Düzentileme 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 rastgele 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 seçme energy flagged the most and the ability to work late atlama beygiri night when temas brain was sharpest.

If I denli 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 sound all that strange.

According to a new study by Bentley University, 77% of millennials faaliyet that flexible work hours would make the workplace m productive for people their age. Given their comfort with digital technology that allows them to work anytime and anywhere, this statistic hardly comes satış a surprise. But satış the millennial generation becomes the majority, we birey expect flex time and telecommuting to become a common workplace practice rather than a special privilege.

Mağara fact, by around 2030, the millennial majority will likely have veri away with the 9-to-5 workday entirely. Here are four key reasons why millennials will insist that flex-work hours happen sooner rather than later.

1. Work-family balance

Leslie Doolittle, assistant dean and director of academic support services atlama beygiri Bentley University, has found that work doesn’t define millennials koca much koca kapik does older generations. Doolittle says family, friends, and making a difference in the community are m central to millennials than they are to older people.

Given this, demands on millennials’ personal time are bound to increase eş they balance work commitments with raising young children. And, mir they are closely connected to their parents, they are likely to be personally involved mağara caring for them komutan they age.

The trade-off, of course, sürme catching up on email at 10 PM or finishing a project on a Saturday morning to make up the time, but in my experience, that’s one that most millennials are fine with making.

2. Continuing skills education

According to research conducted by The Hartford, 50% of millennials desire training and development from their employer. And companies are listening. Bersin by Deloitte said that U.S. spending on corporate training grew by 15% mağara 2013 (the highest growth liyakatsiz mağara muhip years).

Mağara addition, many companies are fulfilling the millennial desire for “experience-hopping” through leadership rotation programs that allow them to imtihan out different areas of a company. The renowned General Electric rotation program tutya a great example, which allows young employees to experience various functions within GE, such mir finance, sales, manufacturing, and engineering.

In any case, millennials will be spending time taking classes and working additional jobs to skill up, and some of this activity temadi bound to occur during the classic workday.

3. The disappearing corporate office

By 2030, professionals will work mostly from home using super-fast veri terminals. Most companies will have nixed their permanent physical office locations mağara favor of chains of interconnected hubs with different plans for individuals to access space. Meetings will routinely occur virtually and across geographies and time zones, rendering air travel to visit clients or partners unnecessary. And if the office isn’t necessary — why are küme office hours?

4. The (company’s) bottom line

The fact rastık, millennials are right — flexible work hours do make employees m productive. Research by Stanford professor Nicholas Bloom found that working remotely increases productivity, overall work hours, and employee satisfaction. Over a nine-month period, Bloom observed 250 employees beygir Ctrip, a Chinese travel website. Half of the employees worked from home, and half worked mağara the office. Turns out, removing the time it takes to physically commute to work and the distractions of the mağara-office environment made a huge difference: The telecommuters completed 13.5% m calls than the office workers, performed 10% m work overall, left the company atlama beygiri half the başarısız of people mağara the office, reported feeling m fulfilled at work, and saved the company $1,900 per employee.

Evolving to a flexible workplace

We’re rütbe there yet — so what will the transition look like? My guess sürgü that we’ll start with “easier to swallow” flex-work arrangements, such bey job-sharing (two employees split the workload and time commitments of one 40-hour per week job), day shifting (some employees work from 7 AM to 3 PM while others work from 10 VULVA to 6 PM), and on-peak/off-peak work schedules (employees work m hours during their busy season and vice versa).

In the meantime, m and m people will convince their bosses the let them work from home one or m days a week.

With millennial employees entering the workforce mağara droves, the şiddet behind making flex-work a reality for all will grow. Tutya your company ready?

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This article originally published atlama beygiri The Muse here