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.
Exactly. Anyone who expresses the opinion that there’s no reason to care about how employees feel is just telling you that they are unqualified to ever be in a management role.
I’m a Realtor and work from home a lot. I’ve always had the choice of going to and doing whatever I like, when I like. But I love going to the office a little everyday. Fun people and atmosphere. We all need social time. I’m seeing more and more people becoming less and less social. It’s not healthy.
Amen.
Don’t forget jealousy of others for being able to work remotely. That always figures in these discussions.
Many returned to the office, fewer returned to actually work.
During the lockdown, the building they had leased was sold to someone, who then planned on renovating the whole building. Also during the lockdown, the company had the best earnings in quite a while, so it was decided it wasn't worth the money to lease offices in the old building after all. The company told everyone to go to the building and take what they wanted since nobody would be going back there. My son continues to work from home, which is just fine with him. He's happy not having to fight morning traffic in Albany, NY to get to work everyday, and then fight it again on the way home. Everybody in his department still gets a decent yearly bonus too. So, it's a win-win situation for everyone.
It might work if you're a small company and you're managing a bunch of Baby Boomers.
Yes, that’s definitely part of it. You can’t really micromanage or have HR be able to enforce your Woke political BS on remote employees. Yet another reason to insist on remote work.
“Don’t forget jealousy of others for being able to work remotely. That always figures in these discussions.”
Definitely! There was a constant stream of snark from some of the in-office personnel.
After a year of that I set the phone system to call forwarding to my home line, copied the programs to my hard drive at home, and instead offered 24 hour support. It worked great in that instance, but how does a company train a new hire? How do they develop and mentor a new hire? How does an employee working remotely compliment other work groups office based?
With employees job hopping every three years, home or remote based work should not be happening. We had a remote employee direct software licenses and numerical keys to his home. He jumped jobs and we couldn't use our plant triage programs along with some drives configuration yearly licensed keys. Our company counsel advised not to litigate it, but to spend the extra $70K for new licenses and keys.
You can't trust most people when they are not observed in the office.
“I’d rather work late in my basement office during a program crunch then stay until late at night in an office 35 miles away.”
110% - and I often did.
Hmmm. Any house sale is going to go better with a dedicated office space, isn’t it?
Just as the communists planned...
The next emergency mandate, next year, will finish off any survivors as well as control the election...
The serfs will continue to meekly comply...
“So folks quit when they were instructed to come back or be fired? Seems okay”
Definitely - that’s free market at work. But not so great if you’re a manager whose competition is taking your quality employees, leaving you with vacancies or having to fill positions with lower-quality employees.
10 out of the 11 board members are in favor of pressing these people back to work in the office. The CEO of the company has been resistant to this because he fears losing some key employees.
I'm the only board member who is ambivalent about it -- and even supportive of the resistant employees (so long as they are resistant for the right reasons). At our last board of directors meeting I made a very simple statement to explain myself to the other ten board members:
"All of you should have thought of this crap back in 2020 when you bought into the COVID hysteria and insisted on sending these employees to work from home. This is what I warned you about back in March of 2020 when we first met in that emergency meeting to discuss the company's COVID protocols."
At the time, I warned everyone on the board of directors that there would never be a "return to normal" if the employees ended up working from home for more than two weeks.
Interestingly, the subject hasn't come up in recent months since we had that last meeting.
We are very dysfunctional and dysfunctional societies collapse.
We’re collapsing.
To each his own.
“Good employees will give you good work from home.”
^^^This^^^. And bad employees will give you bad work in the office.
Us vs Them management works so well. Lol.
Bunch of lazy pajama loungers
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