Hey boss, I will be in by noon

Jessica Piha gets to work whenever she wants and leaves whenever she wants -really. “There's really no set schedule,“ said Piha, the director of communications at home-improvement startup Porch, which lets its employees work flexible schedules.

That's how it should be for all of us whose jobs aren't shift-based. We should decide how and when to get our work done -yet so many of us are stuck on the clock.

The 9-to-5 schedule doesn't conform to most people's lives, or their workflows. Sitting in a chair for eight hours straight doesn't produce results; many studies have established the benefits of taking breaks during work. And the best hours for productivity vary from person to person. Workers also find schedules dogmatic. We're adults, and we like autonomy over our lives.

Research suggests working fewer hours in a given day or week can improve productivity and health and boost employee-retention rates. This year, a study in Sweden found that nurses who traded eight-hour shifts for six-hour ones took fewer sick days. Another study found that people who worked 55 hours a week performed worse on cognitive tests than those who worked 40 hours.

By contrast, Treehouse, an online learn-to-code startup with four-day work weeks and nine-hour work days, credits its 120% yearly revenue growth to its perpetual three-day weekends. But such alternatives to the traditional 9-to-5 still measure workers' efficiency in hours, allowing for little flexibility. Often the four-day week means working 10-hour days, or longer, in exchange for a free Friday . That still adds up to 40-plus-hour work weeks, even if it makes for a longer weekend. And according to research by Allard Dembe, a public health professor at Ohio State University, working long hours brings risks of health problems such as heart disease, cancer, arthritis, and diabetes.

However, flexibility seems to scare some employers.Employees, too, might worry that with no set schedule, they might effectively be expected to work all the time.

But research published this year outlined a possible way to make flexibility work for both employees and employers. In that study , around 500 workers at a Fortune 500 firm were given no set schedules. Some got in later; others left midday . They didn't work fewer hours, just different ones that better fit their lives. For months, facilitators led meetings with employees about how to get work done with varying schedules.

The employees said the flexibility improved their overall well-being, and the quality of work didn't suffer, either. If that sounds extreme, employers might give workers a little wiggle room at the end of their days.

All we really want is a little control -and to make that 6pm yoga class once in a while.

(TOI)