Chronoworking | Why working in line with your circadian rhythm could be good for business

Some working adults who had the privilege of going to university might remember long nights in the library before an exam or essay deadline. Thankfully, this isn’t a convention in the corporate world, where the conventional working times are, of course, 9am to 5pm.

The eight-hour workday, and 40-hour workweek, was introduced by Henry Ford so that employees had more leisure time to spend their money. Since then, the 9-to-5 job has been a staple of life as we know it.

Yet, we know employees have their own individualistic needs that make them more conducive to productivity. The pandemic revealed that some employees work better from home whilst others are more productive in the office and around others.

For the first time, flexibility became integral to productivity in businesses. And, despite knowing that some people are more productive in the evening or night, we still have little flexibility around the times of day we deem ‘core working hours’ and our classic 9-to-5 has experienced virtually no upheaval.