Open Scheduling: A new one to me!
 

Wow, the nursing home where my SIL works has instituted a program called open scheduling. A blank sheet is posted on the board and the nurses fill in their own schedule!

We have a similar program here at work called FLEX. You can work part time or full time and you pick the hours. It's meant to attract retired persons who have skills but don't want to work full time. It's wildly popular.

But do they fill in their own schedules?

Yes, but they have a couple of rules. 1. they need to commit to a schedule a month out (liberal) 2. Because some share cubies they need to work it out amongst the other flexer's so they don't overlap. Depending upon which department they work #2 sometimes doesn't apply. They can come in and work from Midnight to six AM if that floats their boat.

The business is open 24/7 so their are lots of possibilities.

Wow, I can imagine that work place politics must play a huge part. Not that we could ever function with scheduling like that, but if we did, the infighting and back-stabbing would be relentless.

A lot of lawfirms do this too for people who have been there a while but don't want to go on a partnership track, or like you said, Of Counsel silverbacks. For men they call it the 'contract' track and for women it is called he 'mommy' track.

Correct, in my department (Legal and Risk Management) there is some excellent talent in the "Silverback" area. The mommy track area is mostly filled by the work at home program.

When I was in college, I worked at a insulator factory. Working every day did not give me enough time for school, so a friend of mine went with me and we both applied for the same job. The deal we cut with the factory was that they would hire both of us to work the same shift, but only one of us worked each day. Whoever turned up each day was entirely up to us. We simply decided each day who was going to go to work. Quite out of the ordinary for the 1970's but an excellent arrangement for us and I think it worked out well for the factory.

That wasn't by chance an Ohio factory? Like Barberton.

That was and remains very common in the merchant marine industry (for officers), albeit not on a day to day manner. But in the large union companies like Maritime Oversees, there may only be X amount of jobs for American flagged ships available in the world, and if there is a strike, a lot of times two guys will scab and split the sail time. They will sail for six months, collect unemployment for 3 months and then live for 3 in Thailand or Honduras, ectt.... on pennies until they have to ship out again.

Victor Insulators, upstate NY. Owned by Gould at the time.
Union was IBEW. I don't know if the union had any input on the arrangement.

Sounded like Ohio Brass they were doing that in the 70's as sort of a non union thing. Part time people could not join (not eligible) the union.

Anything to keep their workers happy. My buddy's wife was a nursing home RN and was miserable. Now she's at Methodist Hosp and much happier. Takes a certain personality, lots of "code browns". :eek:

I tell ya, if we had open scheduling at my old RT job, I'd still be there.

I can see why they would do that. UPS also used to play that game.
Both of us were members of the union.

Dude you f'kin crack me up. No you won't be there! :D :D Still on payroll but not really there!

My suspicion is they're doing it to weed out the nurse population.