According to a report by EY, there is shift by employers towards an "untethered workforce".
Future talent strategies will focus on personalized experiences rather than traditional rewards and physical work locations.
The reason is to curb turnover – 38 percent of employees surveyed indicated they might quit in the next year, necessitating employer flexibility and talent flow management.
A positive culture is essential for a diverse and dispersed workforce, with culture accounting for 40 percent of an organization's talent advantage health score.
According to the source:
For instance, 38% of employees said they're likely to quit in the next year, which will require company flexibility and a plan for talent flow. This means untethered culture, expanded rewards and agile skill building will become more prevalent, the report found.
"Previous iterations of this survey showed the lenses through which employers and employees viewed the working world: employers driven mostly by cyclical concerns and employees fueled by structural transformation of how, where and why they work," EY experts wrote. "Those lenses appear to be fracturing, as old thinking is shown as too rigid to navigate new terrain." https://www.hrdive.com/news/an-untethered-workforce-is-the-future-ey/730140/ (Oct. 17, 2024).
Commentary
Undoubtedly, some employers and employees will be divided on the idea of an untethered workforce. We already see the divide regarding return-to-office mandates, especially in different industry sectors.
However, for employers, there are some benefits. An obvious value is cost-savings from rent (once the lease expires), but less obvious is the drop of employment practice litigation exposure; specifically, litigation related to harassment.
During the pandemic, as part of our RiskTrends™ database, we noticed a substantial drop in public source documents regarding charges of harassment. Harassment cases continued, but mostly in public and other industry sectors that continued to go to work (versus those with remote employees).
Physical interaction between employees increases the risk of harassment and bullying. When employees are in each other's space, they can ignore boundaries regarding a person's physical space and convey discriminatory messages face-to-face.
Verbal and emotional harassment and bullying can still occur remotely. For example, an employee might send a link to a hate site, but, at least for harassment, it is less likely to create a hostile work environment if the interaction with the work environment is brief and fragmented.
The final takeaway is that an untethered workforce may be the future because of cost savings, recruitment, and retention, but there are other subtle values as well.
