To read Part 1 of this series, click here.
Flexible work benefits and work-life balance
Due largely to the influence of millennial employees, the benefits conversation is shifting towards how employers can make inroads towards the elusive work-life balance, in which flexible work options play a major role. That being said, you may be surprised to hear how multiple surveys have found that employees would leave their current employer for another with better flexible work benefits, including paid leave. One key study shows that nearly three-quarters of workers (74%) said they would quit to join an organization that offers remote work options.
The concept of flexible work benefits wears a lot of hats, with many benefits that fall under its umbrella (flexible scheduling, remote work, paid leave, and more) seeing considerable overlap in discussion. Complicating this question of definition, one survey of 1,227 working adults by Unum treated them separately, finding that “paid family leave [topped] all other workplace perks” at 58% of workers, with flexible and remote work options not far behind at 55%. Certainly, today’s workplace is in a better position to accommodate all employees who work flexibly, with technological advances making it easier to work from home but still stay connected to your team.
Note: This article purposely does not discuss self-employed people working as part of the gig economy, whose roles could also be considered remote. (It’s interesting to note, however, that this segment of workers–which makes up “20% of the labor force at nearly 60% of U.S. and U.K companies”–may in part prefer contract work due to its flexibility.)
Putting work flexibility into context
The American Time Use Survey prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that almost one-quarter (24%) of employed Americans have regularly worked from home for the last 10 years (this percentage has remained “relatively flat” between 2009 to 2018). Workers with an advanced degree are more likely to do “some or all of their work” at home.
This statistic becomes more impressive when focusing on remote workers, defined as “non-self-employed people who principally work from home at least half-time.” A FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics report found a 159% increase in remote work over a 12-year period from 2005 to 2017. By this definition, 3.4% of the total U.S. workforce (4.7 million people) are remote workers, up from 2.9% (3.9 million) in 2015. By comparison, Digital Ocean found that 86% of IT employees–who can naturally work anywhere from their computers–worked remotely; nearly one-third of those worked from home full-time.
Taken as a whole, these statistics point to the fact that flexible work options are not exactly new. Rather, the work-life balance this benefit represents has enjoyed widespread and rising popularity over time, especially among the highly-educated and tech-forward. Sara Sutton, CEO and founder of FlexJobs and founder of 1 Million for Work Flexibility and Remote.co, notes that “Remote work isn’t all-or-nothing. The majority of white-collar workers are already working remotely, even if it’s 5 or 10% of the time.”
Differences between hourly and non-hourly workers
So why would 74% of workers want to leave their current job for one that offers flexible work options?
Employees may have a variety of reasons, such as parenting responsibilities, sick relatives, or the simple desire for more free time–which can be infringed on by an inconveniently located employer. However, since hourly workers are less likely to have an advanced degree, flexible scheduling is more relevant to them than working remotely. BlueCrew, an on-demand staffing platform for flexible W-2 work, found that “hourly job seekers are more likely to reject job offers because of a long commute [38% of 10,000 rejected jobs analyzed] rather than pay [10% of rejected jobs].” It’s also interesting to note that 26% of job seekers cited schedule inflexibility in particular as a reason why they rejected a job.
BlueCrew CEO Adam Roston shared his take on it: “The access to flexibility with the gig model has shifted the paradigm for hourly workers and employers across all kinds of industries — including manufacturing, hospitality, and retail.”
The new normal of work flexibility
If a bad commute is enough of a reason for employees to quit, there is a clear connection between work flexibility, job satisfaction, and work-life balance. Many successful companies are starting to weigh in on this very topic.
At InspireFest 2018, Fidelity International HR head Ranjani Kearsley spoke about the intersection between work flexibility and employee engagement, noting that “Giving employees more autonomy and the freedom and flexibility to change their hours and workspace as they see fit has been proven to make them more productive.”
According to Jason Phillips, global chief of staff at Cisco, “Work flexibility is becoming the norm. […] The challenge is how fast organizations provide it. Those that can are going to be in a far better position to retain top talent over the next three to five years.”
Why offer flexible benefits?
Harvard Business Review (HBR) claims that the most in-demand benefits often come at a relatively low cost to employers, which is relevant to the many hiring small business who find the process challenging but want to up their game at attracting talent.
In contrast from the Unum survey, a 2017 HBR survey placed “work from home options” and “more flexible hours” in the 2nd and 3rd positions of most desirable employee benefits (after “better health, dental, and vision insurance”). These benefits “are of utmost importance to a large segment of the workforce: parents value flexible hours and work-life balance above salary and health insurance in a potential job, according to a recent survey by FlexJobs.” Flexible work benefits dovetail interestingly with the popularity of gender-neutral parental leave, since work flexibility for dads also benefits moms: Research from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research found “that mothers have fewer postpartum health issues and better mental health when fathers are able to experience flexibility at work following the birth of a child.” Work flexibility that extends past a child’s first few months of life enables parents to better manage their children’s care through school age, too.
Still, employment specialists maintain that people’s reasons for wanting work flexibility shouldn’t matter. All workers employed at companies without flexible options are less satisfied at their jobs and tend towards turnover. This is because inflexible jobs lead to perceived lack of work-life balance, and research shows that this “negatively affects childless workers and men–not just women and parents.”
A company culture that supports its benefits
At the same time, the research showed that 40% of respondents feared they would jeopardize their jobs if they asked for time off–a phenomenon the report called “flexibility bias.”
This serves as an important reminder that offering 2019’s highly popular benefits will certainly help you attract, compete for, and likely even retain top talent. However, as we discussed with gender-neutral parental leave, company culture must support employees’ use of benefits–or the retention benefits won’t kick in.