
Survey: Most UK Workers Aren’t Working 9-to-5, and Most Don’t Want to

A new poll from YouGov has found that just 6 percent of employees in the UK are working traditional 9-to-5 hours, while only 14 percent said they would prefer to work those hours, Personnel Today reported on Tuesday:
The survey, commissioned by Blue Rubicon and McDonald’s, asked more than 4,000 adults for their views on working hours and found that most full-time workers preferred to start earlier and leave earlier: 8am to 4pm were the most popular hours for 37% of respondents while 21% chose 7am to 3pm.
Just under four in 10 respondents (42%) were already working according to shift patterns, compressed hours and job shares and many of these people told researchers that they felt more motivated than when in fixed-time work and being able to work flexible hours led them to stay in the job longer.
The desire to work more flexibly in future was expressed by 70% of respondents, with 65% adding it would improve their wellbeing and satisfaction at work. However, a third of people said they didn’t think their employer would allow them to work more flexibly. Just under half (48%) said they would prefer to work a longer day in return for a shorter working week.
Evidence that traditional work schedules are becoming obsolete has been accumulating for a few years now, and not only in the UK: A CareerBuilder survey in the US in 2016, for example, found 59 percent of US workers saying they believed the typical 9-to-5 workday was a thing of the past. Work-life balance is also an increasingly important driver of talent attraction and retention around the world, as our research at Gartner has found.
At People Management, HR experts at the CIPD underscored that the survey’s findings reflect a need for organizations to be more attentive to employees’ needs in managing schedules and designing the workweek: