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GREENSBORO — You've cut back on the number of trips to the store and all those extra driving excursions that were draining your gas tank. But some trips — such as the trek to work five days a week — just can't be cut.

Would you work four 10-hour shifts if allowed? Join the discussion at the Debatables blog.

Or can they?

Employees at Greensboro's Replacements Ltd. have been offered a way to trim some dollars from their gas budget. The company recently gave some workers the option of working four, 10-hour days or telecommuting from home one day a week.

Offering alternative schedules is a growing trend in the business community, with employers trying to help their workers cope with gas prices at or above $4 a gallon.

Employees at Replacements were quick to take up the offer, with about 80 workers out of a force of 550 taking advantage of the altered schedule through Labor Day, said Jeanine Falcon, the company's vice president of human relations.

Rob Vreeland commutes from Chapel Hill to Replacements' Greensboro campus. When he heard about the offer, "I started calculating how much money it was going to save me," he said.

Vreeland is telecommuting once a week. As a Web developer for the company, he was already set up to work from home in case of an emergency.

"I wasn't reluctant at all" to switch to the new schedule, he said, estimating that cutting a day's commute would save him about $10 a week.

Leaders at Replacements started talking about offering the alternative work schedules six weeks ago.

"As we started talking more and more about it and realized gas prices were not going to go down, we realized we needed to provide that relief," Falcon said. "We said, 'What is something we could do that would be meaningful?' We didn't want to just send out an e-mail that said, 'We encourage you to carpool.'"

In addition to the four-day weeks and telecommuting options, Replacements is also allowing employees to change their schedules to enable car pooling and testing technology to allow call center workers to take calls remotely.

Milanka Trbic, an administrative assistant in the china inventory department, had spent some time a little while ago trying to arrange a car pool from her home in High Point to work.

When Replacements offered the alternative schedule, she jumped at the chance to cut her gas bill.

Trbic now works 10 hours a day, Tuesday through Friday. "I think it'll at least save me one tank of gas a month," she estimated.

The program feedback so far has been positive, Falcon said, without a decline in employee productivity.

"We've also gotten managers saying that even in the four, 10 (hour) days, people are really aware of what they need to accomplish in the four days instead of five."

Contact Lanita Withers at 373-7071 or lanita.withers@news-record.com