It starts at nine, lunch break at noon and ends at five in the afternoon. The work habits experienced for decades are starting to change due to the pandemic. Not only do employees perform their duties from home, but the exact timing of their work also changes.
With the pandemic, a number of new ways of working have emerged, including the so-called non-linear working day. Employees who work in such a system can perform their duties outside of normal business hours. They will respect their obligations when it suits them. Asynchronous working hours allow the employee to flexibly divide activities into intensive work blocks throughout the day. The system allows the employee to adapt the work to his personal life and not vice versa. On the trend writes BBC.
In the past, non-linear working hours weren’t that rare, but they may be making a comeback. Sometimes, she says, people follow without realizing it. For example, when they get up to prepare in advance for a meeting or, conversely, finish a task late at night.
Not all companies will appreciate such an arrangement, but if employees follow certain rules, according to experts, there are countless benefits that irregular working hours bring.
Break, food, nap
Work as a precisely delineated straight line was by no means common before the industrial revolution. A typical working day lasted from dusk to dawn, punctuated by regular breaks, lunch breaks, and even naps. When the company switched to industrial production, factory work required a rigorous work rate of at least forty hours per week.
The eight-hour workday was later moved to the office and remained the social norm despite technological advances. But the pandemic has shaken established models, as employees have been shown to remain productive even when they take a break, spend time with family, and work in a more flexible time interface.
A myriad of possibilities
Everyone can set flexibility differently. A schoolboy’s parent needs to pick up her daughter from school in the afternoon and take her to the club, and he prefers to finish her work in the evening. Someone else might prefer to get up and finish some of the homework before the rest of the family wakes up, as they would be disturbed later. The variations are innumerable.
Laura Giurge, a behavioral research professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, calculates the benefits: “Asynchronous working hours allow people to save commuting time, to carry out paperwork when they are physically less productive, to find time to exercise and even save money by cooking her food at home. ”
More flexibility results in higher productivity. “The key benefit of non-linear work is the control over how we spend our time,” Giurge explains. “That way you can get the job done when you’re most productive,” she adds.
Everything has its limits
But even this way of working requires at least a basic framework that holds it together. There are basic guidelines that will not allow employees to stray too far from their planned goals. Such a framework can be defined, for example, by mandatory meetings during which employees work together on a task.
People were already working outside of fixed working hours before the pandemic, they were already replying to emails from home, for example, but that’s not the same thing. It involved unpaid overtime that extended the working day by eight hours. Experts believe that a non-linear pace could, on the contrary, prevent employee burnout. Today, tech companies and start-ups primarily enable this work interface. However, there will be a growing demand for an irregular work pace in other sectors as well, and companies that do not adapt to it will lose their workforce, Professor Giurgeová is convinced.
It may interest you: Yoga or massage during working hours is no longer a problem. Companies also build wellness centers in their offices
Exercising during working hours is no longer a problem. Companies give employees more freedom | Video: Ondřej Houska
