Study: Remote workers are happier, stay in their jobs longer, and work more hours than on-site employees

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By Brit Morse

In recent years, businesses increasingly have offered remote work arrangements to keep employees happy and productive. Now, a new study has quantified just how appreciative remote workers really are–and how much your company stands to benefit.

Video conferencing company Owl Labs surveyed 1,200 U.S. workers between the ages of 22 and 65 for its 2019 State of Remote Work report, and found that employees who regularly work remotely are happier and stay with their companies longer than on-site employees. Of the more than 1,200 people surveyed, 62 percent work remotely at least part of the time.

In the study, released on Tuesday, full-time remote workers said they’re happy in their job 22 percent more than people who never work remotely. The reasons respondents said they decided to work remotely were better work-life balance (91 percent), increased productivity/better focus (79 percent), less stress (78 percent), and to avoid a commute (78 percent).

Not surprisingly, Owl Labs also found that employees are more loyal to companies that offer them increased flexibility. The remote workers surveyed said they’re likely to stay in their current job for the next five years 13 percent more than on-site workers did.

Not only are remote employees happier, but they are prepared to work longer hours, according to the report. Remote workers said they work over 40 hours per week 43 percent more than on-site workers do.

The report also revealed other differences between remote and on-site workers, finding, for example, that remote workers were more than twice as likely to earn more than $100,000 per year. And the higher they were on the corporate ladder, the more likely survey respondents were to have the privilege of working remotely: The job levels with the greatest percentages of remote workers were founder/C-level (55 percent) and vice president (46 percent).

 

Source: Inc.com

Leadership assessment: Do men and women influence differently?

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By Darleen DeRosa

Do men and women lead differently in the workplace? Based on much of the research, the short answer is “yes.” Although the gender leadership differences often align with the stereotype that women lead with a more interpersonal style and men with a more task-oriented style, it appears that gender does play a role in leadership style and preferences.

Because a leader’s success often depends upon their ability to gain the support and cooperation of people who frequently have competing priorities or conflicting goals, OnPoint Consulting wanted to understand what gender differences, if any, exist in how leaders use influence. To help answer this question, we used a 360° feedback questionnaire to collect data on the influencing skills of 223 leaders (116 men and 107 women) across organizations and industries.

While the data pointed to some significant differences in the approaches men and women use to gain others’ buy-in and support, we also uncovered some surprising similarities. The following is a summary of our findings.

Most Effective Influence Tactics
Our previous research on influence identified 11 influencing tactics used by the most effective managers. We then grouped these tactics according to their effectiveness in gaining others’ support and commitment—most effective, moderately effective, and least effective tactics. The four tactics that are most effective in gaining commitment from others are: Continue reading →

Playbook for stockpiling AI talent: Buy, borrow, build

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By Clint Boulton

Many IT leaders will tell you hiring tech talent is right up there with culture change as a chief hurdle to business transformation. Finding enough software engineers, Scrum masters, DevOps leaders and other potential change agents remains a burden. But experts agree the top challenge is hiring experts in data science, including those with machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence skills.

From healthcare to financial services, every sector is embracing some form of AI as a core business strategy. Eight-four percent of 500 business leaders surveyed online by consultancy EY in 2019 said that AI is critical in facilitating efficiencies and reducing costs, gaining a better understanding of customers and generating new revenues.

But the road to success depends heavily on the talent pool, as 31 percent of those same leaders said that a lack of skilled staff is the No. 1 barrier to AI adoption.

Here experts share their experiences with mining AI talent and provide tips for how CIOs can lure the right mix of data scientists, ML engineers and AI experts. Continue reading →

Should I stay or should I go?

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The topic of counter offers is an interesting one. I am sure you have seen articles and thoughts about the subject and they are usually one person’s perspective on the topic. For a somewhat different approach, we’ve reached out to people in our network to gain their thoughts and perspective on the topic.

 

 

We asked:

You have just received an offer to join a new firm. You are giving notice to leave your current position and your employer makes a “counter offer” to keep you from leaving. You start to think about whether or not to take that “counter offer.”

 

Not a big fan of counter-offers.  In my experience, in addition to the conscious decision to leave there is an almost subconscious detachment of the person from their current role and organization.  So even if you counter-offer to get someone to stay, a significantly high percentage of people end up leaving within a year or two anyway.

Having spent most of my career in high growth companies, if somebody is going to leave for a reason that is “counter-offerable”, they probably weren’t fully committed to your journey to begin with.

Paradoxically (perhaps), I have found that when people leave for something that turns out to be a mistake, taking them back results in a team member that more fully appreciates the opportunity so the engagement and commitment leave they come back with is that much higher.

Mark Trepanier,  Chief Operating Officer,  transformAI

 

For me it is about ‘why’ are they looking to leave. We had a high-potential developer communicate he was leaving last year. He was leaving to join Disney. On the surface you might say ‘wow, that’s a great company’. But he is a developer in a SaaS company leaving to join a big company to write code for internal use. Didn’t seem like the right career move. I got involved, talked to him about why he would leave / why he might stay and we created a reason for him to remain and now 8+ months later it’s been a win for both. Might he leave down the road. Sure. If he does and when he says it is time to go, I offered to connect him to every CTO I know.

There have also been other times when I have chosen to pass on a counter.  If it is just about money and it is going to raise it’s head again, I’d rather part ways now.

Jay Ackerman, President & Chief Executive Officer at Reveleer

 

What do counter offers tell us about the individual employment relationship?  That a counter offer is made reveals something about the employer as well as about the employee.

On the employee side, has the employee failed to effectively demonstrate his or her value to the organization?  In the current corporate world, we are each trustees of our own assets, and we have to be ready to demonstrate our current and future value to our employers.  Sometimes in the rush to make deadlines for deliverables, we fail to remind the organization how that deliverable was pulled together and the experience and care that went into it.

The first question I ask recipients of counter offers is why they resigned and if they failed to convey their restlessness and feeling that they were not valued.  If that is part of the problem, what behavioral changes will be necessary to see that it doesn’t happen again.  If it is not reasonable to expect that behavior will change, it may be wise to reject the counter offer, but doing so without changing the employee’s mind set may mean the pattern will be repeated in the new job.

Finally we should also question whether the employee failed to groom a successor and the counter is just a stop gap until a successor can be trained up or found.  If that situation exists, the long-term prospects for the employee are not great.

On the company side, counter offers frequently come about because management is not listening to its employees and pro-actively developing employees’ careers.  Again, succession planning may be faulty and that is why the counter is generated.  The immediate boss may be weak or uncaring.  Unless some organizational change is made, the employee will have the problem all over again.

Unless the root causes of the resignation and counter offer are understood, accepting a counter seldom solves any of the longer-term problems.

One exception to the balanced equation problem described above occurs when the central problem is pay.  If the employee has been straining for additional pay, and salary administration guidelines preclude a substantial increase, a counter offer with a substantial increase may be a solution that will be endure.  The employee will be satisfied in the medium term with the new number, and the company will realize that the finding, retraining and lost productivity costs entailed with a new employee exceed by far the raise that was contained in the counter offer.

Lowell Williams, Executive Director, Contingent Worker Center of Excellence at KPMG, LLC

 

 

We hope you find these perspectives interesting. If you would like to share your thoughts on this for future blogs, please let me know.

Sincerely,

Larry Janis, Managing Partner I Integrated Search Solutions Group

P-516-767-3030

Email: janis@issg.net

ISSG I Twitter I LinkedIn

 

Are You Pursuing Your Vision of Career Success — or Someone Else’s?

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by Laura Gassner Otting

You’ve checked all the boxes. You’ve graduated from the right college, held the right internship, flourished in the right graduate program, and landed the right job at the right company. You’ve followed the path that everyone else told you would be the one to lead to success — to your dream job — only to find that your dream job doesn’t feel so dreamy after all.

The good news is that you aren’t alone. Across each generation, the realization that success hasn’t brought with it the expected happiness has created a zeitgeist moment where conversations about purpose, fulfillment, and satisfaction reign supreme. In fact, a 2015 study by Gallup showed that only one-third of the American workforce feels actively engaged in their work.

Each generation is experiencing its own work identity crisis, trying to determine why their work isn’t working for them. Millennials — social media natives who have never lived separate lives at work and at home  —  don’t look for work-life balance, but rather work-life alignment, where they can be the same person, with the same values, at home and in the office. Boomers are turning the standard retirement age of 65 at the rate of 10,000 per day, but are not ready to put their hard-earned toolboxes on the shelf to gather dust. One-third of Americans over the age of fifty —nearly 34 million people — stated that they were seeking to fill their time with some professional (paid or unpaid) purpose beyond just the self. GenXers, finding themselves caught between raising children and nursing aging parents, are looking for work that contributes to managing these demands rather than working against them.

While these generations may differ in terms of what’s most meaningful to them, across each generation, meaning matters. Continue reading →