The road to better time use
Houston-area employers are offering relief from the traditional commute, increasing productivity and saving workers money
BY one count, each year Houston employees lose the equivalent of a week and a half on the job stuck in traffic during rush-hour commutes. The loss of those 61 hours wastes about $1,490 in fuel and productivity, according to the most recent Urban Mobility Scorecard, an annual report by the Texas A&M University Transportation Institute.
But Houston employers increasingly are finding ways to recapture some of that by offering flexible work schedules and the option to work off-site. They’re also helping employees save on commuting in other ways, with programs for car pooling, public transportation and parking.
It turns out, those kinds of benefits can help boost staff morale as well. They proved to be a significant factor in this year’s Top Workplaces survey, which ranks the area’s large, medium and small companies in terms of how they are viewed by their employees.
For example, one of the toprated companies on the list, the 150-employee architecture firm Kirksey, introduced flexible work schedules and the technology to enable it almost a year ago.
“Currently, so many freeways are under construction, we wanted to make sure we were making the best use of people’s time,” marketing director Stephanie Wilkinson said. “Everyone can work remotely from home. We really stress to people to do what makes sense to them so people aren’t wasting their time.”
Architect Darrell Whatley’s job takes him to clients’ offices around town for their higher education projects as well to Kirksey’s office near Interstate 10 just inside Loop 610 West. The 15-year employee no longer spends an hour and a half making the 24-mile trek from his Cypress home to the office by 8:30 a.m.
“Everything I have access to electronically in the office, I have access to remotely,” Whatley said. “It just allowed me to gain some
more useful time than staring at the steering wheel on the road.”
At management consulting and technology services firm Accenture, only a fraction of the company’s more than 1,600 local employees come to the office daily.
As part of a global initiative to trim real estate costs, Accenture’s Houston office has shrunk from three floors to a single ultrahigh-tech floor in downtown’s 1301 Fannin office tower. Dubbed “Workplace 2.0,” the office is designed with one seat for every eight employees. Every area is dual-purpose, with collaborative areas for not just working but also playing games and drinking coffee.
Similar to a hotel, employees can reserve offices or conference rooms that connect them virtually with Accenture offices worldwide. Technology allows employees to connect with the company and co-workers via cellphones and computers any time they choose.
‘It wasn’t a hard sell’
“Every employee here is enabled to work from anywhere,” said Rene Saenz, office operations supervisor for Accenture in Houston. “It wasn’t a hard sell to get people to work at home. That time they spend in the car, they could be working.”
Several companies offer a “9/80” compressed work schedule, in which employees get every other Friday off. Among them are Spectra Energy, Burns & McDonnell, LJA Engineering, and Brady, Chapman, Holland & Associates.
At its headquarters in the Galleria area, Spectra Energy offers free parking and telecommuting programs. It also participates in van pools and the Trek Houston bus service to the Sugar Land, spokesman Creighton Welch said.
At Kirksey, ride sharing is popular among groups of employees who live in west Houston and The Woodlands. The firm recently introduced an interactive Google map on its intranet to facilitate carpool arrangements. Kirksey designates the best parking spaces for fuel-efficient vehicles.
Companies such as Accenture, Burns & McDonnell, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and KPMG participate in commutertransit accounts, a pretax benefit used to pay for public transit.
An estimated 3 million people use commuter transit accounts nationally, according to WageWorks, which administers the program for KPMG.
Subsidized bus passes
KPMG, which has offices along the Metro Rail line at BG Group Place downtown, subsidizes $60 monthly for Metro Q Card bus passes for permanent employees, spokeswoman Sue Vreeland said. It also pays for after-hours parking for employees who need to work late.
Among other companies offering flexible work schedules are BHP Billiton, Edward Jones Investments, EOG Resources, Insgroup, Jack Henry & Associates, Talos Energy and Wortham.