Winning the war for talent in the post-pandemic world

SAN FRANCISCO, 17th June 2021 – The Future Forum, a consortium launched by Slack Technologies, Inc., (NYSE: WORK) to help companies reimagine work in the new digital-first workplace, is releasing a new global study that unpacks how 15 months of pandemic work has shifted employee expectations. The Future Forum Pulse shows that flexibility now ranks second only to compensation in determining job satisfaction: 93% of knowledge workers want a flexible schedule, while 76% want flexibility in where they work.

And employers should take note: one in five (21%) knowledge workers is likely to jump to a new company in the next year, and more than half (56%) are open to looking for a new position.

The Future Forum Pulse is based on data from more than 10,000 knowledge workers in the US, Australia, Germany, Japan, France and the UK. In addition to the research report, the Future Forum is also releasing three playbooks developed with Herman Miller, BCG and MLT in consultation with a network of C-suite executives from companies as diverse as Chobani, Levi’s and the Royal Bank of Canada.

The research and the playbooks paint a picture of flexible work that is more nuanced than the choice between office-based or remote work. Instead, flexibility is shown to require a new working model that delivers always-on access to information, creates channels for consistent communication and carves out predictable working rhythms – without having to revert to an office-based nine-to-five schedule.

Here are three key insights from the Future Forum Pulse:

1. Flexible working hours are more important than flexible locations.

Flexible work, in all its forms, has become a default expectation for knowledge workers. Ninety-three per cent want flexibility in when they work, while 76% want flexibility in where they work.

Location flexibility has a significant impact on knowledge workers’ ability to manage stress (58% higher for those working fully remotely), their work-life balance (45% higher) and their overall satisfaction at work (30% higher).

But schedule flexibility has an even more dramatic impact: employees are more productive and significantly less stressed – and they even report being better connected to the people and information that they need to get the job done (see the chart below for detailed numbers).

But flexibility has its limits. Knowledge workers still want some structure in their workday. Two thirds (65.6%) want a balance between full flexibility and a predictable framework. Typically, this consists of a limited set of core team hours (e.g. 10:00–14:00) for meetings and quick responses, while allowing for individual flexibility the rest of the day.

2. The office has a role to play, but digital infrastructure is the big differentiator.

In the pre-pandemic era, leading-edge companies spent vast sums on offices in prime locations and campuses with elaborate perks. In the post-pandemic era, that same investment should be rerouted to digital infrastructure.

Fewer than 20% say that they see the office as a place for focused, solo work. Instead, more than 80% of knowledge workers say that they want access to an office for in-person collaboration and team building – activities such as collaborating with colleagues and clients (32.9%), attending in-person meetings (19.9%) and building camaraderie (25.2%).

If offices are primarily for in-person collaboration and team building, then digital channels are where work happens. Companies that make the required investments in new digital infrastructure see dramatic improvements, compared to those relying on legacy systems. This shows up not only in expected areas such as productivity (+54%) but also in the sense of belonging (over 2x) and ability to manage stress and anxiety (over 5x).

The Future Forum Pulse also shows that the frequency of communication within teams has a major impact on employee satisfaction. Knowledge workers who use digital infrastructure to communicate multiple times per day score significantly better than those who rarely communicate: they have nearly three times the sense of belonging and over twice the ability to manage stress and anxiety.

3. Flexible work is a game changer for working mothers and Black knowledge workers.

In the US, working mothers have carried a disproportionate burden through the pandemic, with half a million more women leaving the labour force than men. Even though women were working from home, the pandemic put a spotlight on the rigidity of work schedules, which led to unprecedented burnout and attrition. The Pulse shows this in stark detail: women with children score lower than men with children across each element of the Pulse, including work-life balance (-38%), ability to manage stress (-50%) and sense of belonging (-23%).

Flexible working models are a potential game changer. Women with children say that the number one benefit of a flexible schedule is ‘being better able to take care of personal or family obligations during the day’ (men with children rate ‘better work-life balance’ as the key benefit). Normalising and encouraging flexibility for all employees is one of the keys to reversing these numbers.

Black knowledge workers also have lower satisfaction scores across the board. They have consistently lower satisfaction with their relationships at work, are less likely to believe that they are treated fairly at work, and are more likely to believe that they need to justify their work to their manager. Not surprisingly, Black employees are even more likely to be looking for new opportunities in the coming year: 72% of Black employees compared to 51% of white employees.

Flexible work opens the door to reversing these trends. Black knowledge workers are more likely to say that working remotely is better for their sense of belonging than to say that it’s worse, while the opposite is true for white knowledge workers. Sixty-eight per cent of Black knowledge workers want flexible work policies, compared to 56% of their white counterparts.

For companies seeking to improve diversity, geographic distribution matters: about 60 per cent of the Black labour force is located in the US South, compared with only one third of private sector jobs. Building diverse and inclusive teams is only possible when companies embrace the real flexibility that creates equitable access to opportunity.

Winning the war for talent depends on asking three big questions

1. How do we offer flexibility as a basic benefit? Giving employees flexibility in when and where they work is not a perk – it’s a core principle of how a modern company operates.
2. How do we reimagine our infrastructure to create connection? It’s no longer just about office space. It’s about the digital centre of gravity where work gets done.
3. How do we reskill our managers to ensure that diversity, equity and inclusion are a core competency? This is a vital step towards ensuring that companies have the ability to attract and retain the best, most diverse talent available.

The specific answers will look different for each industry and each company. Winning the war for talent depends on accepting that there is no going back to the pre-pandemic world of work. Attracting and retaining the best talent depends on moving forwards.

Additional content:
Read the full Future Forum Pulse white paper.

Read the new Future Forum playbooks:

• More than just hybrid: a how-to guide for leaders on how to really make flexibility work, co-authored with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
• Building a Connected Organization, co-authored with Herman Miller
• Moving from retrofit to redesign on diversity, equity and inclusion: a how-to guide for leaders, co-authored with Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT)

Methodology

Survey of 10,447 knowledge workers in the USA, Australia, France, Germany, Japan and the UK conducted by Qualtrics 26th April to 6th May 2021. Respondents were all knowledge workers, defined as employed full-time (30 or more hours per week) and either having one of the roles listed below or saying that they ‘work with data, analyse information or think creatively’: Executive management (e.g. president/partner, CEO, CFO, C-suite), senior management (e.g. executive VP, senior VP), middle management (e.g. department/group manager, VP), junior management (e.g. manager, team leader), senior staff (i.e. non-management), skilled office worker (e.g. analyst, graphic designer).

The Future Forum Pulse measures how knowledge workers feel about their working lives, on a five-point scale (from ‘very poor’ to ‘very good’), across seven dimensions on a scale from -60 (most negative) to +60 (most positive).

Contact:

Steve Sharpe
pr@slack.com