Y’all the Great Resignation has scared the pants off of corporate America. No longer can they get away with teasing ping-pong tables and elusive “work-life balance” that we all know is heavy on the work but light on the life. Go figure, once going to the grocery store could literally kill you, it’s like everyone woke up at once and realized that there’s more to life than being tethered to a desk for eight — or in your case, probably closer to 12 — hours a day, five days a week, 50 weeks a year until you drop dead of a heart attack at 53. So thanks for that, Rona. If there’s one good thing to come out of the last year and a half, it’s that. Well, good for everyone who isn’t an employer, anyway.
Deloitte U.S. CEO Joe Ucuzoglu was on CNBC’s Squawk Box yesterday and the big takeaway is that companies the firm surveyed have finally got the memo that they will start bleeding people if they don’t give them what they want. Right now, what the majority wants is not to be forced back to the office, he says.
“There’s a tension between the desire of some leaders to bring back a preponderance of in-person work and a yearning of many in the labor force to preserve the level of flexibility,” he said. “This is not an all-or-nothing, though, and what we’ve been talking a lot about with respect to a hybrid model is bringing to life the best-of-both-worlds models.”
While he’s speaking broadly about corporate sentiment in general, he also briefly discussed his firm’s people and how they feel about returning to the office. I’m curious how many of you Green Dotters out there agree with this:
Ucuzoglu said a “very large proportion” of the company’s employees are yearning to come back to the office and be with their colleagues. However, he said, return-to-office plans will be a gradual process with employees acclimating at a pace they’re comfortable with.
“There is a realization with the delta variant surging that Covid will probably be with us for some time. It’s not going to go away cleanly on some specific date,” he said, which means companies are tasked with trying to create “the environment in which the vast majority of your people will feel confident getting back together and co-locating.”
Given the firms’ fight for talent and the documented Big 4 exodus currently underway, it seems like they’ll need to tread carefully whatever they do or they risk scaring too many people off, people who they can’t afford to lose. And for you all it means that if you don’t like how your firm handles the Great Reopening, just look elsewhere. It’s a workers’ market after all. Or so we hear.
Watch the full clip here:
Deloitte U.S. CEO says hybrid model should ‘bring best of both worlds’ to meet employees halfway [CNBC]
Related article:
F*ck the Firms, It’s Your Show Now
Ironic US Deloitte CEO states that yet no raises were given lastyear as a matter of policy in Canada. Hmmmm absurd working hours for employees, no raises, what could go wrong. Yet Deloitte had the best revenue year ever in its history.