Why workers are choosing to return to the office and the skills successful leaders need for this decade

Employers are more than twice as likely to use parental leave to lure workers today than they were at the end of 2021, new research suggests.

In June, more than one in eight (12.8 per cent) job postings on jobs site Indeed included phrases such as “parental leave” and “maternity leave” in their job descriptions – up from an average of 10.6 per cent last year and 6.3 per cent in December 2021.

Indeed ’s economist for the Asia-Pacific, Callam Pickering , said the data did not measure how many employers actually offered the perk. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency estimates about two-thirds of private-sector employers provide it.

“But it highlights a shift in how often paid parental leave is used as a selling point to potential employees.”

The analysis supported recruiters’ observations that candidates are asking prospective employers about their parental leave policies more than ever. Partly because the post-pandemic employment boom, which is gradually weakening, gave workers more bargaining power. And partly because of the ongoing push for gender equality and because workers emerged from the pandemic wanting a better work-life balance.

This week, we also received data from XY Sense that suggested the sharp increase in office attendance at the start of the year was not an anomaly but a longer-lasting shift towards higher average office attendance.

White-collar employees who work at least some of their week from home still outnumber those who come into the office five days a week, according to numerous surveys.

But XY Sense’s workplace sensor data found that average workplace utilisation – which refers to the percentage of total available spaces in a workplace that are used regularly – was 40.6 per cent in the June quarter.

That was only a fraction higher than the 40.3 per cent recorded in the March quarter, but it was the highest since the pandemic and significantly higher than the 30 per cent recorded in the final three months of last year.

For some, working from home feels too much like living at work. That feeling has motivated workers like Wisr senior brand designer Shamanthi Rajasingham to voluntarily increase their office attendance beyond company requirements.

“I’m keen to bring back that separation between work and home, and bring a bit more balance into my life,” she explains.

Business groups said they expected the trend towards higher office attendance to continue as the jobs market weakened.

Elsewhere, we revealed the top skills leaders need to succeed this decade, found out how many WFH employees are secretly working from overseas, and identified the four traits that stand out among this year’s BOSS Young Executives.

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