Bosses want to return to the office. Workers, not so much. Gusto’s team of economists was curious about this, so they studied 100,000 remote workers on the Gusto platform for a year to understand how that remote work is going. They uncovered some pretty interesting stuff.
For example, despite bosses’ public fears that they don’t know what their people are doing, remote makes recruiting far easier. And workers allowed to work remotely may be substantially more loyal and less likely to leave.
On Tuesday October 11, 2022, Gusto’s Editor-at-Large Caleb and Jennifer Scott, CEO of HireEffect, will share those findings. Join them to have your questions answered, and in the article below, we offer a sneak peek.
The data overwhelming shows workers want more flexibility
Eighty-percent of people want at least two days out of the office, our research found. Thirty-five percent of people say that work-life balance was “the defining factor” in whether they took their current or latest role, and nearly half of people say it’ll be their biggest factor in the future.
And when we say “biggest factor,” we mean that it was more important than compensation. Which, building upon previous research, is really telling—in a study last year, workers said “flexibility” was more important than paid medical care, and second only to paid time off.
As Jennifer will explain in the webinar, the first thing most workers are asking these days in interviews is whether the role is remote or hybrid. What’s your client’s response?
Thirty-five percent of people say that work-life balance was “the defining factor” in whether they took their current or latest role
Workers with flexibility appear a lot more loyal
According to the study, workers who are allowed to work remotely or at least partially remote are 13 percent less likely to quit than workers without this option. That’s a major deal when five million Americans quit just in the first half of 2022 and 90 percent of businesses say they’re struggling to fill at least some roles.
What if offering more options to continue to work out of the office, even for just some days, can help your clients retain talented staff?
Remote-friendly environments may be more gender inclusive
Prior to the pandemic, fewer women took advantage of remote work than men, largely because they tend to work in roles or industries that aren’t conducive to working from home, such as veterinarian work, medical sciences, and teaching. But of course, lots of companies found new ways to make work happen over the past two years.
The numbers say it all. Before the pandemic, 1 in 30 women worked from home compared to 1 in 22 men. After, 1 in 8 women now work from home compared to 1 in 7 men. The gap has substantially closed. (Though a gap still remains.)
The sector with the biggest change has been professional services. There, 25 percent of women now work remotely, compared to 21 percent of men.
If women gain more from remote work, and are taking great advantage of it (proportionally), what could remote work do for gender diversity in your client’s workplace?
The biggest barrier is bosses trusting their people
Jennifer will broach this topic on the upcoming webinar. Your clients may be pushing for a return to the office for all sorts of reasons, and you can help them work through whether those are legitimate objections to remote and hybrid work, or whether it’s something they might benefit from rethinking. For example, if they think, like many large corporations, that employee surveillance and “worker productivity scores” are the only way to establish remote work trust, that’s worth digging into.
Would they themselves enjoy receiving that level of scrutiny? What’s going on where they can’t trust their people? Why can they not simply focus on the results?
If this data or these ideas intrigue you, join Caleb and Jennifer, and bring questions.
