Negosentro | 2 Key Ways Employers Are Sweetening the Return to the Workplace | Recent events have caused a cataclysmic shift in how employees view their jobs and employers will need to respond to maintain a satisfied workforce. So many people found themselves sequestered at home in the past two years, and while many businesses responded by setting up temporary work-from-home scenarios to keep their businesses functioning, many failed to comprehend the permanent changes in attitude toward work that this scenario would birth.
Once a human being experiences something that they like, it is very hard to successfully take it away. When it came time to return to work in 2021, a large portion of the workforce simply refused to return to the old way of doing things. They had experienced the many benefits of working from home and they were unwilling to give those up. Now employers across the globe are scrambling to develop a new workplace that will optimize worker satisfaction and worker productivity at the same time. This is producing some exciting changes.
Hybrid Workplaces
Although maintaining a fully remote workforce is not an option for some companies, many are instituting changes that will give their workers greater flexibility in schedule and improved work-life balance. This includes developing a hybrid workplace, which can take many forms.
Companies that can maintain a remote workforce are choosing to do so. They have found that letting their employees work from home has many benefits for the company as well, such as the ability to save immense amounts of money on maintaining physical workspaces as well as a marked increase in employee productivity. Businesses have also realized that having a remote workforce allows them to hire the best employees without regard to location, opening up a global hiring base that is very attractive to many companies.
Alternatively, many businesses are allowing workers to spend some of their time at home and some at the office. This allows employers to maintain a physical presence for jobs that simply cannot be completed in a remote setting while giving employees greater flexibility to schedule life events.
Those businesses that cannot function remotely are instituting flexibility in other ways such as allowing workers to choose the schedule that works best for them. Employees can come into work during the traditional workday, or choose to work their hours at alternate times in the evenings or on weekdays. This arrangement can open up possibilities for workers for whom a traditional schedule is onerous such as those trying to better their education or who are the primary caregivers for children or senior parents.
Childcare Solutions
One of the unexpected perks of a pandemic world was parents getting to spend time with their children building essential relationships. Additionally, parents got to see a glimpse of what their budget could be when not weighed down by child care costs. Not surprisingly, when it came time to return to the nine-to-five grind, many were reluctant to go back to the way things were.
During the pandemic, many businesses began offering their employees backup childcare and some are choosing to maintain the service now. This means that when a working parent’s regular caregiver is unavailable or for some other reason they cannot secure childcare, the company pays to allow that parent to take their child to a designated child care facility for the day.
Larger companies are ramping up their efforts to provide childcare facilities at the workplace itself. Doing this has numerous benefits including a stark decrease in callouts at the companies that have instituted these facilities. Also, the convenience of having their childcare at the workplace gives parents a more manageable morning routine that results in a decrease in employees being tardy in the morning.
Another benefit that some companies are including for their employees with children is a childcare stipend that can reduce the impact of childcare costs considerably. What parent would not be enticed to work for a business that makes their child care bill smaller?
Employees have gotten a taste of autonomy and freedom and now nearly 50% of them say that they will leave their jobs if they don’t get to keep some of it. Smart employers are protecting their future by finding ways to answer these demands.
