIH research supports flexible work arrangements such as Maxiflex
Studies have found a direct relationship between flexible work and improved health behaviors around sleep, exercise, and staying home when sick. The Work, Family, & Health Network, a collaborative between NICHD, NIA, and OBSSR, as well as the CDC, seeks to “identify workplace interventions that can improve health and well-being by improving workers' ability to successfully meet demands of both work and family.” Much of their research looks at the impact of changing an employee’s schedule control, or their perception of schedule control.