Stats from our community: What do employees really prioritise?
- Publish Date: Posted about 2 years ago
- Author: Better Placed
There’s so much conversation about changes in the workplace since the pandemic, mostly looking at the practical elements. How work has changed to suit our lifestyles more; how employee voices have become more dominant in the workplace; how benefits have become more people focused and creative. However, one conversation that keeps being alluded to but not explicitly explored is that of the relationship between passion and work.
Surprisingly, as people experienced job insecurity or loss, studies show that priorities shifted from financial stability and climbing traditional career ladders to finding hobbies and passions or even just focused further on their family lives.
What can employers learn from this? Well, there’s plenty. However, it most centres on how they can keep and retain the best talent by nurturing and prioritising this in their employees.
By offering flexibility that allows personal hobbies and career growth at the same time, employees will retain the best talent for the longest time. The old days of days spent in the office being the measure of success rather than actual output are gone and this is how employees should judge performance. Even though the young graduate is at their desk every day by 8am, they might not be performing as well as the mum of two splitting her working day across multiple time slots.
So, what do candidates really want? Not our opinion, but theirs. We asked our community about next looking for a promotion, most desired benefits, flexible working best practice and things they miss about the old ways of working. This is what they said:
When will you start looking for your next job or promotion?
A huge 61.5% of over 1000 respondents said they’re currently looking for a new opportunity. We’re constantly being told about the impacts of ‘The Great Recession’ but this stat is a real insight into the share of that market shift.
However, as much as this can be a threat to businesses who will have huge changeovers, it’s a fantastic opportunity to secure fantastic talent and revolutionise your business to suit the post-covid world.
What do you miss most about working from the office full time?
Conversely when we asked the market about the negatives of working from home, the social aspect of chatting with colleagues was the vote of almost a third (30%) of respondents. This paired with 19% stating ease of collaboration does highlight the communication challenges of remote working that many businesses have still not mastered.
Unsurprisingly with how people are favouring flexibility, only 5% of respondents listed a structured routine as what they miss most and a whopping 45% voted that they missed nothing and remote working has changed their lives only for the better.
Which flexible working practice is most appealing to you?
The most popular answer here was hybrid remote working with 48% of the votes. This aligns with the growth of flexibility whilst also accounting for the continued need to collaborate and socialise in the office for some periods of the week.
The other answer cropping up here was the allusion to a shortened working week, either by compressing hours or simply cutting to four working days a week as policy. Whilst this might seem an extreme change to the standard office it’s becoming more and more standard with tech businesses such as Basecamp, Buffer, Toshiba, Shopify and Microsoft Japan already implementing this for their employees.
So as an employer, how can you exploit the zeitgeist of chasing passions? Create a workplace in which they can co-exist. Give staff the time and flexibility to spend with their families or on hobbies in order to create a working environment too desirable to leave.
In an employment market full of talent shortages, it is those extra non-monetary benefits that we’re seeing really sway candidates at every level of seniority and across all industries.
If you’d like to chat to us about growing your team with these principles in mind, get in touch today to speak to an expert consultant.