‘Chrono-working’ tipped to be NZ’s next big employment craze

“Chrono-working” is tipped to be the next big employment trend that will hit New Zealand.

The idea is that you work to your body clock rather than 9 to 5.

Staff are allowed to choose their own work hours based on their circadian rhythm - their personal sleeping patterns - and the times they are most productive.

That might mean starting early, bowling in at morning tea time or napping in the early afternoon.

"Chrono-working" means ditching 9-to-5 and working to your circadian rhythm, or your body's natural 24-hour clock. That might mean starting early, starting late, or napping in the middle of the day. Photo / Getty Images

Recruitment firm Robert Walters (the new home of ex-Cabinet minister Stuart Nash and the largest supplier of contract labour to the public sector) is touting a survey done across the ditch that found 42% also thought chrono-working would improve their mental health.

The firm’s Australia New Zealand chief executive Shay Peters says the concept could also be “revolutionary” for multinationals.

“While chrono-working may seem radical at first glance, its implications have the potential to completely reshape the workforce, creating a borderless economy,” he says.

“By breaking free from the constraints of traditional working hours, we can ensure that there is always someone available to cater to the needs of clients or customers, regardless of their geographical location. This opens up the possibility of a truly global workforce like we’ve never seen before.”

Robert Walters Australia-New Zealand chief executive Shay Peters says the new workplace trend of chrono-working has "the potential to change the workforce as we know it".

The concept has been trialled at tech firms Canva and Dropbox and UK jobs platform Flex, among others.

“This approach could yield benefits in terms of employee morale, sleep quality and productivity levels,” Peters says.

Costs productivity

One expert here is already sold.

“We all know early risers - like me - and the night owls,” says Massey University’s Professor Jarrod Haar.

He says those descriptions fit around 14% of the workforce.

A 9am start didn’t make sense for either. Fighting rush-hour traffic robbed an earlier rise of one and a half hours of good working time, while 10am was the earliest a night owl could be productive, Haar said.

Studies say your internal clock is 47% genetics - and that it’s hard to override that bio-programming.

“But we are so obsessed with the 9-5pm that we can’t seem to think out of the box,” Haar said.

Chrono-working is a high-trust model that suits knowledge workers, he added.

“Managers just need to focus on productivity, not time.”

Jarrod Haar, Dean's Chair and Professor of Management and Maori Business at Massey University.

There’s already empirical evidence - in the form of Auckland Transport stats that show the city’s work-day traffic volumes - that indicates employer enthusiasm for experimenting with new ways of working has cooled as the pandemic, and the tight labour markets that came with it, have receded.

Earlier, outgoing BusinessNZ chief executive Kirk Hope said many of his organisation’s members had reduced or eliminated working-from-home post-pandemic - but a legacy of Covid was that most people were now much more open to glide time, such as starting and finishing an hour later. It had become the preferred approach to hybrid work for BusinessNZ members.

BusinessNZ declined to comment on chrono-working, saying it was still in an information-gathering phase.

Peters sees flexible working policies being here to stay after the pandemic. And he says the level of interest in chrono-working in his firm’s research highlights “the need for organisations to continue to improve their flexible working policies to keep up with the evolving workforce”.

But will employers give a monkey’s?

During the tight labour markets of the pandemic, employers fell over each other to accommodate various hybrid working trends.

Does Haar think they now have Next Big Thing fatigue? Are bosses less likely to follow workplace fads now there’s less need to cater to employees’ every whim?

“Alas, I do,” the Massey academic says.

“History tells us that employers, especially in New Zealand, are not adventurous full stop.

“And the recession with a labour market that favours employers mean they will not try new things.

“Frankly, they are leaving productivity gains on the table as a result.

“As a country, we need to be more adventurous and utilise evidence-based [as opposed to silly fads] human resource practices like this chrono-working and the four-day week.”

The more we do, the more adventurous and innovative our workforces and businesses will become, Haar says.

‘Unwork’

In a section of the local tech industry, at least, a version of chrono-working took hold pre-pandemic.

“Corporate time sheets were invented over 100 years ago, well before the ultra-connected world that we live in today existed,” Timely founder Ryan Baker wrote in a June 2019 essay that described the output of staff, including himself, who were physically present but at what were, for them, unproductive times - often producing what he called “unwork”.

“You produce poor-quality work that takes more time later to tidy up. As a coder this means I would work on the wrong things, create unnecessary complexity and leave bugs everywhere. All things that take time to fix up or completely redo later. At its worst, unwork ends up in the hands of customers and causes them problems”.

Did he get results from letting staff work when they felt productive? Two years, later, Baker sold his Dunedin-based firm to the Silver Lake-backed EverCommerce for US$95 million (then $135m).

Flexible work - what policies appeal?

In May, Robert Walkers also asked 2000 employees what flexible work policy they’d like to see their company pilot.

These were the top three:

• A four-day week: 43%
• Being fully remote: 24%
• Working from anywhere in the world: 23%

Additionally, 42% thought chrono-working would improve their mental health and 11% were interested in experimenting with the concept.

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.