Flexible working valued over high pay, claims multinational company

According to the latest global survey by Cisco, demand for flexible working arrangements is shaping the world of work.

As explained in HR Magazine, 60% of workers surveyed said they felt that office based working arrangements offered no particular benefit to their productivity. They also expressed that flexibility could be a useful recruitment asset as well as a model for work; a similar proportion (66%) said they would accept lower salary offers if the job offered flexibility.

Many countries expressed their preference for flexible working; however some countries such as India (93%), China (81%) and Brazil (76%) were much more confident that they could be just as productive working away from the office.

"The Cisco Connected World Report gives further insight into the future of workplace and it is clear from the research findings that the desire among employees to be more mobile and flexible in their work lifestyles is extremely strong throughout the world," said Marie Hattar, vice president of borderless networks at Cisco.

Flexible working also appears to be a useful motivator for staff. Almost half of those respondents who could access corporate infrastructure digitally outside of the office said they worked between two and three extra hours each day, with 25% saying they put in four hours or more. Cisco says this does not always reflect home-workers; instead, employees are able to spend more time working due to the ability to manage their work-life balance independently.  
 
However it seems that most companies are not ready yet to go through this kind of changes in spite of the preferences expressed in the survey. Whilst more than 66% of employees expected to be able to use any device to access corporate networks and data from any location and at any time, responses from IT professionals were less optimistic. 45% of the IT respondents said their firm was not prepared either in terms of technology or policy to support a mobile, flexible workforce.