8 years ago
1
Say farewell to your 9-to-5. Here's why we'll all work flex schedules soon.
Several months ago, I was talking to a college senior about her career plans. She wanted a job with flexible hours, and I asked why. The young woman said she wanted the freedom to take a short nap right after lunch when her energy flagged the most and the ability to work late at night when her brain was sharpest. If I had made a comment like this when looking for my first job 16 years ago, I would have been laughed out of the room. But coming from a college student today, the request doesn’t...
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I think the key to it is the happiness that comes from not basing your entire life around a job.
Imagine being able to take a day off basically whenever you want - or at least being able to choose your own hours. How many parents have missed their child's dance recital, because they had to stay and work in order to pay the bills? How many life experiences have people missed out on, because they had to slave away at their job for a set number of hours? Everyone has a story about the time they missed something due to work. Over time, that feeling of powerlessness starts to take control over the workers, and they become disenchanted with their jobs, causing loss of motivation, effort, and morale.
When companies start to realize that they shouldn't be the center of their employee's lives and start to change procedures for the better, they'll see improvements. People will stop calling in sick to go do something, because they can just work on it before or afterwards. People can get a little bit of work done from home when their sick, rather than being forced to go to work feeling like shit, and getting more people sick in the process. Nobody will complain about their hours, or inability to be with their family, because they won't have a reason to.
Sure, physical service jobs will have set hours, and some work events will need to be strictly scheduled, but a lot of companies will probably start incorporating flexible schedules into their operation. Now, if people got paid for the work that they do, rather than how long they took to do it, things would be even better.