Job seekers increasingly want ‘core hours’ with time flexibility, survey says

Dive Brief:

• Employers may have found a compromise for staff resisting return-to-office mandates: Offering them a little flexibility over when they have to be at work, according to an analysis released Aug. 4 by U.K.-based Flexa, a global job platform focusing on flexible workplaces.
• The analysis found that in June, 14% of job seekers, up from 11% in April, expressed a preference for roles offering “core hours” — where employees are required to work during certain hours, such as 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., but may complete their work in their own time.
• From the employer side, the number of jobs offering “a little flexibility” more than tripled between June 2024 and the same time last year, Flexa’s data showed. “A little flexibility” means employers can start or finish their work a little early or a little late, but otherwise work regular hours, according to the platform. In June, nearly 8 in 10 job postings mentioned the benefit, a steep increase from 50% two months earlier, Flexa found.

Dive Insight:

Workers’ post-pandemic preference for job flexibility isn’t limited to where they work, according to Flexa data from more than 4,000 job posts and preferences expressed by 9,473 job seekers in the U.S. and Europe between April and June 2024.

Employees are also looking for flexibility over when they work, the data showed. “Demand for core hours is not a million miles away from current levels of supply, but is increasing by contrast,” Flexa said.

In June, 39% of workers said they didn’t mind whether they had flexible hours or not (as opposed to it being something they sought specifically). But that’s a rapid downturn from April, when 49% said they didn’t mind, and it’s the lowest amount since December 2021, the platform pointed out, meaning employees increasingly seek it out.

Fortunately, “flexible working hours are something that far more employers agree with them on, thanks to the trend towards asynchronous work and output-led management,” Flexa CEO and co-founder Molly Johnson-Jones stated in the report.

For now, employers seem reluctant to offer anything more than “a little flexibility,” according to the data. In June, the number of job vacancies that offered core hours plummeted to 8%, down from 15% in April.

According to a 2022 survey from digital payroll solutions firm Deluxe, some employees may even prefer flexible working hours to the flexibility of working from home. One in five employees at small-to-mid-size businesses said the No. 1 action their employer should take to improve their working environment is to offer flexible scheduling that lets them adjust their work hours.

Notably, if employer support for flexible scheduling lags behind employee demand, employer support for hybrid working arrangements remains strong. Nearly two-thirds of employers who responded to the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2024 annual benefits survey, released in June, offer a hybrid work model.

Even so, most employers have yet to adapt their practices to support the shift to hybrid arrangements, a March report by TechSmith Corp., Global Workplace Analytics and Carytid Workplace Consultancy pointed out.

Leaders and managers need hybrid-related skills, such as establishing team or meeting norms, the report explained, but 3 out of 4 workers said they haven’t received training on these skills.

Employees’ current focus is on flexible working hours, Flexa indicated. “Not since the pandemic have workers cared as much [about this],” Johnson-Jones said. That could be for several reasons, such as staff wanting a better work-life balance or seeking a flexible schedule to balance out having less influence over their working location, she explained.

“Ultimately, flexible working hours meet many different needs for many different workers. And having even just ‘a little flexibility’ around work start and finish times can make a big difference,” Johnson-Jones added.