The remote-work revolution gained unprecedented momentum at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic three-plus years ago, and now many companies are eager to bring their workers back to the office. The problem is that the employees often don’t want to come back.
Employees — especially younger workers — appear to recognize the downsides of remote and hybrid work, but they generally prefer it anyway, according to data from a recent Deloitte survey.
Deloitte’s 2023 Gen Z and Millennial Survey shows that younger remote and hybrid workers have real fears about the impacts of not being in the office. Some of those concerns include suspected proximity bias against them that may inhibit career progression (cited by 18% of Generation Z members and 15% of millennials), difficulties connecting with colleagues (cited by 14% of both Gen Z members and millennials), lack of mentorship (cited by 13% of Gen Z and 12% of millennials), and feelings of isolation (cited by 10% of both Gen Z and millennials).
“If your aspirations are to get that corner office, you probably have to move into a an in-office role so you can spend the time schmoozing, networking, being front-of-mind, that sort of thing,” Shane Spraggs, CEO of Virtia, a business consulting and services company that has promoted remote work for over a decade, told MarketWatch. “And that can be a real consideration for a number of people.”
Fears of opportunity diminishment for remote workers is nothing new. A separate 2022 survey of 200 U.S. C-suite executives indicated that 41% of executives believed remote employees were less likely to be candidates for promotion.
From the archives (July 2021): ‘A lot of people are getting promotions — and most of them are in the office’
But despite those fears several polls conducted in the last few years, in addition to Deloitte’s results, show that a majority of workers would prefer some form of hybrid work schedule, as, to them, the positives outweigh the negatives.
According to Deloitte’s survey, some of the reasons workers value remote or hybrid work were having a better work-life balance to spend time with loved ones (cited by 20% of Gen Z members and 28% of millennials), helping save money on commutes and work attire (cited by 22% of Gen Z and 27% of millennials), increased productivity (cited by 18% of Gen Z and 23% of millennials) and benefits for their overall mental health (cited by 54% of Gen Z and 59% of millennials).
Spraggs noted that people are doing their own calculations as to what makes the most sense for them when it comes to work format, observing that potentially being skipped over for a promotion doesn’t have much bearing for workers who are not fixated on climbing the corporate ladder. Some people may prefer the flexibility for child-care reasons, while others could be saving money by staying home.
“There’s always going to be something you’re balancing, pros vs. cons. … It’s not just the time on the commute because you’re not going into the office. You’re not spending money at the coffee shop, you’re not going out for lunch, you’re not spending money on clothes as much — it’s just a ton of money for a lot of people,” he said.
“I don’t think I would go for a job that is full-time in the office again,” one of the millennial respondents to Deloitte’s survey was quoted as having said. “I’m surprised it was ever a thing in the first place — how did we all survive going into the office five days a week?”
See also: Men reap greater benefits than women when they support co-workers, MIT study finds
In some situations, employees are taking active steps to protect their remote or hybrid lives. Thousands of workers at companies including Amazon
AMZN,
Apple
AAPL,
and Disney
DIS,
among several others, have signed petitions advocating against their company’s return-to-office policies.
About 64% of workers say they would consider quitting if required to return to the office full-time, a 2022 ADP report showed.
Even some high-profile remote-work supporters, however, seem to be changing their tunes. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce
CRM,
said in 2021 that “the 9-to-5 workday is dead,” but last month he indicated that new hires perform better at the office, while adding that he’s pushing for some workers to come in three days a week.
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