Flexibility emerges as the new currency for non-office and public sector workers.

Flexibility in the workplace is not a fad or trend with a short-term expiration date. While some predicted it wouldn’t stick around post-Covid, we’ve now learned that, in most cases, employees of all types have experienced the freedom that comes with flexible working and they don’t want to return to working environments that don’t support it. 

However, a disparity can exist between what employers think workers want in regard to flexibility and what employees actually need. In order to fill in the blanks and understand what the workforce desires, we must first understand what they’re currently being offered and how they feel about it.

As part of our Workmonitor industry insight series, last month we surveyed over 7,500 employees in the UK, US, Australia, France and Germany to find out more about their expectations and opinions. Respondents worked within a diverse range of sectors and industries and hold either a ‘white’, ‘blue’ or ‘grey’ (people holding jobs with aspects of blue and white collar roles that involve a service or is customer-facing but not based in an office) collar roles. 

The findings revealed that non-office workers deeply want more job flexibility, which they prioritise nearly as much as pay. And they believe their employers can do more to meet this need:

Public vs private sector.

Is flexibility really possible for all employees, and can a one-size-fits-all approach be rolled out across all sectors? More public sector workers, including those in education and healthcare, think not when compared to those working in the private sector:

The divide in opinions doesn’t stop at whether employees think flexible working is actually possible. When asked if their employers are working hard enough to encourage flexible working, more of those working in education and healthcare believed it wasn’t in comparison to construction and tech workers. 39% of education workers said that it’s not in their employer’s interest to provide flexible working arrangements, verses two in every 10 (22%) tech workers:

To delve deeper into the data and uncover more of the insights on the importance of flexible working arrangements, access the full article here.

If you are interested in finding out more about the wider Workmonitor recruitment industry trends report, access the full 2023 edition here.

In other news.

Chat GPT - genius, convenient, life-saver or cheating? 

While in the US script writers strike due to what they perceive as the unseen threat of AI, how exactly is the rise in the popularity of AI writing tools impacting today's recruitment processes? Should candidates be ‘allowed’ to leverage the capabilities of ChatGPT to better their chances of success? 

Covering letters, for example, may be a huge challenge for those who have learning difficulties, or who aren't confident writers and AI writing can be of huge value.

Our Marketing Director, Adam Nicoll spoke to the BBC about this very matter, click here to access the full article on BBC Worklife.

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