A national survey in 1988 probed the use of flexible staffing and scheduling alternatives in 521 of the largest U.S. corporations. Company executives indicated they expected their companies to decrease their rate of growth of contingent staffing and increase their use of flextime, job sharing, and home-based work. Several specifics stood out within this general shift of emphasis from flexible staffing to flexible scheduling. Human resources executives expressed lower levels of satisfaction with temporary agency hires, compared to independent contractors and in-house temporaries, on three counts: job performance, administrative costs, and ease of supervision. Results revealed an uneven, but growing, interest on the part of employers to consider work schedules that differed from the full-time, Monday through Friday, 9-to-5 arrangements. As of now, part-time job opportunities and flextime programs existed in a significant proportion of surveyed companies. In companies that had adopted flextime, job sharing, and home-based work, human resources executives gave employees on these schedules high marks with regard to job performance. Surveyed companies were most apt to provide these types of time-off policies: paid absences for vacation, jury duty, sick leave, and bereavement. In addition, leaves for family-related matters, typically unpaid, existed in a significant proportion of the surveyed companies. (YLB)