The Future Forum, an alliance launched by messaging app Slack, has released the results of its 2022 Global Pulse study.
As employees return to the workplace after the pandemic, it found that inflexible return-to-office policies are negatively impacting employee experience scores.
Full-time employees are more stressed and anxious
According to the survey, 34% of employees are returning to the office full-time, the highest percentage since Future Forum began its quarterly survey in June 2020.
Fully face-to-face employees scored the lowest on questions that measured the experience of all eight employees. Mixed office/home employees are in the middle, with fully remote employees scoring the highest in all categories.
Key takeaways include:
- Work-related stress and anxiety scores fell 28% from the previous quarter, the lowest level since the survey began.
- Work-life balance scores fell by 17%, with full-time office workers dropping twice as much as hybrid and remote workers.
- Employees with fixed schedules are 260% more likely to look for a new job in the coming year.
- Australia, Germany, UK and US all have record employee stress scores
The study shows that strict policies and schedules are drivers of employee turnover, and among workers with fixed schedules, this is most pronounced among women, minorities and working parents.
Double standards for executives and employees
The Future Forum also found that rank-and-file employees experienced a greater decline in employee experience scores than executives.
Work-life balance declined five times as much for non-executives as for executives. Non-executives are also twice as stressed than their C-level counterparts.
The reason behind this, according to Pulse research, is executive scheduling autonomy, which allows them to choose hybrid and remote options that are not offered to employees.
Work-from-home productivity remains a problem
A sort of ADP Research 2021, found that onsite work offered advantages that were lost when employees were completely remote.A sort of Research done by Airtasker It was found just a year ago that virtual commuters worked 1.4 more days per month than office workers.
Many company leaders are also questioning employees’ productivity in remote offices.However, there are Many established solutions Employers can use to increase the productivity of their employees working from home.
source: Future Forum (PDF link)
Featured image: Photographee.eu/Shutterstock
