Employees, employers at odds over changing work norms

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Work perception difference widens between employees and employers during pandemic

By Anna J. Park

A recent international survey has shown that employees and employers have vastly divergent attitudes on working policies that have emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While 64 percent of employees believe their productivity has increased with the change to more flexible work patterns during the pandemic, 41 percent of employers think work productivity has dropped due to those same conditions according to EY's "2022 Work Reimagined Survey," which polled over 17,000 employees and 1,500 employers across 22 countries.

Twenty-two percent of employers say all employees must return to the office five days a week, while only 14 percent of employees said they want to come back to full-time office work. Eighty percent of the surveyed employees responded that they prefer a hybrid working policy including two or more days per week of working from home.

Also, while 72 percent of surveyed employers expressed concerns that the new work plans would cut down their workers' competitiveness, only 56 percent of employees agree with the idea.

The global report also stated that the era of "The Great Resignation" has come, due mainly to the accelerated changes in global economic and labor conditions.

Employees now feel less constrained to leave their jobs, as 68 percent of the surveyed workers said they witnessed an increased turnover rate. Forty-three percent of the polled employees also said they're willing to quit their current job within a year for the sake of a higher salary, career development or more flexible work conditions. It is a huge change in their perceptions in just a year, given that only seven percent of the employees polled in last year's survey stated that they were willing to quit their job within a one-year period.

The divergent perception is also evident in that 42 percent of employees think a salary raise is required for companies to keep their employees, while only 18 percent of employers agree to the idea.

By age group, millennials and Generation Z employees expressed the highest rate of intention to quit their jobs within a year, at 53 percent of those surveyed. By work category, 60 percent of employees in the information and tech industries were found to have the highest rate of possibility to leave their job within a year.

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