By J.K. Wall
The Indianapolis Star

In the game of recruiting and retaining the best workers, small-business owners increasingly find that accommodating employees' scheduling requests allows them to compete with larger firms, which typically hold the edge in wages and insurance benefits.

One example is flextime, which allows employees to choose when they begin and end their shifts. During the past five years, the percentage of all firms offering flextime has risen to 64 percent from 56 percent, according to an annual benefits survey by the Society for Human Resource Management.

This trend holds true for companies large and small, human resources experts say, but small businesses are leading the growth.

"Small businesses are more adaptable to the new reality," said Karl Ahlrichs, a human resources consultant for Professional Staff Management.

In 1998, during a tight labor market, the National Federation of Independent Businesses surveyed companies with fewer than 100 employees about their hiring issues. Of firms that had no trouble hiring, 67 percent said the flexibility and independence they offered was above the market norm. Another 53 percent said their work environment beat the average.

At the same time, only 28 percent of these firms said their wages beat the market rate, and only 23 percent said their benefits were above average.

While two years of a down economy have eased tightness in the labor market, hiring remains a critical issue for small-business owners.

In a Dun & Bradstreet survey of small-business owners, a lack of qualified employees ranked as the biggest problem of 2002, beating the poor economy and cash flow.

Once a company finds good workers, flexibility plays a key role in keeping them. To keep good workers, companies must face the shifting demands of the work force.

Now that Generation X is entirely of working age, firms recruiting 20- and 30-somethings must respond to their demand for work-life balance.

Human resources experts report that as an added wrinkle, aging baby boomers, who were more likely to be workaholics, now are beginning to mimic their Gen X colleagues by negotiating time to care for parents and address other life demands.

"We're starting to see baby boomers act a lot more like Xers," said Nancy Ahlrichs, an Indianapolis human resources consultant and author of the book Competing for Talent (Davies-Black Publishing, $32.95).

Ahlrichs said entrepreneurial firms have the advantage over their larger competitors in this changing environment. "They aren't constrained by rules. There are no rules," she said.

That's what Kristen Shingleton found. Five years ago, the single mother left her job at Bank One because it required frequent travel and kept her from spending time with her son, Tyler, who battles scoliosis, severe allergies and a learning disability.

Shingleton now works for Engledow Group, a 150-employee landscaping firm in Carmel, Ind.

Engledow has no formal flextime policy but allows Shingleton to leave work during the day to take her son to appointments with doctors and teachers. Recently, she had three separate appointments to treat Tyler's allergies.

"I would have a hard time working for a very large company," said Shingleton, Engledow's human resources manager.

Other small firms agree to juggle their employees' schedules because ultimately it helps the bottom line. It costs more time and money to advertise, interview, reference-check and choose new employees than it does to work around unpaid leave or odd hours.

Such low-cost benefits as flextime and compressed workweeks rose by double-digit percentages in the past two years, according to SHRM's Benefits Survey, as employers found inexpensive ways to improve benefits.