Employees and job hunters want flexibility. Here’s how to get it right in 2023

The focus on flexibility and work-life balance, particularly in industries and roles for which hybrid work is a possibility, is well underway. Business leaders cannot afford to ignore the trend, as it has become a major focus for job hunters, particularly those in younger generations.

Jacky Magid, co-owner and head of sales, marketing and product innovation at Charlie’s Fine Food Co, described it as a “change in mentality”. During the early days of the pandemic, when jobs were threatened, employees felt very grateful for the security their positions offered.

Today, when recruiting, the conversation is often “These are my terms; as an employee, this is what I’m wanting to do, this is how I want to live my life now; I’ve really liked hybrid working, or, I’ve really liked staying at home for my family and being there for my kids.”

“It’s all great,” Magid said. “But the balance of power has really changed.”

Robert Wilkinson, chief experience officer at OfficeMaps, agreed about the shift, and said younger workers in particular have this “requirement that work is set up around them rather than the other way around”.

Wilkinson urged all employers to take these flexibility calls seriously, as they’re coming in stronger from the millennial and generation Z population. According to Deloitte, this cohort will make up 75% of the global workforce by 2025, and generation Z will soon surpass millennials as the most populous generation on earth.

“A lot of older workers who are managers don’t quite realise how prevalent the gen Zs and millennials are these days,” Wilkinson said.

Outside of the pandemic, it has been the younger workers who’ve really led the demand for hybrid work. 

“When you take out COVID-19, in a lot of cases it’s driven by those millennials and those gen Zs, I guess. That’s what they want to do, they want work to work for them, and that’s the primary thing that they’re looking for when they go for a job these days — the ability to be flexible rather than have rigid times and places.”

In an Employment Hero study from late last year, 50% of hybrid and remote workers said they’d quit their jobs if their management opted for a full-time return to the office. That number increased to 61% for millennials. 

Getting flexibility right

There is much for business leaders to take into consideration, although, after three years of the pandemic, many have settled into their working-from-home policies, satisfied to make minor tweaks. As a society, too, there are implications of hybrid work that emerged that will continue to take long-term effects. Take the uneven burden it places on women, who continue to shoulder the majority of household and childcare labour, which is set to have a knock-on effect on economic participation. 

Wilkinson said, of the brands his firm has worked with, the ones who’ve done the best job of riding the hybrid work wave successfully — getting the most out of office assets, productivity and people — are the ones who “looked at what work looked like in the future, rather than what the [office] building looked like in the future”.

“When it comes to flexibility, we’re still talking about the same things, you know it’s still the time and place questions that employees have, but it’s more of a ‘where do we end up on the spectrum of what that looks like?’”

For Cayla Dengate, a careers expert at LinkedIn, getting it right comes down to communication.

“For business owners, the first thing to do is to talk to your teams, because everyone’s different, everybody’s idea of flexibility is different, and there might be ways that you can maintain productivity but provide that flexibility to employees who really need it to make that work-life balance work for them.”

In a recent LinkedIn survey, 59% of participants said they are considering a switch from their current job in 2023. A better work-life balance was second to only a higher pay packet as the top item on their list when searching for new opportunities.

“Your employee needs to feel like they can come to their boss with a plan for flexible arrangements and be heard,” Dengate said.

“It’s about communication, it’s about an employee understanding what’s possible, and what’s feasible, and feeling that they’re being heard and that their employer is invested in making sure that their work hours, their workplace, is all going to make their life work as well.”

Another trend gaining traction last year was the four-day work week, with a number of businesses small and large kicking off trials with the support of keen employees.

“We’re hearing a lot about how they can be effective for some companies and how trials are having really high success rates. So for business owners, thinking about how they can keep their best talent, that’s definitely something to explore,” said Dengate.

Of course, in the SME world, working from home and four-day work weeks aren’t always on the cards for a range of businesses. How can these ensure workers’ wants and needs are being heard?

Over at Charlie’s Fine Food Co, where plenty of the workforce is made up of younger workers and local and international students, Magid said: “It has to be more than money. It has to be. And I think it has to be almost more than working conditions too.

“Certainly for a baking team, we can’t offer them hybrid working or anything like that, so it has to be that it’s a fun place to work. They’re going to spend a hell of a lot of time there, so we invest in them, we train them, we have fun on the bakery floor with them, we work hard together as a team to support one another, so that 40 hours a week, or whatever hours they’re doing, is an enjoyable time.”

This article was part of a feature series on workplace and employment trends to support our Smart50 Workplaces program, developed in partnership with Employment Hero.

Download the ‘What are great employers doing differently in 2023?’ report to look at current trends in the employment landscape and best practices from Smart50 Workplaces Top Performers.