I've been up and down the country over the last few days doing some work around  PWC's Annual Global CEO Survey.

The report looks at some of the key themes and challenges that CEOs believe they'll face in the coming year.

Top of the agenda for most CEOs is growth, but also getting the right talent too - finding the right people with the right skill-base.

And how they manage that workforce is also changing.

Flexible working hours is becoming more and more common it seems - and not just to accommodate families.

Yes, it's important to be at those school sports days, or perhaps you want to start earlier so you can get the kids from school, but technology increasingly allows many of us to work from wherever we want.

And more and more employers are seeing the benefits that flexible working hours bring to their business.

Staff are happier, they're achieving more work-life balance, and employers are seeing increased productivity and fewer staff taking sick leave.

I was talking with one boss who said one of his staff - an accountant - was a surfer, and he usually went surfing on one morning a week.

And that night he'd work a little later - possibly from home - but there was no question he'd get the job done.

Central to it all, of course, is feeling valued and establishing trust,  and this was another theme that came through in the survey.

You've got to trust your employees but lets face it, in most cases work rate is measurable. You know if someone's pulling their weight or meeting their targets.

Technology allows people to work from where they wish, and when. If they can work from home for a couple of days, you  avoid the commute. So that means one of two things -- either more down time, or you can spend more time working if you need to.

But ultimately, CEOs say that in most cases, employees 'flourish' when they're given the opportunity to work their own hours.

It's quite a shift, isn't it?

There is nothing that binds the corporate world to a desk between the hours of 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, any more.

And technology makes that goal of work-life balance that much more achievable.

In the UK, a report by the Work Foundation estimates that 70 percent of employees in the UK will be on flexible contracts within the next three years.

And it makes sense because happy employees are loyal employees.

In some industries - like the media, for example - flexible working hours aren't quite so easy to achieve, but if you could work flexible hours, would you?

Perhaps you already do. And if you're honest, do you think you'd still be highly productive working outside of the office?