Gone are the days when you clock in at 9 a.m. and then leave the office at 5 p.m. Work has been embedded in our personal lives through technology and economic pressures. I don’t have a single friend who works a typical workday schedule anymore, and you probably don’t either. A new study by Mozy proves that workplace flexibility is on the rise. It found that 73 percent of bosses have a relaxed attitude to timekeeping because employees are already working beyond the typical 9 to 5 day.
One-fifth of employees have already checked their work e-mail by 7 a.m., and the average employee has already spent up to 46 minutes working before he or she comes to the office.
The study also found that the average employee arrives at the office at around 8:18 a.m. and leaves at 5:48 p.m., but doesn’t stop working then. Employees are usually still working until about 7:19 p.m., checking their e-mail to see if their boss has messaged them. Due to this flexibility, 15 percent of managers think it’s acceptable to call employees after work, up to 9 p.m.
Employees are now working upwards of 12 hours a day through their use of technology. This may explain why employers are more tolerant of lateness: The average manager is OK with an employee coming in 37 minutes late. The report also showed that managers are more accepting of employees taking longer lunches (48 percent) and carrying out personal activities at work (21 percent).
But don’t get lazy. If you stay at the office longer and are focused during work hours, you’ll be more successful. If you try and take workplace flexibility for granted, you might find yourself out of a job. In the future, I predict that companies will focus more on results than on time spent at the office. It won’t matter if you work from home or if you put only 20 hours in a week, as long as you’re achieving high-quality results.
– Dan Schawbel is the founder of Millennial Branding, a Gen-Y research and consulting company. Subscribe to his updates at Facebook.com/DanSchawbel.
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