In the surprisingly successful 2000 film “What Women Want,” the character played by Mel Gibson suffers an accidental electrocution, after which he is able to telepathically “hear'' the thoughts of women. The results, predictably, are mixed.
It’s not such a stretch to imagine our ongoing transition to the next normal along similar lines: The disruptions of COVID-19 were a massive shock to the system for organizations across the board. They’re now listening to employees in new ways. And the result, as in Gibson’s character’s case, could prove to be something of a reckoning.
So if “What Employees Want” is the new storyline, then these two recruitment tips, more than any others, will have to be top of mind for employers going forward.
1. greater flexibility with hours and working remotely
Given the historical link between flexible work arrangements and employee turnover documented in employee surveys — and the fact that offering greater flexibility can reduce turnover by as much as 25 percent — it’s surprising how many organizations are taking a hardline stance on return-to-office policies today.
The financial services sector is a case in point.
In February 2021, for example, at a moment when many were heralding remote work as the “next normal,” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon characterized the situation instead as "an aberration that we’re going to correct as soon as possible.” Not to be outdone, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon opined that remote work simply wasn’t going to be a viable long-term option for employees at his company — at least not “for those who want to hustle.”
Whether or not these hardline policies will ultimately pay off remains to be seen, but there are early signs of trouble. Already, in fact, an exodus of employees is being reported from Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and other financial services companies pursuing similarly inflexible return-to-office policies.
But financial services companies are by no means the only ones whose return-to-office policies may throw a wrench in their recruitment processes. The extent to which employees aren’t just expecting but rather demanding greater flexibility is on display right now elsewhere as well. Take the results of a recently released internal survey of Apple employees, for example, in which a full 90 percent of respondents indicated that flexible work options were important to them. What’s more, 37 percent — or more than a third of Apple’s workforce — expressed concern that they’ll be forced to quit if they aren’t offered flexible work options with the company down the line.
Given that Apple is asking all employees to return to the office three days per week as of early September — and plans to restrict employees to just two weeks of full-time remote work maximum per year — this has all the makings of a major human capital crisis. The far more likely outcome, of course, will be policy revisions to keep more people on board.
Time will tell. But make no mistake, flexibility (or lack thereof) will have a decisive influence on the effectiveness of your organization’s employee recruitment and hiring processes, and whether you can get out ahead of tight hiring timelines, too.
2. health is everything
The latest stats around employee health and wellness are deeply troubling. Take the fact that roughly two in five adults in the U.S. reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder at some point in the pandemic, a rate four times higher than it was the year previous, simply for starters. Small wonder, then, that employee health and wellness would emerge as such a central part of the conversation — McKinsey calls it “the coming revolution” in a recent white paper, for example — about the future of work in our next normal.
Mind you, even if many of the health and safety enhancements that now matter most to talent emerged during the long course of the global pandemic, these go way beyond mental health benefits or considerations around return-to-office safety — mask requirements, elevated temperature detection, onsite cleaning protocols and so on.
Not that these things aren’t important, of course. They are. In fact, workers who don’t feel safe at work due to COVID-19 are more than three times as likely to be exploring opportunities elsewhere than those who do, according to one employee survey.
But the point is, rather, that the conversation itself is changing and expanding. Employee health, safety and wellbeing have become broadly encompassing concepts. And as key selling points in your recruitment process, they now touch on everything from mental health benefits to organizational culture, work-life balance and more.
Viewed in that light, findings from our 2021 Randstad Employer Brand Research — an exhaustive employee survey of 190,000-plus respondents from 34 markets globally — should be top priorities for any organization experiencing talent acquisition or retention pain points today. Take the following, for example:
- Work-life balance was cited by respondents as the second-most-appealing factor about potential employers, trailing only compensation. This appears to be a new development as well, with work-life balance overtaking job security only in the last two years.
- Financial health is the number-one thing employees want across all sectors — and this doesn't just boil down to compensation. Offering benefits or training to support financial planning and management, for example, can be a key differentiator as well.
- Benefits targeting health and wellness (including mental health) are increasingly key. Forty-one percent of workers in Randstad’s next normal survey said their employers began offering new health and wellness-focused benefits during COVID-19, among which mental health assistance ranked in the top five. Given that businesses can expect to receive, on average, just over $4 for every $1 spent on effective mental health initiatives for employees, according to WEF research, there’s a clear business case to be made here as well.
Finally, it’s worth noting that this increasingly expansive sense of what constitutes health, safety and wellbeing in the employer-employee relationship dovetails with the conversation around flexibility in significant ways as well. Recent employee surveys suggest that remote employees are happier and more satisfied with their jobs on average than their onsite counterparts, for example. So for organizations struggling right now to hire and retain high-value talent, flexible work and health and safety offerings may ultimately be, as the song goes, like love and marriage — you can’t have one without the other.
key takeaways: what employees want next in our next normal
To be sure, not everything about our next normal — and the employee recruitment practices we’re seeing now — is new or different. Offering competitive compensation, for example, remains table stakes when it comes to landing top talent, much as it was before.
But as we have seen, employee expectations are changing in decisive ways, as these recruitment tips suggest. Flexibility has become a more effective lure than ever. For 2021, our top recruitment tips would be to prioritize health and safety, as they are now far more broadly encompassing imperatives for companies to deliver on. And while these tips are broadly applicable to organizations of all sizes, they’re a game changer if you’re under-resourced — or, say, an HR department of one.
At this point, only one question remains: Will your organization rise to the occasion?
