The pandemic, and a strong economy, have shifted people’s demands and views about work in potentially lasting ways.
How should leaders respond?
Upon waking in the morning((and making a pit stop at the loo, of course), I head straight for the kitchen to chug a glass of water mixed with green superfood powder, along with a daily synbiotic. From the kitchen, it’s a direct line to the backyard, where I meditate among madrones and succulents for 40 minutes using brainwave entrainment technology, do a series of yogic postures, and then scribble three stream-of-consciousness pages by longhand (a practice many creatives swear by). All the while, the UNFILTERED sunlight exposure is setting my circadian clock, so that I’ll be more alert throughout the day and able to sleep easy come night.
The day starts early, always early.
It's
Burnout. Workers are doing too much and not enough, and everyone is paying the price.
The Problem
This may be the path to
purpose, which elevates both
the individual and the collective.
WHY IT MATTERS
Learn to harness the latest science to optimize the mind
and body in service to the important stuff.
THE SOLUTION
Next is a cup of coffee—the ultimate nootropic—mixed with a blend of functional mushrooms and adaptogens. On weekdays, that’s lion’s mane for focus. If an immunity boost is needed, then Chaga. Weekends, before long runs, Cordyceps is called for. Midmorning is when I’m naturally most focused, so that’s the time I hunker down for the day’s most cognitively grueling tasks, eliminating distractions and never working in chunks longer than around an hour. I frequently walk away from the computer screen to gaze at the horizon (an autonomic-nervous-system regulator) or to move my body (the home office and gym share a space, so I can easily flow from prose to pull-ups). I don’t eat processed sugar or flour and I don’t drink alcohol. Roughly every two months, I take a clinical (as determined by the Johns Hopkins psilocybin studies), ego-dissolving dose of psychedelic mushrooms. Eight to nine hours of sleep every night is nonnegotiable, and my bedroom mimics a cave—dark, cool, quiet. Did I mention I also sleep on a tatami mat to replicate circumstances closer to how humans slumbered for hundreds of thousands of years? Or that I’ve undergone EMDR and hypnotherapy, and most weeks, even in January, I dunk in the northern Pacific Ocean for some cold-AF therapy?
I was born in the mid ’80s, at the height of virtuous selfishness; raised in the ’90s, when self-esteem reigned precious; and came of age in the new millennium as social media made external validation the only kind that matters. I launched my career amid the Great Recession and chased after adulthood from the periphery of Silicon Valley, the birthplace of the gig economy. I am the disillusioned yet still-overstriving by-product of the self-optimization era—and while unrelenting pressure to do and be more has, like a leech, sucked the life from many and caused them to seethe at the term “optimization,” in these practices, or “hacks” as they may be dismissed, I have found liberation.
The Problem
THE SOLUTION
Historically, during job-market upswings, many organizations have used the traditional way to attract or retain employees: throw more money at them. Back in 2010, the Great Recession was over and companies were again competing for top talent in a growing economy. Salaries were rising at about a 3 percent annual clip. At that time, the money-first strategy was usually enough. Multiple surveys show that as recently as 2016, the top reason candidates chose one job over another was the salary and benefits package; anything else hardly registered. Which is why 6 percent of organizations intended to implement flexible work schedules or encourage remote working, according to a study done at the time by the Society for Human Resource Management.
This time around, experts say something is different. Sure, companies are using money as a lure. This spring alone, Bank of America, Amazon, McDonald’s, Walmart, JPMorgan Chase, and a host of other big names announced pay increases, signing bonuses, or both. More money is a point of negotiation, say multiple talent professionals. But a LinkedIn periodical survey of about 5,000 users indicates job preferences began to shift this spring. A full 50 percent of respondents said that flexibility of hours or location has become more important than before, a trend that held firm regardless of age or experience level, says George Anders, a senior editor at large at LinkedIn. “A few years ago, flexibility wasn’t even on the map,” he says.
For most people, that flexibility centers on working from home, part or all of the time—something that became ingrained among workers during months of lockdowns. According to a spring survey from the financial firm Prudential, 49 percent of people said they were saving money by working remotely, 46 percent said they were saving time because they didn’t have to commute, and 34 percent said remote work improved their health.
Unlike in previous job-market upturns, workers today are demanding considerably more than just better money and health insurance. The pros and cons, from the organization’s perspective:
Written by Meghan walsh
illustrations by alex wells
WHY IT MATTERS
What workers
want
Service companies have little financial flexibility when
payrolls exceed 50 percent of sales (30 percent for
manufacturing industries).
Happier employees;
potentially easier to find talent
to fill roles.
Demand 1
Pros
cons
Higher wages
Vocal Stances on Social Issues
Can alienate workers and customers who don’t have the same perspective.
Increases engagement of existing employees and is attractive to potential new hires.
Demand 2
More-Defined
Career Paths
Role mapping involves considerable time and effort by the company.
Potentially increases employee retention; gives candidates confidence they
can grow.
Demand 3
Hybrid Work
Schedules
Potentially disrupts corporate culture and productivity, if handled poorly.
The top priority for many employees, in particular those with children.
Demand 4
Remote Full-Time
Difficult, often-overlooked differences between managing on-site and remote workforces; many bosses don’t want it, either—84 percent say they want employees back in the office.
Increases potential talent pool across geographic regions.
Demand 5
More Paid Time Off
US employees, on average, don’t use 27 percent of their vacation days; could create a large cash liability when employees quit.
Employees may appreciate an extra day off to handle personal matters or extend vacations.
Demand 6
Work Four Days
a Week
Can be a costly scheduling nightmare; customers and suppliers don’t work four-day weeks.
Early research shows that four-day workweeks can improve productivity by 20 percent and lower worker stress levels.
Demand 7
Time devoted to “meaningful” work could mean less time devoted to other “essential” work that the organization needs done.
More challenging, meaningful work can help increase employee engagement, and engaged employees are more productive.
Demand 8
More Meaningful
Work
More Training
Can get expensive: it costs $25,000 on average to reskill a US employee,
not including
mistakes and lower productivity as they ramp into new roles.
Makes employees feel valued by their organization; gives both worker and employer more flexibility.
Demand 9
Could be very costly; 44 percent of older millennials already have a chronic healthcare condition.
Employees often will accept a lower salary if they perceive that healthcare benefits are superior to those at competing firms.
Demand 10
Improved
Medical Benefits
of course, as do employee demands. Indeed, the last 14 months may be the fastest, broadest swing ever in the US job market’s history. In late 2019, Liz Dente, the chief human resources officer at Priceline, created a presentation for her talent managers highlighting how the nation’s unemployment rate—3.6 percent at the time—was near a 50-year low. The team would have to adjust its offer tactics. In spring 2020, with COVID-19 just hitting, she had to prepare a new one, reflecting the massive state of unemployment. Now all that has boomeranged, with companies hiring more than 18 million people early in the year, and Dente’s presentation has changed again to one that’s close to what she used in 2019.
Job markets ebb and flow,
Beckie Schuerenberg, a content marketer, for example, says she was OK with her role back in 2019, including her daily commute from her suburban home to downtown Chicago. The pandemic forced her to work from home, but it also gave her a chance to spend more time with her children. She began to see how much she was losing by going to an office every day. When she started looking for a new job in 2021, she rebuffed any offer that didn’t grant at least some work time at home. “I was willing to do some travel but not going in every week,” says Schuerenberg, who finally landed a role working primarily from home. “I have other priorities.”
To ignore what has happened over the last 14 months
would not be smart.
There are also a host of liabilities associated with taking on causes, whether political or environmental. Still, it may be hard to ignore. Some 70 percent of workers in a study by the research firm Gartner said they’d consider quitting their companies in favor of working for an organization with a stronger viewpoint on social issues that matter to them—a remarkably high number that has caught many corporate chiefs off guard. Much of this, experts say, is another sign of the times: workers who want more value from work want to be at companies with purposes more aligned with their own. “For large swaths of populations, having a voice on issues is going to be huge,” says Stephanie Lilak, Dunkin’s chief human resources officer.
Her firm has handled this part by opening more dialogue with employees—bringing them in on how the C-suite is thinking. Since the pandemic started, Dunkin has been holding virtual town halls every six weeks, encouraging any employee to submit questions to top executives. “Even if the employees don’t like the answers, they do like that they are being heard,” Lilak says. Leaders, meanwhile, say that more two-way communication has been one of the most critical lessons to come out of the pandemic. It’s how companies can determine their workforce’s top priorities, make adjustments, and help both employees and employer come out ahead.
Flexibility remains the order of the day at many organizations. The pandemic revealed myriad opportunities and challenges that employees or bosses had never envisioned. “To ignore what has happened over the last 14 months would not be smart,” says Rodney Scaife, chief human resources officer at the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Over at Boeing, Barr says the firm’s willingness to let workers work remotely or at least in other Boeing offices has become a serious recruiting tool against rival employers. “For certain roles, a lack of flexibility can impact employment brand,” she says.
can be a difficult calculation. Offering remote work can dramatically increase the size of the talent pool from a geographic perspective, yet the pandemic also revealed at many firms that managers didn’t know how to track productivity or motivate employees well through Zoom. Some firms have added more paid days off to give people more family or personal time, but that can add to already-mounting financial liability, since even before the pandemic, US employees were leaving 27 percent of their time off each year unused.
how companies address such needs
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i quit
by the numbers
Experts have said employees are in a historically strong position—at least for now. Here are some figures:
Percentage of Americans who quit their jobs in April, the highest level since at least 2000
2.5 million
Number of LinkedIn users who expressly say “open to work” on their profile
Unemployment rate in May, the lowest since before the pandemic
million
Number of job openings in the US this spring, an all-time high
Minimum average compensation a worker with a college degree requires, $5,000 higher than in March 2020
Share of the US workforce actively engaged in a job search, up from 17.8% in November 2020
Annual percentage
increase of paid job
postings on LinkedIn
that offer “remote work”
Percentage of the global workforce likely to consider
leaving their
job in the next 12 months, according to an April survey by Microsoft
86,460
$
How much bolder employees will get is anyone’s guess. Any shift in the economy or inflation could take away much of their upper hand. But experts say that whatever the demands, organizations may be able to turn them into an opportunity for all sides. Yes, firms may need to teach executives how to better manage people who aren’t going to be working in the same place at the same time—but learning how to better engage staff while also upping their skill sets can also unite management and talent for similar goals. Klotz sees it fairly simply: “Organizations need to apply as much innovation to the issue of worker retention as they do to their own business.”
For their part, most CEOs are not fans of those priorities, worrying that productivity and even hustle fade outside the office setting. At last count, more than 80 percent of CEOs wanted employees back in the office, when only about one in 10 workers saw it that way. But employees noting the record number of job openings in the US—9.3 million at last count—seem empowered enough at the moment. According to one survey, a third of them were turning down jobs that didn’t offer more flexibility to work at home. “These epiphanies of employees could lead to a Great Resignation,” says Anthony Klotz, an assistant professor of management at Texas A&M University. He and others say there’s already a catchy term for it: the Turnover Tsunami.
Some experts say they see an evolution going on here. Recent years have seen more discussions, particularly among millennials, about better work-life balance. The desire brewed below the surface, then bubbled over in the age of lockdowns, when workers of all ages and job roles saw what they could do—and had been missing—at home. Wanting remote or hybrid work is part of that new view, experts say. When you are willing to give some of your personal time, the thinking goes, you also want your employer to offer more defined career paths, greater skill training, and stronger mentoring. “We’ve all had a chance to find purpose and meaning, and I’ve heard lots of anecdotal evidence that for many people, that purpose and meaning was not coming from their jobs,” says Klotz.
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2.5 million
and the clock is ticking for Ron Phillips. He has been chief human resources officer for Sysco, the giant food-service firm, for only about a month. The Houston-based company recently told employees its philosophy on remote work after the pandemic ends (the short version: about two-thirds of the workforce should be back to work at the cafeterias, warehouses, or corporate offices full-time). Some employees disagree with the firm’s stance, but Phillips doesn’t know how far that might go. “I’d love to know if I have to ring a bell and say, ‘Oh my god, I’m going to lose 15 percent of my workforce,’” he says.
mid-june
It's
Elizabeth Norberg is under some pressure too. As CHRO of Foot Locker, she understands that employees want to hear more about the sizable commitment to racial justice that the firm made last year. “They want to know about our progress and what’s next,” she says. She believes that employees who are unhappy with the company’s answer will start taking recruiters’ calls.
And then there’s Diana Barr, who as head of global executive staffing for Boeing is trying to fill numerous management roles across the world. She has plenty of candidates, but many are hesitant about relocating. Others want to be able to work at least part of the time outside the office or factory. They also want answers about Boeing’s strategy to become more inclusive and how the company engages with the communities in which it does business. Pay and title still remain important, too. “Candidates only want to make moves that are progressive,” she says.
Companies are used to bargaining with workers and potential recruits, though it’s usually focused on money, vacation time, and health insurance plans. Here or there, an individual employee might have haggled for some other smaller perks. Flash to 2021, however, and experts say everyone from entry-level recruits to the most senior executives are becoming emboldened in ways few can remember. Based on the kinds of demands being made and how they’re being made, HR experts believe that the value proposition people have regarding work is significantly shifting—a transformation that started during the pandemic but could extend for generations. “The pandemic caused a moment of self-reflection,” says Mark Royal, a senior director for Korn Ferry Advisory. “People started asking themselves, ‘How do I feel about what I’m doing?’”
The biggest topic, naturally, is whether organizations will offer remote or at least hybrid work, an increasingly common ask among employees in nearly every field. But experts say a growing number of people want more value out of their work life, with roles that are financially rewarding and much more defined career paths. They want challenging assignments and more training. And to a surprising degree, they want to be certain the company’s views on social and environmental issues are aligned with their own.
To be sure, many people are still just happy to have a job or get an offer. Yet workers also know that today’s economic and job-market conditions may be creating a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make demands, at least in some sectors. At the most recent count, US companies alone were scrambling to fill more than 9 million job openings. As other parts of the world come out of the pandemic, their openings will balloon as well. Organizations have a delicate balancing act—they’ll lose business without enough hiring, but conceding to too many demands could cripple their business plans. Some leaders feel they have no choice but to hold the line and say no.
It’s a stare-down that’s coming to a head very soon. Many organizations have targeted September as the time to fully reopen their offices. While decisions about facilities have been made, many critical decisions about remote work, salary changes, and even commitments to social issues are still up in the air. With every passing day come growing risks, and HR is typically in the middle of it all, fully aware of the stakes. “If you haven’t landed on some policy that is flexible to [employees], they’re moving on,” says Caron Cone, ADP’s division vice president for human resources. “They’re not patient.”
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The pandemic, and a strong economy, have shifted people’s demands and views about work in potentially lasting ways.
How should leaders respond?
The Problem
The Problem
As the economy rebounds, employers are racing to hire but face a workforce that has dramatically redefined its needs.
WHY IT MATTERS
WHY IT MATTERS
Organizations could miss out on key growth opportunities or worse, if they aren’t fully staffed or don’t have the best talent.
THE SOLUTION
THE SOLUTION
Create more flexible jobs
and address employee goals—
without jeopardizing the
firm’s primary strategy and
post-pandemic goals.
By Russell Pearlman