“Enticing employers through remuneration alone is a brittle policy that won’t withstand poaching from the highest offer.”
Chelsea,33,(not her real name) started in her role as a category analyst at a major Australian retailer seven months ago. Her company lets her do her job primarily from home,but on the rare off-chance she needs to be in the office,she needs to shuffle around her entire day.
She has to be out the door before 7am or become stuck in peak-hour traffic in a commute that has blown out to more than 1½ hours.
“My life now looks different to what it did two years ago,so I can’t just,at the drop of a hat,turn up to an office,” she said. “I’d have to make arrangements for my family.”
When she was job-hunting a year ago,flexibility was at the top of her list of priorities. Being able to work from home was a key consideration in accepting the job offer.
Still relatively fresh in her role,Chelsea is not looking to move on any time soon - but she knows she has the upper hand in the current employment market.
“I’ve been hit by so many recruiters,” she said. “If[employers are] inflexible,don’t meet the needs of the worker now,if they don’t appreciate and learn from what’s happened in the last few years – people will leave.
“It’s a job-seeker’s market at the moment.”
Swinburne University professor and Centre for the New Workforce director Dr Sean Gallagher said workers are now expecting a hybrid arrangement - with more time at home.
“People have become more invested in their lifestyles at home over the last two years,and they’ve gotten pretty good at working from home … They don’t want to give it up too quickly.”
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Dr Gallagher said workers now have a different expectation as to what should be done in the office.
“Workers don’t want to come back to the office to sit and do Zoom calls,or process email,” he said.
“The office needs to focus much more on meaningful human interaction … everything from ideation to complex problem-solving,to conflict resolution.”
If anything,the role of the office will become even more important than before,particularly in the war for talent where employees are increasingly shunning ‘transactional’ incentives.
According to the head of workspace analytics tool Worksona,Jessica Hall,the next frontier of the flexible work revolution will be around how,and when,they work.
“Almost a quarter of people want more varied hours to accommodate their other commitments,” Ms Hall said. Countries like Belgium,Iceland,and Japan are experimenting with four-day work weeks.
“We’ve uncovered some really creative and more inclusive ways to do things[through online collaboration]. It’d be a shame to forget about those now that the office is available again.”
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