The headline buries the big number: They claim a whopping 1/3 of the workforce quit after the announcement.
But they also buried the other big factor: They offered everyone $1000 to quit. They also didn't actually completely end flexible working hours, they just raised the minimum working hours to 20 per week and required that they be performed during core hours:
> employees would now be required to work at least 20 hours per week on a set schedule during regular business hours; their log-on and log-off times would be tracked, and stylists would at least temporarily no longer be allowed to become full-time employees. Those who couldn’t work within the new rules were offered a $1,000 bonus to quit
So it's not as simple as the headline makes it sound. It would have been helpful to know how many of those employees who quit were already working the minimum of 20 hours per week during core hours.
If they lost a lot of key workers, that's a big deal. If they lost a lot of people putting in a few hours here and there and those workers got $1000 for it, then this is a non-story. I suppose we can't really know.
From personal experience: Flexible work is great, but infinitely flexible working hours quickly becomes a huge pain. Without setting core hours and minimums, you end up with a long tail of workers who want to put in a couple hours here and there at weird hours. This might work if you workload is 100% asynchronous, requires virtually no training, and has minimal managerial intervention, but eventually the odd hours and inconsistent working schedules take a toll on everyone else who has to work around the flex employees. Constraining flex hours to certain windows and requiring a minimum is actually a very reasonable policy, IMO.
According to the article the minimum working hours isn't 20 hours a week, they are forcing their employees to block off 20 hours during core working times to be available in case Stitch Fix wants them. If Stitch Fix guaranteed those 20 hours were paid I'd be more understanding.
> While the new policy requires that stylists be available at least 20 hours per week, company guidelines reviewed by BuzzFeed News said they can be scheduled for as little as zero hours as “availability does not guarantee a certain number of working hours each week."
This. This was basically a lay off in disguise, and yet it's being portrayed as the opposite. Stichfix has continually automated many of their processes using their 100+ data scientists. This is no different.
The company's executive has continually failed at PR though, which is hammering the stock price. Unbelievable that they're letting this narrative just persist.
That's if you beleive the scientists are there for the product instead of being there for the investors. I don't know about stitch fix but there's a lot of unrealistic "Oh we're going to automate away all our staffing costs"
> They also didn't actually completely end flexible working hours, they ... required that they be performed during core hours
These are always equivalent in my experience. I've never seen a company that didn't use "core hours" to mean some large window centered around the middle of the day.
This doesn’t, however, make sense because Stitch Fix’s core hours cause entirely too many employees to be on the server at one time. Last week, the server went down at exactly 8 am every single day because it was the first hour stylist were allowed to be on. It also went down for 3 hours on Wednesday. Stitch Fix is not equipped to have this many employees on the server during these core hours. If the server goes down, you are to move your hours or take a pay cut— whether you are part time or full time. This is exactly what stylists saw coming, so they bowed out.
You obviously don’t have any real insight into the company or the changes that were made. There aren’t employees putting in a “few hours here and there”, and the minimum commitment previously was 15 hours. They’ve restructured scheduling policies to a very large degree from how it’s operated for almost 10 years. They now require exact time-shift commitments to the minute, for multiple hours within a tight schedule timeframe, and you still are on-call. Before you were able to schedule anywhere from 15-29 hours and you would set hours during the day that you could complete around your own schedule.
Your assumption of things aren’t close, and they didn’t lose employees who barely worked. They lost employees who have anything else going on between the hours of 8-8 between Tues-Sat, and worked the job for flexibility..
But they also buried the other big factor: They offered everyone $1000 to quit. They also didn't actually completely end flexible working hours, they just raised the minimum working hours to 20 per week and required that they be performed during core hours:
> employees would now be required to work at least 20 hours per week on a set schedule during regular business hours; their log-on and log-off times would be tracked, and stylists would at least temporarily no longer be allowed to become full-time employees. Those who couldn’t work within the new rules were offered a $1,000 bonus to quit
So it's not as simple as the headline makes it sound. It would have been helpful to know how many of those employees who quit were already working the minimum of 20 hours per week during core hours.
If they lost a lot of key workers, that's a big deal. If they lost a lot of people putting in a few hours here and there and those workers got $1000 for it, then this is a non-story. I suppose we can't really know.
From personal experience: Flexible work is great, but infinitely flexible working hours quickly becomes a huge pain. Without setting core hours and minimums, you end up with a long tail of workers who want to put in a couple hours here and there at weird hours. This might work if you workload is 100% asynchronous, requires virtually no training, and has minimal managerial intervention, but eventually the odd hours and inconsistent working schedules take a toll on everyone else who has to work around the flex employees. Constraining flex hours to certain windows and requiring a minimum is actually a very reasonable policy, IMO.