Businesses are experiencing a massive talent crisis with the ‘Great Resignation’ as employees are re-evaluating what matters in life. Their expectations are more aspirational as to what they want from a ‘good’ job. People are no longer competing for jobs; businesses are competing for people.
The pandemic has provided an opportunity to reimagine ways of working and has changed perceptions about what makes a ‘good’ job. More jobseekers and employees want flexibility in how, where and when they work, with many expecting hybrid working patterns as a normal feature in a post-Covid job market.
The Work Trend Index survey conducted by Edelman Data x Intelligence, highlighted that 73% of employees want flexible remote working options to remain and 67% of employees want more in-person work or collaboration after the pandemic.
This paradigm shift of how employees want to work requires employers to move beyond the mindset of a “one size fits all” approach. The challenge for businesses is to take a personalised and inclusive approach to meet individual needs that enable employees to co-create their own ‘good’ jobs, supported by managers and aligned with organisational practices and policies.
The onus is on employers to demonstrate that they genuinely care, actively listen to provide tailored solutions that support the wellbeing and inclusion of their people. Therefore, it is critical that businesses focus their efforts on the things that can make a real difference – like their culture.
COVID-19 has demonstrated that job re-design can be achieved and achieved quickly. Organisational change interventions and initiatives that could have taken years were actioned in days. As we transition out of the pandemic, there is an opportunity to embrace change and strive to create ‘better’ jobs for everyone. Doing so will not only result in attracting and retaining the top talent, but will result in increased productivity, resilience and enhanced employee wellbeing and engagement.
Central to Business in the Community’s What if your job was good for you? report is our Better Work Framework that provides evidence based suggestions as to how you can achieve ‘good’ jobs and ‘better’ work for all. The framework brings together five enablers that support ways of working that drive long term wellbeing, and four organisational values that sit underneath and operationalise ‘better’ work. The framework recognises that to achieve and maintain ‘good’ jobs, wellbeing needs to be integrated into to being a mainstream issue that permeates across every aspect of business.
Those organisations that will flourish are those that are as passionate about employee experience as they are about customer experience. By treating your employees as consumers who have a choice to work for your organisation or not, is the moment that you reframe your culture and enable ‘good’ work to become a reality.
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Business in the Community is supporting, and Louise Aston will be Chairing a panel on this topic at The Watercooler event which is taking place on 25th and 26th of May at Olympia in Central London. The event is all about helping employers connect to achieve the right joined-up mental, physical, financial, social and environmental wellbeing solutions that deliver the best possible outcomes both for employees and for the business. You can find out more and register to attend free here.
For more information on the Work Trend Index survey, see: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/hybrid-work
Business in the Community’s What if your job was good for you? Report can be found online: https://www.bitc.org.uk/report/what-if-your-job-was-good-for-you
