Employers Not Offering Flexibility Will Attract Fewer Job Applicants

USA – Zoom’s Chief People Officer Lynne Oldham said only 1 percent of its workers or about 66 staff want to return to the office full-time, reported Human Resources Director on Friday morning (7 January, SGT).

This is similar to the findings of a survey conducted in Q3 by San Francisco-based PRO Unlimited, which shows that 89 percent of workers prefer to work at a company that allows remote work options.

This means that businesses that offer such flexibility are expected to capture 96 percent of the labour market, while those that don’t would miss out on 58 percent of job applicants. This analysis is based on data from over 30,000 employees across the United States.

In particular, staff in tech firms like those working in in Silicon Valley seem to greatly want to telecommute more than other staff in other industries. About 66 percent of employees of tech companies said they want to work remotely full-time, while 34 percent of such staff said they will only accept a job that can be entirely done from their home.

As for Zoom, Oldham revealed than only less than 100 technical workers continue to work from their office, while the rest are working remotely. She also shared that they continue to get the feedback from their staff on their preferred working arrangements.

“We’re in the process of figuring out our return-to-office strategy. We’re listening very hard to what our employees want and ensuring that we’re not doing things they don’t want.”

“We’re going to really try to be whatever you need us to be as your employer. Whether you want to stay remote, whether you want to be in the office one or two days a week or a month, or whether you want to be one of those 60 people in the office every day,” she added.