It was 1934 and graduates from Stanford’s school of Electrical Engineering decided to take a couple of weeks off to do some fishing.  Two graduates, Dave and Bill, discovered strong similarities in their attitudes about things, and struck up a friendship. 

When they returned home—Dave to a job with General Electric and Bill to graduate studies at Stanford—they continued to spend some of their spare time together, sometimes tinkering on projects in Dave’s garage.  A professor encouraged them to launch a business, so they flipped a coin to determine the name of their new company.  Bill won the toss, and in 1939, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard formed a partnership. 

Although Hewlett Packard is recognized for its technological contributions, it is interesting to note that HP pioneered many of the revolutionary “work/life” ideas that exist in the business community today.  

Their first office was designed without interior walls so that space could be “flexible,” and in 1967, HP became one of the first companies in the world to apply the concept of flexibility to its employees, as well.  That is how FTO (Flexible Time Off) was born.  The decision was based on the assumption that if you take care to hire employees with a decent work ethic, you can simply trust them to put in their fair share of time. 

“On occasion, situations will arise where people have personal problems which temporarily affect their performance,” states the document known as the HP Way, Hewlett Packard’s formal list of corporate objectives, “and it is important that people in such circumstances be treated with understanding while the problems are being resolved.”

This strikes at the heart of the FTO concept.  Flexible Time Off allows employees to take paid time off in daily, half day, or even hourly increments.  Working mothers have time to attend to sick children.  A busy engineer can sleep late after an exhausting road trip.  A member of the accounting staff can stay home to meet the refrigerator repairman, then work late to make up the time.

Offering flexibility to an employee with good work ethic doesn’t promote laziness.  Instead, it gives people the “down time” they need to make themselves more productive when they are at work, and that’s important to your bottom line.  Imagine where HP would be if Dave and Bill had never had time to do any fishing, or if all of that tinkering in the garage had been put off because Dave was putting in overtime at work. 

If you’ve avoided offering benefits like FTO because you’re concerned about the difficulty of computing and tracking payroll expenses, contact a member of your PEO's payroll department today.  Payroll preparation is our specialty.  FTO is a benefit that is within your company’s grasp. 

Source:  www.hp.com.