Businesses are now Offering Higher Pay to Employees who Agree to Come Back to Office
The pandemic allowed work-from-home to become a norm rather than an option available to employees in case of emergencies. But after the world went back to normalcy, employers started encouraging employees to get back to offices. Since a large number of professionals have become comfortable with the remote-working culture, businesses are now trying to lure them to the workplace with higher incentives. Following the shift in preferences, major companies like Boeing, UPS, and JPMorgan Chase are already mandating in-person work five days a week. But getting employees to work on the company's terms is not easy, since it's not just incentives they wish for, but they need flexibility and additional perks to ensure they sustain a work-life balance.
Convincing employees to work from the office is the main challenge as Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter highlights saying "Employers who can't offer flexible arrangements have to offer higher pay". Not just in the US, but people across the globe have been addicted and have found their comfort zone in a work from home setting. As per the numbers, in January 2024, around 29% of all workdays were still being done from home. The drive to offer employees work from the office is resulting in salaries for fully in-office jobs in the US going up. As per the numbers revealed by ZipRecruiter, companies are ready to offer an average salary of $82,037 for fully in-person roles by March 2024 which is a direct 33% hike as compared to last year.
Additionally, the data demonstrates a 29.2% pay increase for employees who shifted from remote to office settings. Pollak further says, "Among some employers, there can be a perception that remote workers are less productive. Many are also psychologically and financially invested in their corporate real estate – they want to fill their workplaces, at whatever cost". If bosses are really concerned about their employees they'll probably have to keep offering them bonuses and hikes for full-time in-person work for quite a while. Having discovered a work-life balance, a large number of employees have opted for remote work so that they can spend more time with family. This is why offering better pay that allows them to take better care of their families is a win-win for both employers as well as employee. The incentives-based approach is also a more effective alternative to the policy where some firms threatened to fire employees if they didn't come to the office.
As professionals will need to adjust to the office environment after a while, companies need to be flexible and make their employees feel valued and cared for. As per ZipRecruiter's survey conducted in March 2024, about 33% of the business-service jobs in the US give their employees the flexibility to work in either hybrid or remote work. Barbara Petrongolo, professor of economics at the University of Oxford recommends, "Workers still want flexibility, and there are plenty of jobs advertising the ability to work from home at least two days a week. So, in order to impose inflexible working conditions which are unfavorable to the employee, employers have to continue to pay more."