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The survey, given to 1,012 employed participants, sought to answer the question, “How does America’s workforce feel about flexibility?” The answer, it turns out, is that it values flexibility more than anything. Let’s take a look at some of the results of this survey.
What Matters the Most?
While “Compensation” was a serious contender for survey takers, “Work/life balance” was the most highly valued feature of the modern workplace. “Professional Development” and “Job Perks” were next highest after these two, with “Status” and “Mentorship” nearly tied for least important. Clearly, the workforce would rather be better paid and have flexibility than have harder-to-measure benefits like clout or the opportunity to develop.
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Would You Choose to Work Part Time?
When participants were asked if they would be willing to leave their current job or willing to work fewer hours in the interest of flexibility, a slight majority (53.71%) said they would. The other 46.29 percent said that they would not be willing to work part time.
Have Things Changed?
Interestingly, workers are more likely to accept part-time work today than they have been in the past. In the context of other answers, the reason why probably involves the desire for flexibility. Another contributing factor likely involves that workers are remembering the market crash and the difficulty finding jobs that it entailed. Better a part-time job than no job, after all.
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Why Do You Do It?
As we can see, most people (42.60%) work part time “voluntarily.” The second most common answer was that survey participants took a part-time job because it was the only job around (31.40%).
For How Long?
Part-time workers seem to be a temporary commodity, with the overwhelming majority (51.00%) answering that they have only been working part time for 1–5 years. If you do the math, the spectrum would involve people who got jobs 1 year after the market crash to people who only just now got jobs.
Tomorrow we’ll look at the rest of the results of this survey, plus an introduction to BLR’s HR Decisions Magazine.