Compliance Pressures HR as Remote & Hybrid Work Spread Out Employees

Hybrid Work

Seventy-percent (70%) of Human Resources professionals say the difficulty of complying with state and local laws has increased markedly as their companies hire more workers from more states. An increasing number of employers are hiring across wider geographies as they wrestle with increased demands for remote, hybrid, flexible and non-standard work arrangements following the Covid-19 pandemic.

In addition, 30% of the HR professionals who reported rising complexity agreed that the difficulty of compliance has increased “substantially,” found a study conducted by cloud-based payroll firm Gusto. 

#HR professionals say the difficulty of complying with local laws has increased as they hire more workers from more states. #HRTech @GustoHQ Click To Tweet

Gusto surveyed over 800 HR administrators of companies with between 10-50 employees from the roughly 200,0000 businesses on its platform. The research found that “a company with 25-49 workers is 1.5x more likely to have workers spread across 4-10 states, and 7.3x more likely to have workers in 10 or more states.”

“These changes increase the workload of HR practitioners due to the complexity of managing the many nuances of compliance and employment regulations for different states and workers’ schedules,”  said Liz Wilke, Gusto’s principal economist.

The remote-hybrid shift has also affected top-priority HR functions such as building a good culture to managing day-to-day administrative tasks. “HR practitioners know that building culture and managing day-to day processes are among the most valuable skills they offer to their businesses,” said Wilke.

“However, delivering on this value has become more complex as the shift toward flexible working arrangements, including remote and hybrid work, requires an increased focus from HR leaders on facilitating engagement, commitment and retention among workers.”

Flexibility or Nothing

On top of all that, Gusto found that flexibility has become the top consideration for candidates when they’re deciding whether to accept or decline a job offer. That indicates that flexibility has outranked pay and career development as critical factors in accepting or rejecting  an employment offer. Of workers who declined their last offer, 45% said flexibility or work-life balance was the most important factor in their decision-making,” Wilke said.

In addition, nearly half of workers, 48%, said the ability to work from home at least some of the time would be a major — if not the most important — factor in determining whether to accept a job offer down the road.

Larger Labor Market

Offering remote or hybrid work affords employers access to a larger labor pool, and, thus more opportunity to get high-quality candidates for their available positions.

In other words, there’s a significant opportunity for companies to optimize their talent attraction strategies by actively targeting candidates outside of their local region. nearly 65% of the companies offering both remote and hybrid arrangements actively sourced candidates outside of their local area. That share grew to 86% for remote-only employers, Wilke said.  

In addition, flexible and non-standard working schedules help to increase performance and produce less turnover. “Thirty-four percent of companies that provide remote and hybrid workplaces said the skills and experience of new hires has improved, and 27% reported that productivity of staff increased as a result,” Wilke said.

“Companies that offer remote work are also seeing benefits in reduced employee turnover,” she added.

iMage: iStock

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