Podcast: We Love Our Jobs. But Let’s Not Rush Back to Work

Covid Office

Transcript

Welcome to PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. I’m Mark Feffer.

This week’s podcast is brought to you by Criteria. Finding and retaining great talent is a challenge – and Criteria can help. Their assessments help you make better talent decisions, by identifying high-potential candidates. Criteria’s designed and validated their assessments to predict job performance by objectively evaluating skills and abilities that lead to success. And then they go further, highlighting high-potential candidates who may have been overlooked based on experience alone.

The result? Increased revenue, reduced turnover, and raised quality of hire across the board.

Learn more. Visit www.criteriacorp.com. That’s www.criteriacorp.com.

There’s a new survey out that says job satisfaction in America is back to where it was before Covid-19. Remote work, flexible schedules, greater autonomy and not dealing with a commute are all playing a part. People seem to like the situation enough that even the rollout of coronavirus vaccines isn’t enough to pull most people back to the office five days a week. In fact, some employees say that’d look for a new job if they had to go back to some kind of workspace.

Podcast: We Love Our Jobs. But Let's Not Rush Back to Work. #HR #HRTech @hibob_hr Click To Tweet

The survey’s from workforce-management platform Hibob. It found some definite signs that job satisfaction is tied to flexible work. For example: Some 62% of individual contributors, 66% of middle managers and 79% of senior managers say they’re highly satisfied with work. Those aren’t dramatically different than they were before Covid. 

Meantime, only 10% of employees want to go back to the office full-time. Most people seem to like the idea of working two or three days in the office, the rest of the time at home.

This is all causing a rethink about the whole point of the office. The study said offices are evolving from everyday work spaces to places designated for socialization, collaboration and company culture. In-office time could become more about meetings and onboarding than heads-down worktime.

And, indeed, nearly a third of individuals said socialization’s the most important purpose of the office now. More than a third of managers said it was collaboration.

Either way, flexibility seems to play a prominent role in people’s thinking. Hibob says employees have established a strong rhythm with hybrid work, and they’re not going to rush back to the workplace five days a ways just because they got vaccinated. 

And this talk of socializing seems to be about staying connected with others, face to face. Clockwise, a company that develops scheduling software, says that since the pandemic began, people spend 25% more time in team meetings.

Hibob’s results aren’t necessarily earth-shattering. There’s been a lot of research that’s found employees like the hybrid-work approach and that business leaders see it as workable. The number of employers who feel good about remote work increased 10 points between June 2020 and January 2021, according to PwC. And more employees say they’re more productive now than they were before the pandemic, the firm said.

And this has been PeopleTech, the podcast of the HCM Technology Report. A publication of RecruitingDaily. We’re also a member of Evergreen Podcasts. You can check out other shows at www.evergreenpodcasts.com.

This edition has been brought to you by Criteria. Resumes and interviews aren’t good at predicting job success, and they lead to bias that gets in the way of hiring a diverse, high-performing team. Criteria has designed and validated their assessments to predict job performance by objectively evaluating the skills and abilities that lead to success. And, they’ll highlight potential candidates who may have been overlooked based on experience alone. The result? Increased revenue, reduced employee turnover, and improved quality of hire across the board.

Visit criteriacorp.com to see how Criteria can help you unlock the potential in your candidate pool.

And to keep up with HR technology, visit the HCM Technology Report every day. We’re the most trusted source of news in the HR tech industry. Find us at www-dot-hcm-technology-report-dot-com.

I’m Mark Feffer.

Image: iStock

Previous articleAlight’s New Platform Focused on Data, Personalization
Next articleRoundup: Workday Extends App Capabilities; ZipRecruiter Pushes Urgency