Member Article

New YouGov report shows that two-thirds of Brits want remote working to continue post-lockdown.

Research itemises the UK’s new working priorities.

YouGov and Vestd have published a brand new report identifying the desires of British job seekers in 2021.

Researchers from YouGov interviewed thousands of participants, all employed in diverse sectors from across the UK, to find out which working benefits now matter the most.

Those that took part were given a choice of different factors that would appeal to them if comparing two jobs against each other. Options included the availability of mentor programmes, digital HR platforms and office perks such as games rooms and sleeping pods.

Subjects were asked to choose as many as were applicable to them.

The nation’s top three.

The top three national averages were:

• 1. The ability to work remotely or flexibly. (66%)
• 1. Shares/Options in the company. (26%)
• 1. Mentor programme and free lunches. (24%)

Clearly, remote working is now a fundamental work perk for an enormous amount of people. And in some regions, this figure was even higher with 73% of Londoners and 74% of those in the North East stating that remote and flexible working would make them choose one job over another.

Responding to the data.

At the time of writing, fifteen million Brits have been vaccinated, leading to optimism from Westminster that the national lockdown could soon be relaxed.

Given the results of this survey, it might be wise not to rush back to ‘how things were’. If your company can offer permanent working from home, or increased flexibility going forwards, you could gain the competitive edge on other employers in your area.

How to introduce permanent flexibility.

Some roles, such as face-to-face sales or manufacturing, demand that workers are based within a retail environment or factory. But many positions have the potential to be based remotely.

Think about what elements of your workforce could conceivably work remotely and invite those segments to apply for home-working through your HR department.

Your HR department can then support your employees to create a safe and dedicated space for their work. Your company can also help team members to establish a routine and communication habits that will keep them connected to the team.

If your company has been forced into working from home during the pandemic, it might be wise to consider at this point what has worked and what hasn’t.

Do you feel that team members communicate enough, or has there been information overload? What policies or tools can you put in place to make your permanent arrangements as productive as possible? Could you introduce Slack as the company’s noticeboard or is Whatsapp and email serving all of your communication needs? Now’s the time to think these questions through.

Second place - shares in the company.

‘Shares in the company’ took the second highest amount of votes in the poll, and is therefore something for all companies to consider if they want to beat the hiring competition.

According to the Employee Ownership Association (EOA), by introducing a share scheme, you’ll be better placed to retain your talent and attract new blood. And by giving everybody skin in the game, you’ll be able to light a fire underneath your workforce.

By using digital share platforms like Vestd, you can remove all of the complexity and expense out of setting up your scheme, meaning that introducing this benefit will be almost hassle-free for your organisation to introduce.

Joined third place.

Does your company offer a mentor scheme and/or free lunches? If not, you can achieve some quick wellbeing wins by introducing them.

Both options drew 24% of the YouGov vote, demonstrating their importance to British workers.

Offering a mentoring programme allows skills to be more rapidly shared throughout levels of your company. Mentoring can also foster greater team cohesiveness and better confidence levels for new joiners. For more information about how to set a programme up, CIPD.co.uk has lots of great, free advice.

Free lunches.

Given that we are in the era of the remote worker, it’s somewhat surprising to see that 24% of people would consider free lunches as a deciding factor when weighing one job against another.

If you are looking to encourage workers back to the office, it might be a good idea to introduce a free lunch programme to gauge the level of interest. But even if the majority of your workforce would prefer to continue working remotely, you could think about offering lunch vouchers for a day or two per week.

The relatively small expenditure could be valuable in enabling team members to feel valued and rewarded.

Conclusions.

The British workforce has spoken and it’s clear that the vast majority of people have found working from home to be a great experience. Working from home provides an excellent work/life balance and enables people to set their own schedule, emancipating team members from the ball and chain of the traditional 9-5.

If there’s one take-home to take heed of from this study, it’s that working remotely really is something that every organisation should offer if possible.

By not offering flexible working as a benefit, you could be limiting your recruitment to an extremely limited pool of job seekers.

Covid19 has accelerated company adoption of home working practices but as we (hopefully) move towards a post-lockdown workplace, it’s crucial that you consider your organisation’s line on flexibility.

Remote working is now firmly part of the modern British worker’s psyche and as such, needs to be a serious part of any decent set of employee benefits too.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Jemma L King .