The workplace is constantly evolving and so too are the workers. A staggering 81% of 16-24 year-olds think traditional 9-5 office life is no longer relevant in the 21st century. This statistic comes from a survey of over 1,000 UK office workers undertaken by TeamViewer for a new report about the future of of the workplace. With such a high number of the younger generation feeling this way, businesses and employers need to cater to the evolution of work life.

Many studies aim to prove that flexibility is the new productivity when it comes to work. In the case of homeworkers, most people will agree that flexibility doesn’t mean a lack of structure. Key qualities for working from home include independence, resourcefulness, self-motivation, solution finding, resilience and communication. In other words, homeworking is not for the faint-hearted!

Why not give it a try this Friday 20th May for National Work from Home Day? Here are a few productivity hacks from people who work regularly from home.

Department of Psychology, The University of Sheffield and Chair of The Institute of Inertia 

Friday 20th May is National Work from Home Day and many office workers will take the opportunity to avoid the commute in favour of working from home (perhaps in their pajamas[1]) and getting some ‘proper’ work done.

The question is will they be any more productive?

Assuming that the time that would otherwise be spent commuting, attending meetings and chatting with colleagues is spent working, then simple reason dictates that working from home means more time spent working and, thus, greater productivity.

But this simple prediction makes a number of assumptions:

It always helps to be on the right side of history – and that applies to business as much as anything else in life.

So a smart business will detect which way the tide of affairs is flowing and swim with it. And, in advanced western economies, the trend is towards more and more people working from home, reverting to a norm that was only interrupted by the Industrial Revolution.

When I started Catalyst in 2005 as a finance and accounting recruitment agency, it seemed like a natural way to operate. I knew I would enjoy it, the people I wanted to work for me were all in favour and – most important – it gave us a valuable insight into much larger businesses that were also moving towards the same model.