?Job seekers are showing greater interest in postings for work that is more likely to require onsite attendance, according to jobs site Indeed.
This could signal brighter days for employers that have had difficulty filling job openings.
Sectors for in-person work that are attracting high interest include food preparation and food service as well as hospitality and tourism. Interest in job postings for these fields is at or above pre-pandemic levels.
Job interest was measured by tracking the average number of clicks per job posting for each job category over a 28-day period—from Feb. 1 through May 20.
“The U.S. labor market remains hot,” Indeed said in its latest report. “As the U.S. economy has bounced back from the initial COVID-19 shock, demand for labor has grown much more quickly than supply.”
Employment has rebounded, joblessness has been at or below pre-pandemic levels for months, and wages are growing fast as difficulty finding workers in multiple sectors has driven pay up about 6 percent on an annual basis, the report noted, although inflation is eating into wage gains.
There are potential roadblocks to this employment momentum, the report warns, such as new variants of COVID-19, a quickly tightening monetary policy and geopolitical instability.
Interest in in-person work has not recovered across all sectors; in the personal care and home health industry sectors, for example, interest still lags. Additionally, remote work is still more popular than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic, although some employers such as Elon Musk at Tesla are now making onsite attendance a requirement of employment at the company’s offices.
SHRM Online has collected the following news stories on the topic of employers requiring in-person work versus offering the option to work remotely.
Job Seekers Warm Back Up to In-Person Work, Signaling Relief Ahead for Restaurants
New data from jobs site Indeed shows interest in onsite work has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels. Since the beginning of this year, it found no statistically significant difference in interest in onsite versus remote jobs, meaning that those looking for work are more open to in-person employment.
Elon Musk Tells Tesla Employees: Return to the Office, or Else
Elon Musk is demanding that Tesla office workers return to in-person work or leave the company. The policy was disclosed in leaked e-mails Musk sent to Tesla’s executive staff on June 1.
“Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla. This is less than we ask of factory workers,” Musk wrote, adding that the office must be the employee’s primary workplace.
[SHRM members-only resource hub page: Remote Work]
Returning Employees to the Physical Workplace
As we begin to return to the physical workplace, organizations must recognize how employees’ needs and expectations have changed. Here are some suggestions for managing the return to the physical workplace.
Survey: Just 4% of Employers Are Making Everyone Return to the Office Full Time
A new survey from The Conference Board, a nonprofit business research group, found that only 4 percent of HR leaders said they are requiring all employees to return to the workplace full time. Less than half (45 percent) said they were requiring some workers to return to the office five days a week.
“We were all pretty shocked,” said Robin Erickson, vice president of human capital at The Conference Board. “We were surprised given what we’re hearing about how many employers are requiring workers to come back full time.”
The research found that 90 percent of the surveyed employers are allowing hybrid work schedules.
(Forbes)
50% of Companies Want Workers Back in the Office 5 Days a Week. Why Experts Say This Strategy Could Fail
About 50 percent of business leaders say their company already requires or is planning to require employees to return to in-person work full time in the next year, according to new research from Microsoft, which surveyed 31,102 workers around the world between January and February.
This number stands in sharp contrast, however, to what employees really want: flexibility. In the same report, 52 percent of workers said they are thinking of switching to a full-time remote or hybrid job in 2022.
(CNBC)
Employers Take Note: Most Remote Workers Don’t Want to Go Back to the Office
If your staff has been working from home most or all of the time during the past two years, chances are a majority may want to continue doing so after the threat of COVID-19 fades.
Pew researchers said a February survey found that 60 percent of workers with jobs that can be done from home say they’d like to work from home all or most of the time when the pandemic is over if given the choice. This is up from 54 percent in 2020.
Planning a Full Return to the Office? Beware ‘a Stampede of Top Talent’
The push-pull of in-office requirements versus employee demands for workplace flexibility are at the heart of what many companies are dealing with as they struggle to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our advice is for leaders to recognize the reality of the new labor market and adapt. Working from home is here to stay,” according to a Harvard Business Review (HBR) report. “Among the millions of firms that tried remote work since the pandemic struck, fewer than 20 percent plan to have [employees] return to the office full time after the pandemic ends.”
Ordering employees back to the office full time risks “a stampede of top talent” leaving for rival organizations that will offer hybrid work, according to the HBR study.