Good morning.
If you’re returning to the office in person today, you’re not alone.
This year, over 1 million employees are expected to be called into the office at least part of the week for the first time beginning in September, my colleague Paige McGlauflin reports based on data from real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL).
“Office attendance, as measured by property management and security firm Kastle Systems, has hovered at 50% in 2023, the highest rate since the pandemic began,” McGlauflin writes in her CHRO Daily column. “If everything goes the way bosses want it to, the post-Labor Day RTO mandates could push that rate up to between 55% and 65% by the fourth quarter of this year,” according to the report from JLL. However, whether all employees will comply is questionable.
'Green flags'
When it comes to returning to the office, what do employees want from their employers? I sat down with Vicki Salemi, a career expert for Monster, an online recruiting site, to find out. “Our data consistently shows that workers prefer to work remotely, Salemi tells me. “That may not be 100% remote, but they definitely want the flexibility to know that they can.”
Monster’s recent poll of 6,000 U.S. workers found that 51% said flexible remote work policies are their biggest “green flag,” or positive sign of workplace culture that would make them apply to a job or stay at their job.
However, in some industries, such as financial services, there are companies, like Goldman Sachs, pushing for employees to be in the office five days a week. A Deloitte report, "Cultivating employee engagement in financial services," finds that strict return-to-office mandates could impact the retention of leaders. Sixty-six percent of leaders surveyed who work remotely at least part of the time said it's likely they'd leave their current job if their company required them to return to the office five days a week.
So, why would a company make a mandate for 100% in-office work when employees clearly desire flexibility? “It really depends on the company culture,” Salemi says. “A lot of decisions come into play in terms of productivity, morale, and output.”
"Survey: Remote Work Isn’t Going Away—and Executives Know It," an article in Harvard Business Review, is based on the findings of the Survey of Business Uncertainty, which is jointly run by the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, the University of Chicago, and Stanford. Each month, it surveys senior executives at about 500 U.S. businesses across industries and regions. The July survey found that executives expect both fully remote and hybrid work to continue to grow. “The U.S. is well positioned for remote work, the authors write. “Already, the U.S. has one of the highest rates of remote work of any country, behind only New Zealand and Canada among the 34 countries we surveyed.”
A June Monster poll found that 83% of workers are actively looking for a new job. And that percentage may even increase. Another yearly occurrence post-Labor Day is the “September Surge,” Salemi says.
“Usually the hiring in September is the result of job seekers ramping up their search that was perhaps dormant in August when they may have put their job seeking on pause while they were on vacation,” she says.
If you're returning to the office today I'd love to hear more about your experience and thoughts—as always my email is below.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
