Shorter week offers greener option
By JILLIAN DUCHNOWSKI - jduchnowski@nwherald.com
WOODSTOCK – State’s Attorney Louis Bianchi is offering his administrative assistants a gas-saving perk starting after the Fourth of July holiday.
Twenty-two of his 23 administrative assistants will fit their 37.5-hour workweek into four days, rather than five. The measure will conserve energy and give staff extra time with their families.
“We’ve expanded our hours so they can work the same number of hours,” Office Manager Karen Rhodes said.
It means working from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a 35-minute lunch break, rather than working 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with an hour lunch. Participants rotate having Monday, Wednesday or Friday off, so everyone gets an equal number of three-day weekends.
The only worker to decide against the optional schedule did so because of child-care constraints, Rhodes said.
The special schedule is expected to end Aug. 29.
The treasurer’s office has operated with a similar schedule year round for about 12 years, Treasurer Bill LeFew said. Each staff members works from 7:15 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. Days off rotate so that someone who has Monday off one week will have Tuesday off the next.
LeFew said he developed the schedule based on public service, not gas prices, so working taxpayers could conveniently call the office. But his staff likes it, too, because they have a weekday to run errands and attend doctor’s appointments without taking off work.
But other county department leaders said they had no plans to adopt a similar arrangement.
County Assessor Donna Mayberry said her staff wasn’t interested when they discussed the schedule when LeFew started offering it.
County Clerk Katherine Schultz said a four-day workweek, combined with vacation days, would create a staffing nightmare for an office with a lot of foot traffic.
“You look at Fridays and see how many people are working,” Schultz said. “We’re working short-handed as it is.”
