Workers aren’t just asking where they can work—they’re increasingly asking when. In a piece for Quartz, Matthew Fray reports that while many CEOs expect a full-time return to the office by 2027, the sharper fault line isn’t office vs. remote anymore. It’s “time autonomy”: control over start and stop times, meeting load, focus hours, and personal boundaries. (You can also think of it as microshifting.)
Citing the Workplace You Need Now co-author Peter Miscovich, Fray notes that work-life balance has now edged out compensation as the top priority for 65% of office workers worldwide; a figure that’s grown six points over the past four years. Employees say location flexibility alone doesn’t solve their real constraints; schedule control does.
The challenge for companies: maintaining coverage and collaboration without slipping into an “always on” culture or grinding decisions to a halt when key people aren’t simultaneously available. The article points to emerging fixes—core collaboration hours is one—and explains how one company successfully implemented schedule autonomy. For that story and more, read the full piece here.
