No, that’s not a typo in the headline.  Oh, by the way, you can add AM or PM after the hours – it doesn’t matter.  Today you’ll find a vast number of people considering 5am to 9am and/or 5pm to 9pm a part of their regular working day. And guess what? Polls say they really don’t mind!

Today the U.S. has 20% of the American business world working out of their homes, 38% working flex hours, and 42% working an average of 9 hours a day at work and 3+ extra hours at home or off-site. That’s a lot of hours, yet reports say everyone seems pretty happy.

Why is that? We’ll give you one word – CONTROL. People want control, and technology offers it to them. They want control of what they see on TV, how they use the internet, the way they buy products, and the way in which they work. Why miss Johnny’s soccer game if you’ve got your Blackberry with you and you can check emails during the timeouts? You can control your work efforts from almost anywhere so why not be able to work from almost anywhere?

Why are we writing yet another blog post on this well-known subject? Because, as much as this style of working is fairly common today, very few companies offer it as a benefit when looking to hire. Businesses are afraid this type of work schedule would promote flakiness. Yet statistics show the opposite. A Gallop Poll survey shows 86% of people who are able to work flexible schedules actually put in 11 extra hours work each week. Best of all, they are happy with their jobs, and their employers are happy with them.

So next time you complain that you can’t get any good applicants for your job, try adding “flex schedule” into the job description and see what happens.