Working 9 to 5 is no longer the way to make a living, at least in some work places in La Plata County. A 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. schedule has taken over for some, and others have made less drastic tweaks to the workday.
As of this week, the La Plata County Treasurer’s office will be open to the public four days per week. On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, the office will be open from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; on Wednesdays, the office will be open 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
The change comes on the heels of the Clerk and Recorder’s decision in September to pilot a four-day workweek – an experiment deemed a success in January.
Treasurer Alison Aichele said the change will have less of an impact on her staff, made up of just three other employees, but is intended to address some confusion that arose out of the discrepancy in services offered on Fridays out of the county building in Bodo Park.
As of this week, the office of County Assessor Carrie Woodson will continue to serve the public on Fridays out of the building. Some staff members from Aichele’s office will continue to work Fridays, but the office will be closed to the public. The office of Clerk and Recorder Tiffany Lee is also closed Fridays, and her staff does not work that day.
Aichele’s schedule follows that of the county’s Community Development Department, which moved to a similar schedule earlier this year. Staff members still work five days per week as needed, but the office is only open to the public Monday through Thursday with extended hours.
Lee said that what started out as a public-oriented decision has come to also benefit her staff. Aichele remains somewhat wary of the four-day schedule, and intends to keep her staff working the standard five days.
Deputy Clerk and Recorder Arielle Ferguson lives in Bayfield, where the school district now operates on a four-day schedule (Durango School District 9-R is one of the only districts in the area still operating on a five-day schedule). Her four-day work schedule matches that of her 10- and 16-year-old children.
“I’m a much happier person,” she said. “I enjoy going to work more. I’m not near(ly) as stressed out.”
She has a full weekday to do chores and take her children to doctor’s appointments, and she saves money now that her 40-mile commute from Bayfield to Durango and back has been eliminated one day per week.
“It’s making the weekends (filled with) a lot more quality time,” Ferguson said.
Lee’s shift to having her employees work four 10-hour days is among the more substantial shifts in labor scheduling in the area. Studies have shown health, lifestyle and productivity benefits of working both fewer days and fewer hours. It can also lead to higher employee retention.
Last month, the town of Golden announced it was launching an experiment to cut hours in its police department to just four eight-hour days – 32 hours per week – without reducing pay. The truncated week is something an organization named 4 Day Week Global is hoping to spread by working with employers to show the benefits of the schedule – and that decreasing hours doesn’t necessarily decrease productivity.
In Lee’s case, employees are still working 40 hours per week.
The scheduling change came about after Lee received complaints from members of the public who said they couldn’t get to her office after their own workday ended. By extending her hours every day and closing the office Fridays, she was able to remedy those concerns.
Lee said she was the 19th county in the state to make a change like this.
She has received compliments on her office’s extended hours, but the true benefit, she said, is in productivity.
“It’s unbelievable,” she said.
Paperwork that her office fills out for car dealerships used to take three days to turn around; now her office returns it in one day.
And the extra day of rest has increased productivity, cutting her overtime costs.
Excluding election work (the bulk of which occurs in November), her office spent $9,100 on overtime in 2019, $3,000 in 2020 and $6,600 in 2021.
In the first half of 2023, Lee said her office has spent just $112 on overtime expenses.
Many public-facing businesses – the kind that rakes in millions of dollars in revenue from tourists visiting Durango – are unable to restructure schedules because of the need to be open for customers five, six or even seven days per week. But some production and manufacturing businesses are able to swing it.
Jeff Vierling, co-founder of the Durango-based brand Tailwind Nutrition, said that although shipping and customer service employees work a typical five-day schedule, his six-member production team works four 10-hour days.
The hour of start-up and wind-down time necessary on each end of a production day means that longer days lead to a 10% to 15% increase in productivity within a 40-hour period.
“The team prefers it,” Vierling said. “They’d rather just keep on going and finish things out then to cut it short, and have an extra day.”
The county’s treasurer and Community Development department have more modest changes to their schedule.
Aichele said she changed her office’s hours after staff members approached her. The inconsistency in having departments in one building, some of which were open Friday and some not, was “too confusing for the public.”
But other than one hourly employee, little is expected to change in Aichele’s office. She and her two deputies are salaried, and her work remains relatively static.
“There are things that absolutely have to be done on Fridays with the banks, and my deputy and I, who are not hourly, and can work Friday without incurring any additional cost to the county,” she said. “We’ll be working those hours on Friday.”
Aichele says she has seen the four-day workweek implemented in past workplaces, and is wary of the morale shift. People want to be home in time for dinner, she said, and extended child care can be an issue for those with kids.
Woodson, the assessor, cited similar concerns when explaining her choice to stick with the typical five-day schedule.
“I was thinking of the public first,” she said of the change.
But at least in Lee’s office, the feedback on both sides has been overwhelmingly positive.
“From a morale perspective, it’s been widely embraced,” said County Manager Chuck Stevens.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
