Why smarter scheduling is becoming workers’ favourite benefit

In late 2023, The Conference Board asked more than 1,500 US employees which non?salary benefits matter most. 65 percent put workplace flexibility at the top of the list, above bonuses, paid time off, retirement plans and even healthcare.  In 2025, Gallup found that among over 10,000 US workers, 59 percent rated “greater work–life balance and better personal wellbeing” as a very important reason for taking a new job, more than any other factor for the third year running.

The American Psychological Association’s 2024 Work in America Survey, conducted online by The Harris Poll with 2,027 employed adults, adds a sharp edge to that story. One in three workers say they don’t have enough flexibility to keep work and personal life in balance, and more than two in five say they work more hours per week than they want to. In other words, workers are telling employers that the benefit they feel most short of is time they can actually control.

If you take that seriously, scheduling and day?to?day administration stop being background noise. They start to look a lot like a quiet health plan – which is exactly why many leaders studying a doctorate in business administration online are turning their attention to the design of time, not just pay and benefits.

Paycheck to Clock Check

For a long time, the main question about a job was simple: “What does it pay?”. Increasingly, people add a second one: “What will this do to my life?”.

The Conference Board’s 2023 survey shows how far things have shifted. Flexible work options are now the leading non?salary component of compensation for US employees, with women and remote or hybrid workers especially likely to rank flexibility as essential. In that study, 72 percent of women and around two?thirds of hybrid and fully remote workers put flexibility at the top, compared with 57 percent of men and 49 percent of fully in?person staff. That’s not a niche preference. It’s a signal that control over time has become part of how people judge fairness at work.

Gallup’s 2025 research reinforces this. In its nationally representative survey of more than 10,000 US employees, 59 percent said greater work–life balance and better personal wellbeing were very important reasons to take a new job, ahead of higher pay and benefits, job security and several other factors. The same report notes that just over half of workers are either actively looking or watching for other roles, which means employers that ignore time are effectively competing with those that treat it as a headline benefit.

Set that beside APA’s finding that a third of workers lack enough flexibility and almost half are working longer than they want, and the gap becomes obvious. People are trading jobs, loyalty and energy over something many organisations still treat as an operational detail: who controls the clock.

Admin as Time Designers, Not Paper Pushers

In most workplaces, senior leaders talk about wellbeing, but it’s administrators and managers who decide how many late meetings happen, when shifts are posted, and how hard it is to book a day off. That’s where time either leaks away or gets carefully protected.

The data suggests those levers are powerful when used with intent. APA’s 2024 Work in America Survey reports that 81 percent of workers believe they could be just as effective on a four?day week, and 79 percent say they’d be happier at work with that pattern. The share who say their employer offers some version of a four?day week has risen from 14 percent in 2022 to 22 percent in 2024, which hints at quiet experimentation across US organisations.

Workable’s “Great Discontent” series points in the same direction on everyday flexibility. Between 2021 and 2023, the share of respondents who saw flexible schedules as a major benefit rose from 55.8 percent to 66.7 percent, while nearly half highlighted time saved on commuting as a key advantage and close to half reported higher productivity under flexible schedules. That combination – people valuing flexibility and not seeing performance drop – is exactly what cautious leaders have been waiting for.

For admin teams, it all adds up to a very practical brief. Instead of treating scheduling as a back?office chore, they can start managing “time as a benefit” by changing small but high?impact decisions such as:

• Publishing rosters and core meeting windows at least two weeks in advance so people can plan life commitments with confidence.
• Building in common planning periods for teams and departments so collaboration doesn’t depend on after?hours goodwill.
• Minimising last?minute schedule changes and, when they’re unavoidable, communicating them through a single, reliable channel so staff aren’t constantly “on alert.”
• Aligning key meetings and duties with known high?energy times of day and avoiding stacking intense tasks back?to?back, so the daily rhythm supports focus rather than draining it.

These changes give employers more predictability. They also creates a clear line from admin decisions to metrics leaders already track, like job satisfaction and intent to stay.

If Time Heals, Who Owns the Clock?

Put the pieces together and a simple story emerges. US workers now rank flexibility, control and work–life balance alongside traditional benefits when deciding whether to stay or go. Research on flexible and participatory scheduling shows that when people gain more stable, self?influenced hours, their mental health and satisfaction tend to rise.

That gives business administrators a far more strategic role than their job titles suggest. By rethinking rosters, meeting norms and approval flows, they can deliver one of the most valued benefits in modern work: time that feels usable, predictable and compatible with real life, often at lower cost than expanding traditional benefits. Organisations that move first, whether with four?day experiments where they fit or simply fairer, more predictable scheduling, will likely find it easier to hire, engage and keep people over the next decade.

If time is already doing as much for your people’s health as any insurance card in their wallet, who in your organisation is ready to start redesigning the clock on purpose rather than by accident?