61% Of Indian Office Goers Want To Include Travel Time In Their Working Hours, Study Reveals

While taking a new job, the commute time is an integral part of our daily schedule. We might have a 9 to 5 job but if you are living far away then you would most definitely have to work 12 hours a day.

According to a global workplace survey by IWG, 61% of office goers in India want their commute time to be included in their working hours. Over 80 per cent of the companies in India are introducing flexible working to help attract and retain employees, it said.

PTI reported that 41% office-goers also believed that commuting to/ from work is the part of the working day which they like the least. However, only 58% of people in India agreed that their companies currently have a flexible workspace policy.

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Around a fifth of global workers describe flexible working as the ability to make some decisions regarding their working hours, a quarter equate it with being able to manage workload, but more than half relate it to being able to choose the type of work location, the report read.

The survey was based on 15,000 respondents from 80 different countries. The report also highlighted that one of the biggest challenges that businesses face is changing a long-standing attitude towards flexible working.

More importantly, 85% of business people think that flexible working helps returning mothers remain in workforce as well as workers that are past-pensioning age.

¡°Reducing the stress of commuting, particularly when these would involve lengthy commutes in traffic or on crowded public transport, is a benefit both to businesses ¨C whose workers arrive fresh and punctual ¨C but also to staff.¡± the report read.

Although, a third of workers report they try to make the best of their commute. 48% perform some work tasks while commuting to office whereas, 33% simply read a book. Two out of five define commuting as ¡®the worst¡¯ part of their day. Fortunately though, the majority of workers report they think that most people will no longer have to commute daily by 2035, with South African respondents highly optimistic on this front (79%).

¡°In 2019, with half of business people globally reporting that they work outside one of their main office locations half the week or more, it is safe to say that we are way beyond that. Flexible working is the new norm¡±, said IWG Founder and CEO Mark Dixon.

Flexible working is clearly fully rooted in workplace mentality with the majority of workers seeing it as the ¡®new normal¡¯ and business leaders firmly acknowledging its key role in driving business success.