“I don’t want a free croissant – I want to work from home on a Monday.” So says Michelle (who doesn’t want her full name used), a disgruntled marketing executive who wasn’t overly impressed with her company’s back-to-office mandate and subsequent lacklustre efforts to make it a more inviting prospect for staff.
Complementary pastries weren’t enough of an incentive to make her stay, and last year she joined many others who moved on in their droves from the multinational she had worked at.
“I think what would have worked pre-Covid to make employees feel valued is really not working when they’ve had hybrid working and flexibility taken away from them,” she says. “My previous employers tried to make the office a nice place to be. The effort was there, but it came across as tone-deaf and felt like an affront to me and others.
“A lot of colleagues made big life decisions based on hybrid working; they moved further away, and they accepted roles because they could manage a hybrid workplace. And that all changed.”
For Michelle, the extra costs associated with working from the office squeezed her budget.
“I really tried to cut back and bring all my food and coffee with me to work. And I saw some of my colleagues who had longer commutes really struggling with the increase in diesel or petrol costs; in going from two days a week to five days, they’ve seen their fuel costs double, if not triple. And that’s before you get into the time that they’re now spending commuting.”
Another side effect she noticed was a marked increase in clock-watching: people shot out of the office at 5pm on the dot whereas before, they left when the job was done for the day. The takeaway? Commitment was waning and employees had an eye on the door.
With an exodus in the aftermath of the reintroduction of a five-day week in the office, the HR department in Michelle’s company was struggling to recruit top talent to replace staff who left.
“I could see that the five-day-a-week policy was impacting the quality of candidates that were being hired for jobs,” she says. “There may be better candidates out there but they weren’t willing to accept a five-day-a-week job, and especially within the softer skills – like marketing, social media, hospitality – that side of the business started to struggle in terms of recruitment.”
The five-day office mandate was only part of Michelle’s reason for moving on – it also felt like the right time to progress her career – but working in an area where evenings and weekends were often taken up with work events, a more flexible arrangement was important to her.
Now, after taking up a new role at a smaller and more flexible indigenous business, she’s happy with a company culture that is better suited to her needs and lifestyle.
Aodán Ó Conaill is a local leader with Grow Remote, organising social activities and outings for remote and hybrid workers on the Dingle Peninsula. Anecdotally, he sees members of their chapter committed to looking for remote work, even if it means having to wait for the right role. For some who moved west during the pandemic and have put down roots in the area, trying to claw their way back into the pricey Dublin property or rental market just might not be feasible. Not to mention leaving the good life behind.
With the prevailing sentiment from employees being inclined towards at least hybrid working, where does this leave employers and business owners? Fiona Higgins, head of the Knowledge Centre at the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (Ibec), has been crunching the numbers.
Earlier this year, Ibec conducted a pulse survey of senior HR leaders and found that a good majority (67 per cent) do not expect changes to hybrid/flexible working practices they have in place in the next 12 months.
“Despite the much-hyped view regarding return-to-office mandates, the survey does not support this view, not at least on a full-time basis,” says Higgins.
She notes that not all roles and functions are suitable for hybrid and remote working. “It applies to a workforce who are remote-capable in the first place, and these are most likely to be working in sectors such as finance, technology and professional services.”
Looking at the numbers of workers working flexibly, last year just over one-third (33.2 per cent) of workers were working from home for a portion of the working week. “This compares favourably to the EU average of 19 per cent,” says Higgins.
As a lever for attracting and retaining talent, flexibility is highly prized and that doesn’t look set to change any time soon. In the same Ibec pulse survey flexible working arrangements came out on top as the benefit that HR leaders believe is most valued by employees, ranking first above a competitive salary package and career development opportunities.
With the cost of living on the rise, the impact of promotions and better pay shouldn’t be overlooked either. A team of US researchers recently analysed turnover data from more than 11,000 managers between 2018 and 2023. Their findings, published in the Harvard Business Review, suggest that offering promotions and career development during employer-friendly labour markets is the most effective way to future-proof the workforce and retain talent when job opportunities become more abundant.
However, that’s a piece of advice that, while good to know for future reference, isn’t terribly useful in this part of the cycle. Since the beginning of this year, the unemployment rate continues to trend at close to record lows, at just 4.1 per cent.
“Given the tight labour market and limited housing availability, the option to work remotely, even partially, will remain a significant factor shaping employee expectations,” says Higgins.
Nonetheless, some employers, particularly larger ones, are continuing to request more on-site presence and their reasoning, ranging from collaboration to developing early career staff, is valid too.
“As a still relatively new working concept at scale, hybrid and flexible working as a practice requires further iteration in the face of the multiplicity of competing demands and considerations,” she adds.
