Investing in technology positively impacts employee experience

Future forum is a corporation focused on building a flexible, inclusive and connected way of working. Future Forum conducts research and convenes executives to design a human-centered and digital-first workplace. The forum’s latest research focuses on new workforce policy trends, based on a survey of 10,243 workers across the US, Australia, France, Germany, Japan and the UK over the last two months of the year. 2022.

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Here is the executive summary of the winter snapshot study:

• Flexibility builds strong organizational culture – Flexible workers — those who have the ability to adjust to where they work — are still as likely to feel connected to their immediate teams as or more likely to be office workers. room completely. And they are more likely to feel connected to their direct manager and their company’s values.
• Flexible counter spikes the burnout trend – Burnout is still on the rise globally, with 42% of the workforce reporting it — a slight increase (up 2%) from the previous quarter and an all-time high since May 2021, when Future Forum first begins measuring employee burnout.
• Flexibility is a key driver of productivity – Executives continue to cite reduced productivity as their second most serious concern when it comes to flexible work. However, flexible work continues to be associated with higher productivity, not less, with the greatest benefit among workers with flexible schedules.

Here are additional key takeaways from the study:

Technological innovators significantly outperform productivity laggards

How does investment in technology affect employee experience?

Research shows that people who work at companies they describe as tech innovators continue to report higher employee experience scores across all dimensions (compared to those who describe their employer as a tech innovator). their users are technology laggards), including:

• 1.6 times higher productivity score
• Scores 2x higher in concentration
• Score 2.2 times higher on feeling of belonging
• Score 2.8x higher on overall satisfaction

Technology also impacts burnout levels. Workers who think their company is lagging – defined as organizations that typically only use technology after it becomes mainstream – are 31 more likely to report feeling burned out at work % of those who say the companies they work for are innovators.

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Flexible schedule improves business results

When compared with workers who were unable to change their schedules, respondents with fully flexible schedules reported:

• 39% higher productivity
• 64% higher concentration

Conversely, a lack of schedule flexibility will significantly affect both retention scores and employee experience. Employees with rigid work schedules said they were “definitely” 2.5 times more likely to look for a new job in the next year than employees who were able to adjust their schedules. Compared with those with moderately flexible schedules, white-collar workers said they had little or no ability to schedule reporting hours:

• Work-related stress and anxiety 4.6 times worse
• Work-life balance is 2.6 times worse

Who has access to flexible schedules? 56% of desk workers say they have little or no ability to adjust their working hours to their established schedules. The data shows that schedule flexibility is still largely seen as a privilege or benefit of seniority, with executives more likely to have access to flexible schedules than who are not executives.

• 75% of executives have little or no constraints on their schedule compared to 41% of non-CEOs.
• Executives are almost 3 times more likely than middle managers and almost 4 times more likely than individual contributors to be free from schedule constraints.
• 81% of desk workers now want flexibility where they work, including the majority (56%) of employees who work entirely in the office.

• 59% of employees surveyed are willing to look for a new job next year, up 4% since the summer. Of those who said they weren’t satisfied with their level of flexibility, 75% said they planned to look for a new opportunity next year.

• 93% of employees want flexibility as they work, a trend continuing from Future Forum’s previous quarterly surveys. (However, as noted above, 56% of employees say they have little or no ability to adjust their working hours to their established schedule.)

Employees like to combine work arrangements

What drives people to want to go to the office? Two-thirds of all workers (67%) said they liked the arrangement combined with the option of accessing physical space. The top two drivers of employees wanting to work in the office were collaboration (33%), followed by building camaraderie (23%).

When looked at by job level, incentives to come to the office differed significantly between executives and non-executives. Executives rated spending time face-to-face with management 1.6 times more highly than non-executives. Non-executives value building camaraderie twice as much as CEOs.

To learn more about the Future Forum’s latest research on work policy trends and its impact on employee experience and work policy, you can visit This.