What’s the rush?

As workforce evolves, standard hours no longer the norm

The 9-to-5 workday has inspired songs, movies and a whole lot of angst. “I sit in traffic every morning and just stare at the clock on my dashboard,” says Vivian Bell, a 38-year-old account coordinator who commutes Chicago’s wacky suburbs each day. “It makes my stomach hurt.”

Bell says public transportation isn’t an option for now, and neither is a flexible schedule. “I’d like to work from home a couple of days a week — that may happen eventually — but we are very much a standard workday company because we’re managed by a team in St. Louis, and when they get to work, they want to see us sitting at our desks,” she says. “If I could get a little give-and-take on the hours, maybe 10 to 6 or 11 to 7, it would make a huge difference. But I don’t think that’s happening anytime soon.”

That’s unfortunate, says Riley Thome, a workplace consultant in New York. “The concept of ‘work hours’ in a white-collar office is antiquated,” says Thome. “Companies may offer 9-to-5 as a guideline for hours but most companies realize that their employees are working earlier, later or both.”

Women and children first

Although he often hears millennials get credit for flexible schedules, Thome maintains that the trend was born out of an older generation, specifically people in the ’40s and ’50s who realized they couldn’t be two places at once. “Dropping children off at school when two parents are working means that either mom or dad isn’t going to be at the office at 8:30 in the morning,” says Thome. “It’s that group on the fringes of the baby boomers and Generation X that caused the change, not millennials. The origins of that shift in attitude about a set opening of the day and a set closing of the day is a result of dropping kids off at school at 8 a.m. or picking them up at daycare by 6 p.m.”

Pamela Robins, a former HR specialist with Aon in Chicago and a current career coach, backs Thome’s claim, extending it a step further. “If you want to give credit where credit’s due, look to the mothers who became managers,” says Robins. “Nothing against fathers but men were in leadership positions for years and they didn’t do much to promote family-friendly policies. Once women began working as managers and executives, they created policies that helped ease some of the stresses they felt as parents.”

New rules

The change in traditional work hours can’t be attributed only to employees with children, says Peter O’Malley, a former analyst with the U.S. Department of Labor. Part of it, he says, is employers responding to the wants and needs of the current workforce. “Companies are putting up fewer roadblocks for their employees. A change in hours reflects an increased number of employees working from home or in satellite offices around the country,” O’Malley says. “It’s hard to have a set start time when you have people working on the same projects in different time zones and different locations.”

O’Malley says an increase in independent contractors has also changed the rules. “A lot of freelancers will tell you they don’t even begin working until noon or later, either due to other commitments or to their own personal choices,” O’Malley says. “Some people just like to work later in the day. They feel like that’s a time when they’re more productive.”

That’s Natalie Quinn’s story, at least for now. “I gave birth to twins last October and I have a sitter come in at noon so I can work,” says the 27-year-old insurance agent, who works a 1-to-9 shift from her home in St. Paul, Minnesota. “I tried to keep my regular hours after my babies were born, but the house was like a crime scene in the mornings. Even with help, it was just constant crying and screaming. I told my boss that afternoons were much calmer, and he agreed to let me change my hours.”

Since then, Quinn says she’s been more productive than ever. “I spend a lot of time on the phone and I’m fully engaged,” she says. “In the past, I’d be losing focus or trying to coddle a crying baby. Now when I work, I work.”

Most companies realize their employees are working earlier, later or both — and some would prefer to work different hours to avoid crowded commutes.