I was recently talking to a friend of mine who has a small business when he asked if it was time to bring people back to the office.
My response: "Are they still working well for you from home?"
"Yes, but the covid is not so bad now."
"First, it's still a big problem. Also, have you ever heard of the BA.2 variant? You will."
I further explained, "If it ain't broke, why fix it? Your people are good, their work is good, what's not to like? Let them keep working. at home."
He finally agreed to let his people stay home and got rid of some of the leases on his offices. But many other business owners are not so smart; they always want their people back in the office.
Here's the thing: They don't want to come back, not next month, not at the end of this year, not in 2023. Never.
As Lars Schmidt, founder of HR company Amplify, told LinkedIn, organizations that cling to the old, pre-pandemic office ways are only asking for trouble: "They're going to have a hard time retaining talent. They're going to struggle to recruit talent. They will be the poster children of the Great Resignation if they try to lock their employees in buildings they don't want.
You also won't be able to easily hire someone to fill those vacancies when they leave. You do not believe me ? Here's a telling data point from ZipRecruiter: "Remote" jobs receive 300% more applicants than traditional in-office jobs. It also stopped being a problem with tech jobs. Now, almost all administrative jobs that absolutely did not require an office presence have gone remote.
IT company Ivanti recently surveyed several thousand office workers and IT professionals. Guess what he found? 87% of employees do not want to work full time from the office. If you insist that they return, 24% say they will quit first.
This is not a unique case. Many other reports show the same thing. According to LinkedIn's Global Talent Trends 2022 report, people want the freedom to work where and when they want, and are willing to quit jobs that don't meet that need.
They are not kidding.
As Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economics professor, told NBC News, "the idea of a complete comeback is dead."
Do you think you can put aside the deception of workers now that the Covid-19 pandemic seems to be receding? Think again. A recent Harvard Business Review study showed that while more than 47 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs in 2021 — a record, by the way — employment figures from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) show that the big quit was not caused by the pandemic. Instead, it was the crest of a long-term wave of people quitting their jobs.
Why? The authors, Joseph Fuller and William Kerr, both Harvard Business School professors, say it's because of the five Rs. These are retirement, relocation, reconsideration, redesign, and reluctance.
Specifically, "workers are retiring in greater numbers, but they're not moving in large numbers; they're rethinking their work-life balance and caregiving roles; they're making localized cross-industry shifts, or reorganizations, instead to leave the workforce entirely; and, due to fears of a pandemic, are reluctant to return to face-to-face jobs."
One way to avoid this trend is to not give valued employees a reason to retire, relocate, or reconsider their jobs. In other words, if they're happy to work from home: let them. A happy worker at home is better for you than an unhappy worker who leaves your home.
It's the least you can do, both for them and for the future of your business.
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