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Thirty percent of workers around the world surveyed last year said they would consider seeking a new job if their current employer required them to return to the office full time. Millennials are especially resistant. In response to the Covid pandemic, PepsiCo, Meta and General Motors, among others, have incorporated remote work into their corporate cultures.
But in a truly flexible workplace, people would control not just where they work but also when.
“I think it’s really a shame that more companies don’t take advantage of it,” said Azad Abbasi-Ruby, the senior market research analyst at DuckDuckGo. He added, “We get so much done, and I think a lot of it has to do with this flexibility, letting people work when they’re most productive.”
If more employers truly embraced flexible schedules and allowed employees to work at the times that are best for them, experts say, the benefits would be a healthier and more productive, creative and loyal work force.
Our early-bird-gets-the-worm ethic often gets applied to office workers who could do their work just as effectively on their own time. A 2014 study by Christopher Barnes of the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington found that supervisors who are early risers perceive employees who arrive later as less conscientious, regardless of job performance. Other studies show that workers are more creative and leaders more charismatic when they are not sleep deprived and when their work and biological sleep schedules align.
Dr. Pang, a technology forecaster, suggested that employers should think less about time spent working and more about quality. He has identified about 130 employers, including Kickstarter and the government of Iceland, that have adopted a four-day, reduced-hour week without cutting salaries or sacrificing productivity.
”The most impressive, most professional person is not the one who needs 80 hours a week to finish the job,” he said. “It’s the person who can finish it in 30 hours.”