In April 2020, statistics released by the UK’s Office for National Statistics showed that 49.2% of adults in employment were working from home as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a recent research study we conducted 77% of people said they wanted to work from home Some or Most of the time in the future.
There seems to be little doubt that having sampled more home working that a high number of us will either want our current role to be more home based or may start to look for a job which allows this.
Better work life balance, less travel, contributing to a greener climate and more time with the family are just a selection of the benefits we have experienced.
Now as businesses examine the potential positive impact that more employees working from home could deliver from increased engagement and retention to reduced office costs, there is another significant further benefit.
I believe that the businesses who have had home working thrust upon them, can utilise this as a way to overcome long standing recruitment challenges where location is the barrier.
In almost all of the talent research projects we have conducted in the past 6 years, LOCATION, comes out as the top or in the top 2 reasons individuals do not want to work for an employer, regularly above brand or pay.
So, employers in cities and towns without a high concentration of the key and critical skills they need now have an opportunity to attract talent from anywhere, letting their brand, EVP and the role do the talking, not where they are based.
Over the past couple of weeks, it has been encouraging to present research to HR and Business Leaders which shows the high number of talented people they could engage with IF they implement more home working; in many cases 99% of the skills they need are based outside of a commutable radius of their office so wouldn’t normally feature in a potential candidate pool.
After all, if the role can be conducted at home, you could employ anyone, anywhere.
