Editorial
For much of the 20th century, hard work was seen as the best way to achieve a good life. That belief rings hollow for many people today, who doubt that effort alone is the path to prosperity and fulfillment.
Employees' Shifting Priorities
For instance, recent research from Bayes Business School found that workers are generally pretty skeptical about their future earnings prospects. With a lack of confidence in their financial future, they're instead shifting their focus to things like flexibility, well-being and work-life balance.
“More and more, workers doubt that hard work alone will help them reach their life goals,” the researchers explain. “They’re turning instead to roles that give them more of what they value now — flexibility and a healthy work-life balance.”
This is a huge change in how we're thinking about work. Whereas once we thought we'd inevitably achieve our goals with grit and perseverance, we're now looking for a new kind of psychological contract with our employer. We're looking for a relationship that is based on autonomy, personalization and trust.
What Effective Flexibility Looks Like
It's no longer a case of "whether" to provide flexibility, but rather the best way to do so. Research from King's College London shows that flexibility now covers not just where people work, but when, how and even why.
Over half of UK workers say they would rather quit than return to a five-day office schedule. But location is only part of the story. Workers increasingly want control over their hours, their workflows and even the kinds of tools they use.
HP’s Work Relationship Index found that 87% of knowledge workers would trade some of their salary for a more personalized work environment, be it a flexible schedule, customized location or choice in how they collaborate. Similarly, Randstad's Workmonitor Pulse revealed that freedom over hours now ranks as more valuable than location.
Work to Live or Live to Work?
A consistent theme emerges across all of these studies: employees want work that fits their lives, not the other way around. This is especially true for women and parents, who show a strong unwillingness to sacrifice personal well-being for professional progress.
“Well-designed hybrid models offer significant benefits for both employers and employees,” the King’s researchers note. “There has been a marked shift in attitudes, with workers now seeing flexibility as the norm.”
While much of the conversation around flexibility focuses on company-wide policies, an equally important dynamic plays out at the individual level. In many workplaces, employees strike personal arrangements with their managers, often customizing their roles to better fit their needs, talents or ambitions. Researchers from the Stevens School of Business call these “idiosyncratic deals,” or i-deals.
“An i-deal is a non-standardized, personalized work arrangement that is open for negotiation to employees, but is not available by default to all employees,” the researchers explain.
An I-deal Approach for Some
The Stevens researchers set out to understand how these individualized arrangements affect team performance and customer service. Studying an American delicatessen chain and several companies in China, they examined three main types of i-deals: flexibility, career and task.
The findings were revealing. When certain employees were granted flexibility i-deals, such as being allowed to leave early or adjust their hours, it often created relationship tensions within teams.
“Consciously or subconsciously, people tend to compare themselves to others,” the researchers wrote. “If someone is allowed to leave early, colleagues may perceive that as unfair or feel they have to pick up the slack.”
When Some Flexibility Undermines Team Dynamics
The risk is raised tensions and an undermining of team cohesion. Interestingly, however, the study found that not all kinds of i-deals had a negative impact on the team. For instance, task i-deals actually improved team performance because they allowed employees to focus on the tasks they were best at. By contrast, career i-deals weren't as positive.
The researchers explain that flexibility isn’t inherently problematic. Its downsides mainly appear in settings where physical presence is critical for coordination, such as restaurants or front-line customer service.
“We don’t want to convey that flexibility i-deals shouldn’t be negotiated,” they state. “There’s plenty of evidence showing the benefits of flexibility in contexts like academia, IT and creative industries, where autonomy fuels innovation.”
Fairness and Transparency
So what should managers take from all of this? The benefits of flexible working are clear and well-documented, but implementation must happen in a way that's seen as fair and doesn't breed resentment across the team. For this to happen, it's key that managers are transparent in their decision-making and are able to have candid conversations with employees, both individually and as teams.
This aligns with other research showing that leadership style can make or break flexible work models. For instance, research from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya found that remote work and remote teams can be highly effective if managers are willing to adapt their approach. What’s increasingly clear is that this is even more important for achieving the kind of flexibility that employees crave.
This was something that was highlighted in HP's Work Relationship Index, which showed that many managers lack skills in areas like empathy and communication, which are fundamental to ensuring flexible working is offered in the right way.
Doing Flexible Work Right
In the last year or so, we've unfortunately seen the opposite of flexibility, with various high-profile cases of organizations adopting rigid return-to-office mandates.
The most successful organizations codify practices around hybrid and flexible working. These often involve the coordination of in-office days so that teams are together at the same time, while also investing in remote working tools to allow for good collaboration when teams are physically apart. These organizations also clearly define expectations to help ensure that cohesion is sustained without sacrificing individual autonomy.
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We're seeing a fundamental shift in how people are approaching work that reflects our changing priorities as human beings. With just a third saying that work is a key way of forming friendships, and even fewer believing that their jobs offer them long-term security, the psychological contract that dominated much of the 20th century is eroding before our eyes.
“Employees feel isolated, burdened by workloads, lacking in mental health support and financially insecure,” the HP researchers told me in an interview. “Leaders must create workplaces that foster connection, allow employees to balance work and life, and provide a sense of stability — all within a highly uncertain economy.”
A new understanding of productivity and meaning is emerging. While good pay and fair workloads are still important, it's even more important that employers are able to offer work-life balance, purposeful work and a sense of belonging. The most successful future organizations will be those who see flexibility not as a perk but as a fundamental part of how work is designed. It demands recognition that things like autonomy, empathy and personalization aren't luxuries in the workplace, but expectations.
Editor's Note: Read more on how to thoughtfully design a workplace that meets employee and employer needs:
- Work Design Is How Performance, Engagement and Well-Being Scale — When leaders organize work around how people actually collaborate, they'll drive performance and help workers finish their days with energy, not exhaustion.
- Design Better Hybrid Workplace Experiences With Empathy — Start by identifying underlying needs and working back toward the solution, not the other way around.
- How Your Workplace Can Keep – and Keep Up With – Tomorrow's Employees — Employees want not just pay, but clarity and work-life balance. If you want to keep your employees, you have to meet them where they are.
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