Disparity between hybrid work requirements for managers and employees is leading to near-record dissatisfaction, further fueling the Great Resignation.
Despite many companies thriving during the pandemic, most large companies have fought to bring employees back to the office as soon as possible. Many employees, while wanting the option to go into the office, have pushed back against efforts to make them return five days a week. This hasn’t stopped many companies from moving forward with their plans, and now employee dissatisfaction is hitting near-record highs.
In Slack’s latest Future Forum Pulse survey, the company found that 34% of knowledge workers have returned to the office five days a week. This represents the highest percentage since the surveys began in mi-2020. Interestingly, along with this shift in the workplace, “work-related stress and anxiety is at its worst since our surveying began.”
One of the main issues many employees have is the unfair disparity between executives and employees. Non-executive employees are almost “twice as likely as executives to be working from the office five days a week,” while their “work-life balance scores are now 40% worse than their bosses, plummeting at five times the rate of executives over the last quarter.” Those same employees are experiencing more than twice the work-related stress and anxiety as their bosses.
Unsurprisingly, this dissatisfaction is likely to start costing businesses in the form of higher turnover. The survey showed that “knowledge workers with little to no ability to set their own work hours are 2.6x as likely to look for a new job in the coming year, compared to those with schedule flexibility.” This trend could especially impact working parents, people of color, and women, all of whom are more likely to want flexible schedules.
Slack’s latest survey should be a warning to companies large and small, and force them to reevaluate their in-office policies. At the very least, it should cause companies to focus more on implementing their policies fairly.