Flexible working continues to evolve and hybrid appears to be emerging as king. Wave’s Emily Buckley looks at the flexible working journey, how it affects candidate attraction and retention, and what the future is for the way we work.
Prior to the pandemic, flexible working was fairly rare outside part-time or job share roles and even they tended to be requested by employees rather than advertised. As for working in a location other than your place of work, that was incredibly rare. The enforced changes to how and where we worked during the pandemic changed the attitudes of both employees and employers and since then it’s been a journey of discovery for everyone. Flexible working in some form has become almost expected but what that looks like has been constantly in flux – and is likely to stay in flux for some time to come. What does seem to be taking root long-term is hybrid working – and it’s reshaping the world of work.
The pandemic-induced rise of flexible working
In the pre-pandemic years of 2018 and 2019, flexible working was like gold dust. Wave data, taken from its Q4 2023 Recruitment Trends Report: The impact of flexible working on recruitment, shows that the percentage of jobs advertising flexible working terms totalled just 1% in each year. Skip to 2020 and the number increases to 3.1%, tripling its figures in just a year. When the stay at home mandate ended, working from home did not. Many had become used to the greater balance it brought to their lives, ridding them of the 5 day a week commute, freeing up time for hobbies or family, and saving money on travel expenses. Some even relocated when the need to be close to their place of work vanished. They didn’t want to return to the 9 to 5, 5 days a week in the office. The pandemic had shown it was completely possible to work from home at least part of the time, especially as it forced organisations to put the technology and policies in place that were needed to enable it.
So, although in 2021 we were beginning to climb our way out of the pandemic and many pondered whether we would return to our offices, jobs advertising flexible working continued to grow – and the pace of growth doubled. They rose to 6.1% in 2021 and in 2022 they peaked at 7.5%, a significant rise from the 1% share they had in 2018 and 2019. Flexible working was on a huge growth curve, driven largely by the fact that jobs were through the roof and applications were relatively low. The ball was firmly in the candidate’s court and employers were very aware of that. Competition for skilled candidates in the majority of industries was fierce and offering flexible working could give you an advantage in the race to hire.
2023: the year of the flexible working U-turn
However, cut to 2023 and that growth reverses. Jobs advertising flexible working drop to 5.4%, the lowest they’ve been since 2022. Many companies have been either ditching hybrid altogether or mandating two, three or four days in the office. Apple is still running a pilot which requires its employees to work three days a week in the office, Zoom surprised many by reversing their remote work policy and enforcing a two day in the office policy, Disney implemented a four day in-office policy in 2023, and Nike is doing the same in 2024. It seemed like every other week there was a new company in the headlines announcing their back to the office policies. And these were just the big companies that made the news – plenty of smaller companies have been following suit.
So what happened? It often comes down to one of four things (even if not every organisation would admit some of the reasons – though Elon Musk had no qualms about it!).
- A perceived lack of productivity.
- A concern that mentoring and proximity learning will be impacted.
- Just because they can now that the pendulum is slowly shifting towards employers once more.
- A lack of trust in some organisations (an issue that many would say is more down to leadership issues than genuinely untrustworthy employees.)
Flexible working remains a candidate motivator
Despite this, what seems to be clear is that employees and candidates certainly don’t want flexible working any less. It remains a huge candidate motivator, as evidenced by a number of large surveys and reports. 2023 Totaljobs research found flexible working hours to be the most sought after benefit and LinkedIn data has consistently found flexibility to be amongst the top three candidate motivators when looking for a job. A Deloitte survey found that, among respondents who still work remotely at least part-time, 66% would likely leave their current role if mandated to return to the office five days a week.
A shift in the market leading employers to U-turn
Many businesses enacting changes to their working policies are likely doing so for a number of different reasons – these sorts of organisational changes are often complex. However, the shift in the market is likely the catalyst for many of the organisations that are reversing their flexible working policies right now. Wave’s Q4 2023 Recruitment Trends Report found that applications were up on 2022 numbers every quarter in 2023, with Q4 applications 54% over the 2022 quarterly average. Meanwhile, jobs were either under Q3 figures or equalled them. What this adds up to is that, in 2023, the market was no longer fully candidate-driven, giving employers the opportunity to make changes to their policies.
A dangerous employee-employer disconnect
However, this disconnect between what candidates and employees want and what employers are offering could be dangerous. Flexible working has reached a critical mass – such a huge percentage of the workforce has either experienced it or wants it that it has become an expectation and if a job doesn’t offer some form of flexibility it is likely to be harder to attract quality candidates. And if a company suddenly makes a U-turn on their flexible working policy, there’s a good chance retention will be severely affected. Add to that the fact that what we have all come to expect since the pandemic is the unexpected – things can change very quickly. Ignoring what candidates and employees want is a risky move.
Hybrid working: a happy compromise?
Perhaps this is why hybrid working is on the up – it is the one form of location-based flexible working that is still on the rise. Data from Wave’s Q4 2023 Recruitment Trends Report shows that, although hybrid was slower to emerge in job ads (probably because the term wasn’t widely adopted back in 2020), it has continued an upward trajectory in 2023, whilst jobs advertised as ‘flexible’ or ‘remote’ halved in 2023. This is undoubtedly a reflection of the fact that hybrid is often a happy compromise, offering employees a better work life balance and employers the chance to get their teams together for in-person collaboration for part of the week.
What hybrid means will differ from organisation to organisation – it might mean a set 2 or 3 days in the office, the ability to come into the office on days that suit each individual employee, or even just certain days of the month that all employees come together. And this continues to be defined and redefined across the world of work as we all figure out the best solution.
The industries that champion hybrid
Some industries have adopted hybrid working more than others, as Wave data shows. Currently, IT & Internet dominate when it comes to hybrid working, advertising 43% of all such jobs. As a predominantly virtual sector, it’s an industry with many roles that can be worked flexibly. It’s also an industry with a high number of jobs, so those jobs need to be competitive and appealing to candidates. Public Sector & Services, an industry that consistently finds itself amongst the 5 industries receiving the lowest average numbers of applications per job, also charts relatively highly for hybrid jobs. As an industry that can offer flexibility, it is likely using the lure of flexible working to try and attract candidates to its jobs.
Want more applications? Advertise hybrid
Recruiters are finding again and again that if they advertise a job with either location or time flexibility, they will get more applications. In a survey of recruiters carried out by Wave, a huge 90% of respondents said that they receive a greater number of applications for jobs with flexible working. It continues to be a huge draw for candidates and for employees looking to leave a job that doesn’t offer flexible working – or that has had flexible working withdrawn. In 2024 there will also be the added impetus of a law that gives employees the legal right to request flexible working from day one on the job. Organisations pushing against flexible working will find that there are a lot of people pushing against them.
Opening up the talent pool with hybrid work
The benefits of flexible working, whether hybrid or another form, are huge, opening up the talent pool for recruiters to find candidates that perhaps wouldn’t have been able to work a 9-5 office-based role – and for those candidates to find meaningful work. In a 2023 Talent Matters podcast episode, CEO & Founder of Diversifying Group, Cynthia V Davis CBE, explained how flexible working has hugely impacted diversity and inclusion: “Remote and hybrid working has allowed people with disabilities to do great work and be more productive. It’s opened up more talent pools as it’s brought people back into the world of work that would have otherwise considered it not effective for their lifestyle… It’s opened up more avenues for people who for so long were excluded from the workforce.”
An ongoing live experiment
Tim Oldman, founder and CEO of employee-experience research firm Leesman who recently completed a survey of 2,428 global workers on hybrid working, has said in a BBC article that we are in the early stages of a live global experiment. “We’re only a year into post-pandemic life in real terms, but hybrid working will have to be running decades before we’re able to learn the real impact it has on organisational culture, learning and career development,” he says.
Ultimately it’s perhaps best not to look at hybrid as a certain amount of time in a certain location and view it as redesigning how people work and how companies can make that work. Rather than fighting hybrid, businesses need to assess what their employees and others in their industry want and work to change things internally in order to make that happen. The pandemic accelerated the adoption of flexible working and it is here to stay, likely in the form of hybridity. It is already reshaping how we work and that journey is set to continue for many years to come.
Wave aims to create a world where talent is never missed by providing an all-in-one candidate attraction solution through a combination of technology, data and human expertise via WaveTrackR (data-powered multi-poster, analytics tool and CV Search), RecWebs (tailored recruitment websites) and WaveMedia (strategic recruitment media buying).
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