Rajesh Varrier is EVP and head of digital experience at Infosys. Views are the author’s own.
With many companies now requiring workers to go back to the office, the jury is still out as to whether full time in the office or hybrid work arrangements work better. However, we have learned that there are definite perks to instituting hybrid work which include retention, business growth and a more diverse workforce.
In fact, the Infosys Knowledge Institute’s Future of Work report reveals that companies who have embraced hybrid working are more likely to hold on to their staff. And the research additionally found that strong retention growth is linked to increased revenues.
During tough economic times, businesses need to be in the best possible shape to weather the storm, and companies that make an effort to retain staff — and thus institutional knowledge and experience — will be better placed than those that let valuable staff trickle away.
The best way to hold on to workers is to be flexible about the return to the office. And businesses know this: 73% of respondents to the Future of Work survey, who range from the C-suite to middle managers, said flexible or remote workspaces will be the arrangements they expect to grow in their organizations.
Companies are already clear about the need to attract and retain talent. While some businesses are switching over to more flexible working practices because of a change in operating models, the shift is mostly driven by candidates saying they prefer to work remotely. The research found that 65% of respondents are hiring remote workers because of this change.
It’s not just about hiring workers and giving new staff what they prefer in terms of flexible working. The smartest employers also work with existing staff to re-skill them — and our research found that re-skilling existing talent is correlated with stronger profit outcomes than measures such as extreme automation.
Similarly, looking to diverse pools of talent is an important part of building — and retaining — a valuable workforce. Our research has found that businesses need to look outside their usual pool of prospective employees. We found three talent sources that are linked to business growth: external skills marketplaces, universities and community colleges such as polytechnics or vocational programs.
These sources of talent are together associated with a profit rise of 3.9 percentage points, and a rise in revenues of 2.4 percentage points. This adds up to an additional $503 billion in revenue and $145 billion in pre-tax profits across the markets we surveyed — the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Australia and New Zealand.
This is low-hanging fruit that many companies could pluck, but are not yet doing so. We found companies are actually decreasing use of community colleges as a talent source. Organizations that want to recruit retainable staff should look to community colleges as a priority for talent acquisition.
Businesses that want to retain the best workers and get the best out of those workers will also have to focus not only on the working environments — the office vs. home vs. shared workspaces — but also on the way people are employed.
All of this adds up to creating a human-centric workplace, one that makes being part of the business an attractive proposition for valuable workers, whether they’re new hires or established staff members.
This means flexibility in how and where people work, creating opportunities for staff to learn new skills, and creating the conditions that allow your workers to thrive.
The old office may well be on life support. But businesses can thrive and grow their profits and revenues by keeping up with the evolving expectations of the workforce.
