#PandaPounds: Flexible working in ecommerce

As a non-stop environment, should flexible working be a definite benefit in the ecommerce industry? We wanted to look at this company benefit in more detail; who receives it as a benefit and can it make a positive impact on work-life balance?

In our 2018 ecommerce salary survey & insights report, we asked our respondents about the benefits they receive in their current role – let’s have a look at the insights we discovered!

Who receives flexible working in the ecommerce industry?

We asked our respondents to select every benefit they receive in their current role…have a look at the top 5 below! (Note: As respondents selected more than one benefit, the total will not equal 100%)

As we can see, 37% of respondents receive flexible working in their current role. While it’s great to see this benefit in the top three, it’s still significantly behind company laptops and contributory pension. Despite this, 2018 was the first year flexible working broke into the top three!

Looking back throughout the years, 30% of respondents received flexible working in 2017 while in 2016 it didn’t even break into the top five benefits received!

Does flexible working improve work-life balance?

Many people believe flexible working would have a significant impact on work-life balance – is this true?

Of our respondents who have flexible working hours, 78% are happy with their work-life balance while 15% are not. That leaves 7% who aren’t quite sure! It’s interesting to see that 15% don’t feel that having access to flexible working as a benefit has a positive impact on their balance between work and play.

Of course, there could be other factors at work – perhaps their work load is just too big and flexible working isn’t making a difference to this. What about respondents who do not receive this benefit? 63% are happy with their work-life balance while 23% are unhappy. This means 14% aren’t sure if their work-life balance is quite right.

There are some significant differences here – those who receive flexible working are happier with their work-life balance, and there is a larger number of respondents who do not have access to flexible working who are unhappy. It’s clear that flexible working does have a positive impact, but More #PandaPounds goodness to follow! We hope you enjoyed this quick insight into flexible working in the ecommerce industry! Keep your eyes on our #PandaPounds blog page, where more exclusive insights will be added weekly!