Remote work is essential to employee retention, new survey finds

Is your company looking to resume “normal” office life soon? To avoid costly retention issues, you may want to focus on flexibility.

Almost 30% of remote workers said they’d quit if they weren’t allowed to continue remote work, according to recent research from LiveCareer. And another two-thirds said they prefer to only work for companies that offer remote work options.

It’s a double whammy for CFOs. Not only do some existing employees claim they’re willing to walk if they can’t work remotely, many new candidates say they’d be less likely to consider your company’s open positions if you don’t offer work-from-home arrangements.

Keys for retention

Assuming employees aren’t bluffing and really will give notice, how can you avoid costly, time-consuming employee turnover and retention issues? 

The key to transitioning back into the office may be easing in and flexibility.

LiveCareer asked employees, if they had to go back to the office, how many days a week they’d like to be on-site. The most popular answer was three days (30%), followed by two days (25%), then one day (19%) and four days (9%). So, a half-remote, half-on-site arrangement may be something to ponder.

The survey also asked employees who preferred to stay home what would entice them to go back on-site. Some of the low-cost perks they cited were:

• more flexible scheduling
• a casual dress code, and
• more social time with colleagues.

It’s also worth noting that 50% of workers said they don’t get as much feedback remotely. So, providing more guidance could be another way to get employees excited about being back on-site and help with retention.

Along with implementing any new perks into your existing policies, be sure to make them part of your employee recruitment plan for future hires, too.