The Obama administration announced that it would raise the threshold under which salaried workers are guaranteed overtime pay, regardless of their duties, to $47,476 a year. The updated overtime rule will give working people more free time, more money in their pockets, or both.

But it will also affect how businesses and nonprofits manage their employees. As someone who has consulted on workplace practices for over two decades, I believe the coming changes to overtime pay are a great opportunity to improve the efficacy and efficiency in how we manage people.

Predictably, trade organizations and people who make their living representing employers are wringing their hands about having to adapt.

A recent article in The Washington Post, “How the new overtime rules could affect flexibility on the job,” quotes business representatives that argue that employers might eliminate flexibility because they won’t be able to verify whether the person who may be working at home is really putting in the hours.

This argument ignores the fact that very few people in this salary bracket actually work at home by choice, and that all telecommuters have to prove they are working when they say they are. This rule does not change that.

Any employer that curtails flexibility because of the overtime change is declaring that they cannot trust their employees and that they lack the skills to evaluate performance and results — implying that too many employees lie about their hours and that managers lack the ability to judge the work output of an employee relative to the time put in.

Establishing trust and eliciting commitment to results from employees is a key management task. And knowing what work is expected and the approximate effort to produce it is core to good management. Is a company that lacks solid management skills one that employees would seek to work for or that investors would want to put money into? I doubt it.

In the many years I watched and studied how people work and how they are managed, I became convinced that when all time after 40 hours is free, management can become sloppy and less focused on results.

Witness the endless meetings that lack focus and clear agenda. Witness all the work people are asked to do where the purpose is unclear and there is often no response or follow-through. Witness too many people copied on an email or report that results in hours of unnecessary computer time.

It is not that all managers consciously waste employees’ time — it is that when time is free, there is no incentive to use it efficiently.

When more managers have to pay for overtime, they will be forced to be more efficient and respectful of time. If they do stupid things like curtail flexibility, it will be based on an outdated belief that flexibility is a favor and not simply another way to get the work done. It will be ignoring a key selling point to the talent they need to hire who value flexibility almost as much as salary, and ultimately an excuse for poor management and distrust.

This overtime rule will give a real boost in wages to middle-class people who must work extra hours and a reason to hire more people if the workload is too great — and it is, and should be, a tool for better management.

Time is our most finite and valuable resource available. We must allocate it to our work, our family, our community and our interests. Flexibility is a tool to meet our multiple obligations, not a gift to us.

When time is free it is hard for it to be treated as precious. Americans are overworked compared to virtually all of our economic competitors.

The benefits of managing time better will enrich our society greatly.

Rodgers is founder and former chief executive of Work/Family Directions, a consulting firm, now WFD. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.