A new Slack survey shows that while 80% of workers say they want to choose where they can work, be it at home or in the office, 94% of workers say they want to decide when they work. You read that right – move over standard working hours, it’s time for a new era of scheduling. A recent Axios brief even has a new name for this phenomenon: “work-whenever.”
What is work whenever?
Working whenever means that employees get to pick the hours they work. Rather than showing up to work during traditional hours and leaving when the workday supposedly ends, workers will spread out their 35 or 40 hours of work throughout the week whenever they choose to.
The Slack report, which surveyed over 10,600 knowledge workers worldwide, indicates a considerable discrepancy between employees’ ability to choose a flexible work schedule and their urge to break free from a conventional nine-to-five.
Working whenever isn’t just a dream – it’s becoming a reality the more employees express dissatisfaction with their current situations. Those who are discontented with the present flexibility of their jobs are more likely to want to change jobs. And 57% of employees say that they have little or no ability to deviate from their preset schedules.
Why do people want it?
Knowledge workers are clamoring to work whenever. The study indicates that those with inflexible work hours are three times more likely to look for a new job this year. But why is it so popular when working standard hours has been the status quo for so long?
Many probably didn’t even think that standard working hours could change until the pandemic happened and everyone had the chance to work from home. It became the norm to kill time at work if you had nothing to do and staying late if you had too much to do and getting to work late often seemed like a sin. But now that people have had a taste of working from home at their leisure, there’s no going back.
The study reported that workers are 29 percent more productive when they have flexible schedules, and 53 percent report that they focus better when setting their own hours. In fact, another study shows that the brain can only do about four hours of cognitively demanding tasks per day without losing focus and becoming stressed. And when employees can work from home, they can choose their most productive hours rather than subjecting themselves to burnout. Employees who site lack of flexibility are three times more likely to worsen stress and anxiety and twice as likely to worsen their work-life balance.
“Asynchronous work is not brain surgery,” Francis Saele, a Senior Principal at Accenture, told LinkedIn. “If we are concerned about productivity and the welfare of knowledge workers, employers accommodating more flexible working arrangements should be a no-brainer.”
Additionally, working whenever opens the talent pool in ways that would be impossible if employees were mandated to work certain hours. Parents, caregivers, part-time students, or global workers would all have the chance to show their skills if they had the freedom to manage their own schedules. Night owls don’t have to drag themselves out of bed just to waste the morning being exhausted, and morning people don’t have to stay late completing work – they can just log in earlier.
This flexibility extends to those who might prefer to work from non-traditional settings. For those who travel often or even live a nomadic lifestyle, it’s helpful to be able to work from a hotel lobby or rented RV, enabling them to explore lifestyles that accommodate personal and professional growth.
Letting your team “work whenever”
Implementing a “work whenever” schedule can be relatively difficult, especially when trying to implement flexibility on a team level rather than an organizational one. However, there are small ways to make employees feel like they have more autonomy over their schedules.
1. Enable hybrid capabilities
First and foremost, the Slack study shows that fewer employees than ever want to return to the office full-time – in fact, 53 percent want to be in the office for three days or less. Integrating hybrid aspects into a job, such as allowing employees to work from home or giving them partial work-from-home days, can help workers feel more independent.
2. Stop the micromanaging
The worst part of having a rigid schedule is knowing that a manager is breathing down your neck when you’re late for work. Work shouldn’t feel like punishment, and human behaviors shouldn’t be treated like direct attacks on an organization. By letting official office hours be a little loose, you can accommodate those who like to stay late and those who come early without playing favorites.
3. Create ways to stay on track
There are different markers of productivity than simply logging into your work Slack at the right times. Having reasonable and creative measurables and deliverables, even small ones each day, will keep everyone in the loop without unnecessary meetings. Instead of early morning check-ins where nocturnal teammates can’t show up feeling their best, create a Slack channel where updates can occur over the course of the day.
4. Make the important things important
The “work whenever” mindset isn’t about having a free-for-all, as a little structure can help ground employees and set certain markers, like destinations on a road trip. Meetings and stand-ups can still take place, but because they’re in the midst of personal work, they become less about obligation and more seamlessly integrated into already autonomous schedules.
5. Be transparent
There’s nothing worse than being ordered into the office without any rhyme or reason as to why and then sitting there waiting to leave as if you’re stuck in detention. The Slack survey shows that employees who see their companies as transparent are twelve times more likely to be satisfied with their jobs. So if you’re asking someone to come in, tell them why – and if you’re being asked to come in, don’t be afraid to ask why.
