Poll Shows Flexibility is Considered a “Right” and Valued Over Health Benefits
Quinyx, a leading provider of workforce management solutions, today released, “The Future is Flexible: A New Workforce Paradigm Evolving From the Gig Economy,” a report that uncovers an employee’s expectation of flexibility in the workplace. This report compiles publicly available data with a survey of more than 4,000 employed Americans over the age of 18 and reveals that, behind wages, flexibility is one of the most important factors of happiness at work, higher than health benefits, culture, and employee discounts.
Quinyx commissioned the report to study the impact flexibility can have on employee engagement and productivity specific to the deskless workforce. Stated in the report, 2.7 billion deskless workers around the world have been left behind in the rush to innovate technology solutions to improve business performance. These forgotten deskless workers that are employed in industries such as retail, hospitality, quick service restaurants, and construction, are most often not given access to the flexibility and productivity solutions available to employees that work from a desk.
Quinyx is working to change this, creating solutions that give deskless workers the flexibility they need. While flexibility is often associated with lower productivity and engagement, Quinyx’s research shows that the opposite is true. In fact, the data shows that getting flexible working right will ultimately make for a happier, more engaged and productive workforce:
- 85 percent of workers believe a more flexible work schedule makes them more productive
- 59 percent of workers believe flexibility is a right, not just a benefit
- When looking for a new job, Gen Z sees flexibility (72 percent) as more important than work culture (49 percent), health benefits (39 percent) and employee discounts (29 percent).
What is getting in the way of employees feeling they have the flexibility they need at work? It turns out that challenges with scheduling and coordinating with coworkers ranked highly in the top frustrations employees and managers face at work today. When workers feel chained to their schedules and something like changing a shift requires a significant amount of time and effort, employees become frustrated that they do not have the flexibility they need and – as a result – productivity tanks:
- 41 percent of the surveyed workforce spends up to 5 hours a week at work on their own schedule and other team members’ schedules, and 24 percent of workers spend 5 to more than 10 hours per week.
- 32 percent of the surveyed workforce says that coordination with coworkers is their top frustration at work
- 51 percent said they spend up to 5 hours per week trying to coordinate with colleagues or waiting for a colleague to get back to them
- 52 percent said that communicating with employees is either somewhat challenging or very challenging.
Scheduling shifts, meetings, time off, and more may seem like quick projects, but the data says that scheduling is costing businesses more time and money than anyone thought and are a huge roadblock to flexibility and productivity.
“With flexibility as a core tenant, the way we work today and the process of doing work is changing right in front of our eyes,” said Erik Fjellborg, CEO, Quinyx. “At Quinyx, we are committed to employee happiness. We believe that a happy workforce leads to a happy, more productive business and that flexibility is one of the secret ingredients to achieving this. We work with our clients every day to break down the barriers rigid, unproductive work environments create and are proud to be at the forefront of bringing flexibility back to the forgotten deskless workforce.”
About Quinyx
Quinyx is a cloud-based, mobile-first workforce management software that fuels the workforce in service industries to make people and businesses grow. Quinyx was founded by CEO Erik Fjellborg when working at McDonald’s. After seeing how difficult it was for managers to sort shifts manually, Erik created Quinyx, the market-leading workforce management software, which transformed and radically improved the industry. McDonald’s loved Erik’s solution and became Quinyx’s first customer.
Today, Quinyx helps some of the world’s biggest businesses save time and money, boost productivity and enjoy work. Quinyx has offices in the U.K., Sweden, U.S., Finland, Germany, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands. Its software has also been implemented globally, in markets such as China, Japan and Korea. Clients include Burger King, Swarovski, IHG, Kal Tire, Boots, Virgin Atlantic, London City Airport, Benugo and Odeon Cinemas Group. For more information, visit www.quinyx.com.