As we return to our offices, not everyone is going back to the Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 schedule. Some of us work in shifts or at different times on different days. Most calendars make it difficult to schedule with people who work outside “normal working hours.”
That’s why we’ve made it easy to flex your working hours with Clockwise.
Welcome to the new normal (for working hours)
Between hybrid workplaces, teams distributed across time zones, and caregiving needs sometimes you need to work outside Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5. Roughly half of workplaces plan to implement a hybrid model where workers can split their work time between the office and home (or a coffee shop). Just under a third said they plan to require all workers to work full-time on-site. The rest are going fully remote or distributed.
The majority of workers also need to take care of children or their elderly parents, sometimes during “normal” working hours. For these reasons and more, many are splitting their working hours to balance their home and workplace responsibilities.
The challenges of split working hours
Most companies cited employee health and productivity as top reasons for going hybrid. Not having to be in the office every weekday from 9-to-5, means less commuting, easier collaboration with workers in different time zones, and more time for home responsibilities during the workday.
Workers haven’t had an easy way to reflect their flexible working hours on their calendars. That’s made it inordinately difficult to schedule meetings with colleagues working non-traditional hours. The result? More back-and-forth, rescheduling, and confusion compared to scheduling with those with “normal” working hours.
These scheduling difficulties disadvantage workers who split their hours. That’s led to gaps in productivity, communication, expectation-setting, and more for these workers and their teammates, friends, and family.
This scheduling gap has also had diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) ramifications. Half of companies planning to implement a hybrid model cited DE&I as a motivation. Since women and workers of color are more likely than other workers to need time during the day for household needs, helping split hours workers schedule better benefits DE&I efforts.
How Clockwise is helping workers with flexible hours
You can now set flexible working hours in Clockwise to better support your and your team’s scheduling priorities. When you set your working hours in Clockwise, you now have the option to split your hours across the day or week.
Our goal is to make it easier for you to protect your time for non-negotiables and personal commitments, regardless of when you want to work. Clockwise will move your meetings to the ideal times within your working hours and your Slack status will accurately reflect your availability.
Now, you can add, remove, and update any working hour block as needed. Plus, copying your preferred daily schedule across the week takes just one click.
To start flexing your working hours, check out our getting started guide or just head to your settings.
If you’re not yet using Clockwise, now’s the perfect time to get started!
About the author
Cathy Reisenwitz is the former Head of Content at Clockwise. She has covered business software for six years and has been published in Newsweek, Forbes, the Daily Beast, VICE Motherboard, Reason magazine, Talking Points Memo and other publications.
.png)
