Posted on 08/03/2023 10:38:50 AM PDT by ShadowAce
We’re now finding out the damaging consequences of the mandated return to office. And it’s not a pretty picture. A trio of compelling reports—the Greenhouse Candidate Experience report, the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED), and Unispace’s Returning for Good report—collectively paint a stark picture of this brewing storm.
Unispace found that nearly half (42%) of companies with return-to-office mandates witnessed a higher level of employee attrition than they had anticipated. And almost a third (29%) of companies enforcing office returns are struggling with recruitment. In other words, employers knew the mandates would cause some attrition, but they weren’t ready for the serious problems that would result.
Meanwhile, a staggering 76% of employees stand ready to jump ship if their companies decide to pull the plug on flexible work schedules, according to the Greenhouse report. Moreover, employees from historically underrepresented groups are 22% more likely to consider other options if flexibility comes to an end.
In the SHED survey, the gravity of this situation becomes more evident. The survey equates the displeasure of shifting from a flexible work model to a traditional one to that of experiencing a 2% to 3% pay cut.
Flexible work policies have emerged as the ultimate edge in talent acquisition and retention. The Greenhouse, SHED, and Unispace reports, when viewed together, provide compelling evidence to back this assertion.
Greenhouse finds that 42% of candidates would outright reject roles that lack flexibility. In turn, the SHED survey affirms that employees who work from home a few days a week greatly treasure the arrangement.
The Greenhouse report has ranked employees’ priorities as:
In other words, excluding career-centric factors such as pay, security, and promotion, flexible work ranks first in employees’ priorities.
Interestingly, Unispace throws another factor into the mix: choice. According to its report, overall, the top feelings employees revealed they felt toward the office were happy (31%), motivated (30%), and excited (27%). However, all three of these feelings decrease for those with mandated office returns (27%, 26%, and 22%, respectively). In other words, staff members were more open to returning to the office if it was out of choice, rather than forced.
Recently, I was contacted by a regional insurance company with a workforce of around 2,000 employees. The company enforced a return-to-office policy, causing waves of unrest. It soon became evident that its attrition rates were climbing steadily. In line with the Greenhouse report’s findings, most employees would actively seek a new job if flexible work policies were retracted. The underrepresented groups were even more prone to leave, making the situation more daunting.
At that point, the company called me to help as a hybrid work expert who the New York Times has called “the office whisperer.” We worked on adapting the return-to-office plan, switching it from a top-down mandate to a team-driven approach, and focusing on welcoming staff to the office for the sake of collaboration and mentoring. As a result, the company’s attrition rates dropped and the feelings of employees toward the office improved, in line with what the Unispace report suggests.
In another case, a large financial services company began noticing employee turnover despite offering competitive salaries and growth opportunities. Upon running an internal survey, managers realized that aside from better compensation and career advancement opportunities, employees were seeking better flexible work policies. This aligned with the Greenhouse and SHED findings, which ranked flexible work policies as a crucial factor influencing job changes. After consulting with me, they adjusted their policies to be more competitive in offering flexibility.
A late-stage SaaS startup decided to embrace this wave of change. The company worked with me to introduce flexible work policies, and the result was almost immediate: Managers noticed a sharp decrease in employee turnover and an uptick in job applications. Their story echoes the collective message from all three reports: Companies must adapt to flexible work policies or risk being outcompeted by other employers.
As we navigate these shifting landscapes of work, we cannot ignore the human elements at play. Like unseen puppeteers, cognitive biases subtly shape our decisions and perceptions. In the context of flexibility and retention, two cognitive biases come into sharp focus: the status quo bias and anchoring bias.
Imagine a thriving tech startup, successfully operating in a hybrid model during the pandemic. As the world normalized, leadership decided to return to pre-pandemic, in-person work arrangements. However, they faced resistance and an unexpected swell of turnover.
This situation illustrates the potent influence of the status quo bias. This bias, deeply entrenched in our human psyche, inclines us toward maintaining current states or resisting change. Employees, having tasted the fruits of flexible work, felt averse to relinquishing these newfound freedoms.
Consider a large financial institution that enforced a full return to office after the pandemic. Many employees, initially attracted by the brand and pay scale, felt disgruntled. The crux of the problem lies in the anchoring bias, which leads us to heavily rely on the first piece of information offered (the anchor) when making decisions.
When initially joining the company, the employees were primarily concerned with compensation and job security. Once within the fold, the pandemic caused them to shift their focus to work-life balance and flexibility, as confirmed by both the Greenhouse and SHED reports. Unfortunately, the rigid return-to-office policy made these new anchors seem less attainable, resulting in dissatisfaction and an increased propensity to leave.
As we steer our ships through these tumultuous waters, understanding cognitive biases can help illuminate our path. Recognizing and accounting for the status quo and anchoring biases can enable us to create a workplace that not only attracts but also retains its employees in the new age of flexibility. After all, success in the world of business is as much about understanding people as it is about numbers and strategy.
True. And I live too far away from major cities for anything but 100% remote.
If employees aren’t happy, their work is bad and they leave. The best ones disproportionately leave.
When I first started working in 1999 I was loyal to my company and it did “earn” that - during the 2001 slack period no one got fired, but the top management all took paycuts.
That changed in 2004 with new MBA management.
And my attitude changed when, in 2002-2004 I met folks from IBM who had that “company loyalty” - with 20 to 40 years invested in IBM, lower salaries than job jumpers, completely loyal to big blue — they were fired with no concern.
Being loyal to a company is just stupid - you can be loyal to a person, but the company is just there to pay you for your skills.
you need to remember you work for one company - the company of YOU. Train yourself, give yourself rest periods, upskill yourself and keep that CV constantly out there.
Your welsome.
But in the grand scheme of FR-things, I don’t GAF. 😂
Stay frosty!
Boomers take too many bathroom breaks. Hire an X-er.
I don't know so much about that. If you want to mitigate attrition you damn well better consider morale. With the young apathetic people running around with vaccine brain, it's in the employers interest to accommodate the folks that actually produce. I am specifically speaking of skilled white collar personnel, BTW. I am in software development and I'm here to tell you that the vaccine has damaged employee energy, focus, and accountability ethics. Apathy rules the day. I used to coach for continuous improvement, but now I mostly coach for sustainability.
Bwaaaaaahahahaha!
Toosh-ayyy
Yes, and it's out of necessity. Work from home can and has lead to greater productivity. It's in the interest of a company for folks to WFH on many levels. The most pertinent, of course, is monetarily. For instance, a large office building can save 6 figures a year on paper products alone. Think of the savings for not having to own and upkeep real estate.
Working with the "trophy generations" ain't easy let me tell you. Analyzing the behaviors of these people, especially since they all have vaccine brain now, is a full time endeavor. Attrition cost real money and intellectual capital. Avoiding it it tantamount.
Go ahead and fire them Good luck finding replacements for skilled individuals.
Yep, parking in any city is dangerous. I knew someone that purposefully drove an old Volvo Wagon in Boston knowing it would be hit all the time.
That's right. There is a paradigm shift happening as we speak. Companies need to learn to manage their home work force. In fact, I'd say there should be more pressure for productivity. I have documented an increase in availability of employees that work from home. This leads to an increase in productivity. The quantifiable metrics, whatever they may be, should not have changed when the remote work situation became the norm.
There is a whole conversation about building spaces that needs to be worked out. For us, only the IT spaces are not in use. Management wants to create mega-offices for themselves and hotel everyone else. I’ll be gone long before that happens.
Bob Slydell:
What you do at Initech is you take the specifications from the customer and bring them down to the software engineers?
Tom Smykowski:
Yes, yes that’s right.
Bob Porter:
Well then I just have to ask why can’t the customers take them directly to the software people?
Tom Smykowski:
Well, I’ll tell you why, because, engineers are not good at dealing with customers.
Bob Slydell:
So you physically take the specs from the customer?
Tom Smykowski:
Well... No. My secretary does that, or they’re faxed.
Bob Porter:
So then you must physically bring them to the software people?
Tom Smykowski:
Well. No. Ah sometimes.
Bob Slydell:
What would you say you do here?
Not in my experience in the software industry. Productivity and availability have increased significantly. Being bothered by people "stopping by your cube" and "water cooler time" have been eliminated. Travel time between meetings - eliminated. Asynchronous communication has been a great success. Synchronous is still necessary, but not like it is in person.
Price's Law: the square root of the number of employees do half the work. If you have 100 employees, 10 of them accomplish half the productivity. This is true when it comes to just about anything. The square root of the total sum of stars in the galaxy contain half the total mass. The square of the number of painters in the world, create half the paintings. Etc etc. The Law will not change whether you WFH or not.
My other favorite law is Parkinson's Law: The more time someone has to do something, the more time doing it will take.
Mandating is a nice way of saying the government forcing people to do what they woulddn’t otherwise be able to make peole do.
Like the climate crisis mandates by the soon to be installed P.resident Newsome.
This has left many companies with a shortage of skilled employees and after being used to decades of underpaying and abusing employees, they have now discovered that won't fly anymore. In some instances this has re-created the earlier job market where good pay & benefits were the norm and not the exception.
I deal with this regularly. We have engineers that can never deal with the clients without it becoming a fiasco.
We've had engineers and programmers build intricate and expensive programs that are useless because they miss the mark the client needs. Actually they're usually worse than useless because they handcuff the users to a terrible system.
The engineers are also guilty of building the perfect solution to the problem in front of them while at the same time screwing up several other systems in order to work. It's a mental block where they just can't grasp that other people and processes are in the universe and the other systems need to work as well.
Me too. It's my job as a Scrum Master. I am the interface between the suits and the nerds.
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