The city of Suffolk plans to offer some flexible scheduling options to its employees beginning next month, the city’s human resources director said.

“We want to provide employees with what we call a work/life balance,” said Human Resources Director Ronnie Charles. “It helps them with child care, elder care, a number of different issues.”

Charles said the initiative is being offered to eligible employees so that they can have more input in the hours they work. Although some departments will not be able to take advantage of the options because of the nature of their work, the city wants to “make it available for those who can,” Charles said.

Employees are currently being offered the chance to sign up for the flexible scheduling, though Charles said he wouldn’t know how many had enrolled until next month.

Some options include a work week that includes four 10-hour days, so that the employee has three days off per week; working eight nine-hour days and one eight-hour day in two weeks, with an extra day off every other week; and flexible start and end times for the work day.

Most employees likely will opt for the flexible start and end times, Charles said. Any of the options offers employees more opportunities to spend time with family, take care of appointments and errands and other personal needs, Charles said.

Charles said that department heads will be working out the schedules in their departments individually, and that schedules will be arranged so that customer service will increase rather than decrease.

“One of the things we’re trying to accomplish is the ability to meet our customer’s needs,” Charles said. For example, some employees might like to start later in the day and stay until 6 p.m., thereby increasing the time that department is open for business.

“We’d like to have certain services available for citizens up to six o’clock,” Charles said.

Any cost savings that the city sees will likely be minimal, Charles added.

“I’m just going to be fascinated by how many people apply for this,” he said.