Working nine to five is history - your flexible workday reality

Decades of classic 9 to 5 workdays belong to the past - today flexible work schedules rule offices worldwide. According to a recent study, just six percent of British office workers are still tied to the previous working hours.

Surprisingly, the survey of 5,000 UK office workers emphasizes that the vast majority, 94 percent, today have extensive flexibility about their daily working hours in the office.

Not less than 58 percent of the survey´s respondents prefer to start their working day before 9 pm and finish it earlier than 5 pm.

37 percent want office hours from eight to four, while almost half, 48 percent, would like to prioritize longer working days in favor of a shorter week if possible.

Among office workers with currently flexible working hours, 65 percent report that this freedom raises their satisfaction with the job. 69 percent estimate that this makes an excellent reason to stay longer with their current employer.

Flexible working hours

"The results of the study are entirely in line with our conviction: Employers must and should create opportunities that work for their employees regardless of their age, lifestyle or ambition if they aim to attract, maintain and motivate them.

Employees need to feel well-being and satisfaction at their workplace, including through flexible working hours. They want working hours to suit them - today working nine to five definitely is a no go," CEO at McDonald's UK & Ireland, Paul Pomroy concludes.

In Denmark, the offer for flexible working hours this autumn was phased in The Health and Care Administration, the City of Copenhagen. In the future, all 10,000 employees in all departments will now have the opportunity to continuously go up or down in time by appointment with their manager.

After a pilot trial, the evaluation shows that flexibility is essential when it comes to getting work and family life into a unit, and also the employer scores benefits by offering flexible working hours.

A four-day working week

"It means a lot for our employees to have flexibility in their working hours. Although many have not yet made use of the offer, they feel comfortable to have the opportunity," Health and Care Mayor Sisse Marie Welling says.

She wants that all +40,000 employees in Denmark's largest workplace, Copenhagen municipality, will receive the same offer in the future. Several administrations are just now running a series of pilot trials with flexible working hours.

The Danish digital agency IIH Nordic in Copenhagen decided in February 2017, as the very first commercial company in the world, to complete a 4-day working week, i.e. 30 hours at full pay, for its then approx. 50 employees.

"I could have chosen to share more of my profit with employees, but what I wanted to share is, in my opinion, much more valuable. Such time," CEO Henrik Stenmann explains.

Today, IIH Nordics employees are still working only four days a week. In the year after the phasing-in, IIH Nordics increased 83 percent, sickness absence fell to 1.7 percent, and employee stress levels - as measured every week - to the lowest level ever.

Increased efficiency

"The process has obviously been quite challenging, but I hope that many more companies will try it out. It's not just about employee care but about retention, stress and also increased efficiency," Henrik Stenmann adds.

Among the others, the New Zealand company Perpetual Guardian has followed IIH Nordic and permanently reduced its working hours to its 240 employees without offsetting their salary, which has led to an increase of 24 percent in employee experience of work-life balance while productivity has also increased.

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