News

June 29, 2012

No more nine to five — bosses give flexible hours the thumbs up

The majority of bosses are happy for staff to turn up late for work, according to new research by the online back-up service, Mozy. But their generosity seems to be part of an acknowledgement that their employees spend significant amounts of time working outside office hours anyway.

A study of 1,000 British, German, French, US and Irish employees and employers found that 73% of bosses have a relaxed attitude to time-keeping, as they trust their staff are working long before they actually get to the office.

As staff put in more time out-of-hours, thanks to smartphones and cloud computing, the survey suggests that the average employee has already clocked up 46 minutes before they arrive at the office. And one third of all British employees has logged in to their email by 6.30am.

The survey finds that the average boss would be willing to turn a blind eye to employees being up to 32 minutes late and let staff spend a quarter of the week working from home. British bosses are the strictest, however, wanting workers at their desks no later than 24 minutes into the working day, while US employers tolerate their staff turning up to 37 minutes late.

There’s a definite quid pro quo aspect to this new flexibility. The survey finds that 80% of employers say they think it’s acceptable to call staff in the evening — and 16% of UK employers think it is acceptable to call workers between 10.00pm and midnight.

Three quarters of companies give their staff tools to work from anywhere but there’s still room for improvement on this score — at the moment just 11% of British employers equip their workers sufficiently to access everything on the move.

The survey concludes that the nine-to-five working day has changed dramatically in the past few years. Now the average person starts checking their work email at 7.42am and stops working fully at 7.19pm, it says, so employees are “in work mode” for nearly 12 hours a day.