Reach New Talent Pools with a Five-Hour Workday

Parents and caregivers constitute the largest share of “hidden workers” in the US—those who want to work, but are kept out of the workforce or full-time roles because of employment gaps, skills gaps, or logistical challenges.

One of those challenges is that the typical nine-to-five workday and the school day are fundamentally incompatible, leaving working parents of school-aged children to choose between vying for one of a limited number of expensive after-care slots, cobbling together an often costly patchwork of alternative care, or leaving the workforce altogether.

Amy Grill and Emma Harvey, founders of the Five Hour Club, argue for another option: a workday designed to exist in the hours between school dropoff and pickup. Their organization works with employers to create and recruit for roles that fit within those time boundaries without sacrificing job quality. The jobs are required to offer professional development, provide opportunities for career growth, and pay a salary pro-rated from what wages would be at 40 hours a week. 

The pitch to employers: Offering roles in this model allows you to find qualified people who are otherwise inaccessible. Grilli recalls her own experience trying to re-enter the workforce after a career break without giving up the ability to care for her young children after school.

“I had this five-hour window each day where I wanted to do something productive and have a purpose,” she says, “and when I was looking for jobs, they were very low-level, low-paid jobs. .... There are parents who have years of experience prior to children, and at the moment they might just be sitting there, this huge talent pool being wasted.”

What to do:

Break each role into its required outputs. To trim the scope of a full-time role for a reduced workday, Grilli recommends hiring managers make a comprehensive list of everything the person in that role would be expected to produce. Building a job description around outputs over time breakdowns—for example, specifying that the employee would be responsible for a certain number of research reports per quarter, rather than that half of their time would be spent on research—makes it easier to ensure “there’s no creep” in scope and time, she says, and helps managers to appropriately set their expectations. 

Be specific and clear in your definition of “flexible.” A job listing that simply highlights “flexible work” may be too vague, turning away parents who believe they may still have to request additional accommodations on top of what the company offers. “For me, it was always a barrier to say, ‘I have to ask if I can leave at this time, or if I can go do this,’” Grilli says. Including an explanation of the five-hour option, on the other hand, “makes it very clear to parents what they’re signing up for, and that they don’t have to then ask for flexibility or time off when they need to leave” for child-care obligations.

Specify and enforce core collaboration hours. At either the team or company level, set fixed hours when workers should be available for meetings and synchronous communication, such as the block of time from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm ET.

Involve your employee resource groups (ERGs). As the target demographic for this offering, members of parents’ or caregivers’ ERGs can be partners in developing five-hour jobs and tracking how well the policy is working on the ground. 

Written by Cari Romm Nazeer. © 2024. This article is reprinted with permission by Charter Works Inc. All rights reserved.

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