Company leaders tend to overestimate how many workers desire to mix work and personal time throughout the day and underestimate those who want a delineated 9-to-5 day, according to a Sept. 15 report from Gallup.
Both types of employees — dubbed “blenders” and “splitters” — can be engaged and productive at work, especially if their preferences and needs are considered.
“One takeaway from Gallup’s finding is that leaders could be underestimating the number of their employees who want a more structured 9-to-5 routine, dedicated focus time and to know exactly when they are working or not,” Ryan Pendell, a workplace science writer at Gallup, wrote in the report.
“Leaders may need to be more understanding of those who prefer clear work boundaries,” Pendell wrote.
Overall, there’s a nearly even 50/50 divide between workers who are “splitters” and workers who are “blenders,” according to the report. If leaders identify one way, they may assume their workers prefer the same working style, which can cause workplace and interpersonal conflict. For instance, splitters may not answer calls or emails outside of work hours, while blenders may take personal calls or complete personal tasks during work hours, Pendell wrote.
In a Gallup survey of 135 Fortune 500 CHROs, leaders expected only 24% of their white-collar employees to be splitters and believed 76% would be blenders. However, in a separate poll, 45% of white-collar workers said they preferred a splitter work style, and 55% preferred a blender work style.
In addition, CHROs thought 54% of production and front-line employees would be splitters and 46% would be blenders. In reality, 62% of production and front-liner workers said they preferred a splitter work style, while 38% said they liked a blender work style.
In both cases, leaders overestimated the number of blenders in their organizations, Pendell wrote. When employees feel like their work doesn’t match with their preferred work style, they may be less likely to feel respected, less likely to be engaged, more likely to feel burnout and more likely to look for another job.
“Leaders should ask team members how they prefer to work,” Pendell wrote. “Are they splitters or blenders? Knowing this can help leaders decrease interpersonal friction while getting more work done.”
Work style preferences may vary by industry, according to a previous Gallup survey about splitters and benders, although the divide still hovers between 50/50 and 60/40. For instance, 59% of production and front-line workers said they were splitters, which was the highest percentage among industry categories at the time. On the opposite end, 54% of healthcare and social assistance workers said they were blenders. In the middle, managerial roles were 51% blenders and 49% splitters.
Among employees who may feel mismatched with their work style, poor work-life balance could be a main reason for resignation, according to a recent FlexJobs survey. Asking employees about work preferences and their schedule strengths could boost employee experience, satisfaction and retention.
