After something of a false start late last week, we finally banish the dog days of the festive season today. Along with the pate, James Bond repeats, the body weight in cheese, Gavin and Stacey and strange bottles that see the light of day just once a year, it’s time to put Christmas to one side. And that’s anything but easy. It’s entirely possible to slip into a festive coma. When we try to focus on work, we’re distracted by ads for weekend breaks and holidays – anything, indeed, but work. Work becomes a distant memory – we don’t know where we work, why we work or, indeed, for whom we work. We stumble around hunting down errant socks, travel passes and motivation. Little wonder, recruitment has long experienced a new year spike.
Except, I think this is a problem no longer necessarily concentrated around the Christmas fortnight.
Our relationship with work is changing, and doing so at speed. Flexibility has evolved within the last decade from a nice-to-have for certain workforce demographics to something now demanded by all ages, genders and cultures. If you’re looking to hire right now, there better be a pretty compelling reason as to why you cannot offer better flexibility than the employer you’re currently trying to prise talent out from.
The four-day week is beginning to evolve from a fanciful pipedream into a workplace offering with real credibility. The new Finnish PM, Sanna Marin, for example, is seeking to introduce both a four-day week and a six-hour working day – she wants to see Finns ‘spending more time with families, loved ones, hobbies and culture’.
Even if we view such aspirations as years if not decades away in this country, our relationship with work and the workplace is changing in front of us. In May last year, the ONS reported a quarterly 90,000 increase in the number of self-employed workers – the largest jump for some three years. And even if people are permanently employed, the propensity for them to be working flexible hours, often from home, potentially sharing their job with another, is growing exponentially – APSCo reported late last year that this number had increased by a factor of five over the last two decades. This was further illustrated this week through some research commissioned by the TUC – the number of people working from home has increased 27% in the last ten years.
Little wonder perhaps in the light of the Government’s decision to strip Northern Rail of its franchise and the (not really news at all) news that signalling issues have wreaked commuter havoc at Waterloo this morning. For those of us pondering the attractions of home working, this can only have sealed the deal.
However, the upshot is that we are spending less and less physical time at and with our employer. And there are more and more people who have an increasingly transactional relationship with not one employer, but any number of contacts, side hustles and networks. Online freelance platforms which didn’t exist five years ago, such as Fiverr, Peopleperhour, Upwork and Yunoyuno are fighting for market share. Happily, the concept of presenteeism is disappearing, largely, from the workplace – simply being present at work does not imply that work is being done. Globalisation means that employees are likely to be working further and further away from senior leaders, influence and decision making. Disastrous and cost-based investments in open-plan working have added not only to lower productivity but also an earphone-inspired sense of distance.
And is such a fractured and aloof relationship with an employer taking place earlier and earlier? Resourcing technology will doubtless save money, deliver productivity gains and enable greater reporting capability. Does it also mean that an employer gives the impression of distance and facelessness from the get-go to potential applicants? Do video interviews, online applications and the greater harnessing of AI sacrifice personality and culture at the altar of productivity and cost saving? As both the father and uncle of a number going through such processes, I know my answer to such a question.
(Perhaps this is at the heart of the debate as to why candidate experience appears as much a challenge today as it did a decade ago. It feels as though we approach the issue corporately, from the inside out, rather than addressing the candidate perspective).
The EY Belonging barometer makes for fascinating, if concerning, reading. 40% of us, regardless of gender, age and ethnicity, feel both emotionally and physically isolated within the workplace. We feel quite the opposite of belonging. Nearly half of all employees do not feel as though they belong within the workplace. This is leading to issues of both turnover and productivity. According to research by Totaljobs, Mind and the Samaritans, 53.6% of UK employees feel lonely at work – particularly those within the 35-44 age band.
And what does this bring about? 26% of them have actually left jobs as a result of such feelings of isolation and loneliness.
One of the key drivers and attractions of permanent employment over the freelance and self-employment life is this apparent sense of belonging, conversation and camaraderie of the workplace. This is feeling increasingly like a myth.
Clearly, however, this is a trend that certain employers appear aware of and concerned about.
The same research from EY Barometer, touching on isolation, also points to the upside of enhancing a sense of belonging within the workplace. Those organisations which inspired high levels of belonging created a 56% increase in job performance, a 50% reduction in employee flight risk and a 75% reduction in sick days.
By investing in more and more technical recruitment capability, employers can obscure their face, culture and personality from the beginning of an employee-employer relationship. This feels doubly unfortunate at a time when people are finding it easier and easier to either leave the workplace or spend as little time as possible within it. We want to spend more time with families, friends and outside interests. We’re volunteering more and we increasingly grasp the sense of the experience economy. Structural transport issues create even more distance between us and the workplace. Even those physically at work – according to EY Barometer – sense distance with the people around them.
There have never been more pressures on employers to provide an engaging, welcoming workplace in which people feel as though they belong. Where such people can communicate and relate to their colleagues and co-workers. Where they know what is going on and how they can get on. Where they can celebrate success – whether they are physically or more figuratively in the workplace. Where the experience they encounter is positive, enabling and enriching – not something to endure as a necessary evil. Because such an experience is becoming increasingly less necessary.
At a time where it is easier and easier not to be within the workplace, employers have to make the most of the time their people do spend within their four walls.
Employees and candidates have a richness of choice today. There’s a reason that 59% of London businesses that tried to recruit during the final quarter of 2019 struggled to find the candidates they were looking for, leaving 58% of them operating below full staffing capacity as the new year began, according to the London Chamber of Commerce.
They can choose to work with you, work in your offices, work with you from home or in Starbucks or, indeed do exactly the same work with the competition. The experience you provide, the belonging you create, the welcome you deliver will be key influencers in such a choice.
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 