As gap between employees and leadership widens, new research reveals success factors, including return to office
Research from leading flexible work strategist and futurist Cali Williams Yost and her firm Flex+Strategy Group (FSG) signals a widening gap between employee and leadership perceptions about flexible work and performance, including what's happening when employees are onsite.
"This research provides a unique longitudinal pre- and post-pandemic lens into the employee experience and perspective," says Yost. "While employees and leaders continue to clash about where, when and how we do our best work, our findings reveal the factors that bring organizations together to drive flexible work success."
The online survey conducted in June 2023 for FSG by Big Village, an independent research firm, yielded several key findings, including:
- Even though many employees have more work life flexibility than before the pandemic, a majority say they still do most of their work onsite at their employer's location.
- Most of these employees spend the same amount or even more time interacting/working with colleagues when onsite than before the pandemic.
- Regardless of where work is done, training and guidance are significant drivers for flexible work success, including increased communication, productivity and engagement.
- But a lack of training and guidance, along with the perception that work life flexibility is a policy or perk rather than a business strategy, remain impediments to high performance flexibility.
- Despite economic uncertainty and layoffs in certain sectors, most workers are more likely to pursue flexibility or plan no change from their current approach and believe their employers will continue to offer the same amount or even more flexibility.
When thinking about the use of flexibility in where, when, and how they work offered by their employers, the report shows nearly half of flexible workers (49 percent) still see flexibility primarily as a human resources policy or perk, rather than a business operations strategy. Of interest, a higher number of employees who view the flexibility offered by their employers as an operations strategy received training (53 percent) compared to those who still view it as a perk or benefit (47 percent). There was a notable difference between the percentage of flexibility as an ‘operations strategy’ (47 percent) and the flexibility as a ‘perk’ (37 percent) groups who reported being ‘very satisfied’ with their flexibility. A higher number of the ‘operations strategy’ employees (77 percent) also reported feeling more productive and engaged compared to the ‘perk’ segment (72 percent).
"We are all, to varying degrees, flexible workers now. While the pandemic greatly accelerated the level of flexibility that was already well underway, the crisis-driven nature of that shift was not strategic or sustainable," explains Yost. "Now is the time to move past entrenched beliefs and together reimagine the future of work. Organizations need to view flexibility as the way everyone works and how we all can succeed."
For more information on the report, visit Flex+Strategy Group.
