New incentives could boost satisfaction with in-person work, but few employers are making changes

NEW YORK — Justin Ryan Horton works two jobs. When he’s not working 24-hour shifts as a firefighter, the 22-year-old works as an administrative assistant for a local community college from his home in Colorado Springs.

Firefighting is of course not a work from home job. So when the community college position gave Horton the option to clock in remotely, he took it.

“I’ve been away a lot as a firefighter,” Horton said. “Instead of coming home and seeing my family for a few minutes before going to my other job… I feel like I just have more time with them when I work from home.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the way work looks for millions of people around the world. While many jobs can only be done in person, large swaths of employers have closed their physical doors and increasingly moved their workplaces online.

Since then, workers have been returning to the office in waves, at least for part of the week, and navigating that transition has been an ongoing and significant hurdle for employers and employees alike. And many simply cannot imagine a return to the pre-coronavirus status quo, changing the way companies approach their workforce needs.

Retaining employees who don’t want to work in person is a problem for companies, but relatively few employers (13%) have introduced new incentives that would make employees more satisfied, according to a recently released poll conducted by the university’s NORC. of Chicago.

About three in four HR representatives say retaining employees who don’t want to work in the office is a problem – including 19% who call it a “major problem.” Another 54% of HR representatives call it a minor problem. And only about a third of HR professionals say employees at their workplace are “extremely” or “very” happy about returning to the workplace.

“Once employees discovered that (remote work) could be cheaper and… make their lives a little easier, they just wanted to keep doing it even as the pandemic started to fade,” said Marjorie Connelly, senior fellow at NORC’s Public Affairs. & Department of Media Research, told The Associated Press.

In both the HR survey and a separate poll of U.S. adults, researchers found that the top factors behind employees’ desire to work from home are prioritizing flexibility and work-life balance. Other HR representatives and employees who work from home cite the length and cost of commutes as key.

Those are some of the top reasons why Megan Homis, 33, prefers remote work. As a senior account manager for an advertising and marketing agency in Southern California, Homis goes to the office once a month.

“It’s about an hour and 45 minutes’ drive to the office because of traffic,” she says. “And on top of that, I have two small children – so arranging childcare for them, dropping them off and picking them up, is quite a job. .”

Homis said the ability to work remotely will remain a priority for her in the future. She would consider returning to the office more if an employer offers enough incentives and support for in-person work, but hasn’t yet seen any opportunities that would move her in that direction.

Bill Castellano, a professor at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, notes that flexibility is critical, especially when it comes to giving employees choice in scheduling their work.

“Workers care more about when to work than where to work,” said Castellano, who was not involved in the NORC surveys. He added that this is a key benefit for many remote workers today – and that with the right policies, such as flexible start times, it can extend to physical offices.

There are some initiatives that could encourage more employees to work in person — or at least increase their satisfaction with going to the office already — the poll shows. Most hybrid workers (55%) say paying employees for working in the office would “a lot” encourage them to work in person more often.

Additional pay topped the list among respondents, whether they worked in-person, remote (44%) or in hybrid (50%) roles. However, only 4% of HR representatives whose companies have introduced new policies to bring employees back to the workplace say that includes higher pay.

Employees who are already going to the office – partially or completely – indicated that other incentives such as commuting, in-office childcare, free food and social gatherings could also provide at least ‘some’ more satisfaction in returning to the office.

Those in-office benefits had less impact among exclusively remote workers, Connelly noted — especially at social gatherings. “For example, I work hundreds of miles away from the main office so they can have a pizza party (and) as many pizza parties as they want, but it doesn’t bother me,” she said.

Either way, many American workers have returned to work in person, or never left. According to NORC’s survey, most paid employees report working in-person, and three-quarters of these employees say their employers require them to do so. About 1 in 10 indicate that they can work remotely, but would prefer to work from the office.

Meanwhile, about a third of paid employees surveyed work remotely or in hybrid roles. The majority cited convenience and work-life balance, as well as a lack of office demands, as reasons for doing so.

The number of people working remotely has fallen significantly since the peak of COVID-19, but is still well above pre-pandemic levels.

Estimates vary, but according to a Pew Research Center survey published in March, 35% of employees with jobs that can be performed remotely worked from home all the time. That’s down from 43% in January 2022 and 55% in October 2020. Still, it’s far higher than the mere 7% recorded before the pandemic.

This coincides with the declining options for working from home among employers. For example, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 72.5% of private sector companies had little to no telework as of mid-2022 – up from 60.1% a year earlier.

“I think this downward trend will continue, but I don’t think it will go to zero… (or) where we were before the pandemic,” Castellano said, adding that he believes the hybrid model will grow. in terms of popularity. “The question is: what kind of schedule will that be?”