Over the past 18 months, employers were forced to adapt to the changing environment and switch to a remote working arrangement. As life returns to some form of normality, so too can working arrangements.

Earlier in September we ran a poll on LinkedIn asking “What is your preferred working arrangement?” and the results are in;

What is your preferred working arrangement?

Poll Results (539 Votes)

  • Hybrid = 54%
  • Remote = 41%
  • Office = 5%

The majority of people would prefer a Hybrid model moving forward while 41% would prefer to work fully remote. A staggeringly low 5% of people want to return to working onsite 5 days a week.

From our perspective, we have found this to be leading to some challenges for employers who are currently looking to hire and want employees in the office. Candidates are disengaging and not entering the process as they simply don’t want to work onsite 5 days a week.

The Power is with Candidates

The power is with the candidates in the current job market, and they are demanding flexibility and employers that are not offering a flexible working arrangement are not attracting the top talent. We are seeing companies really struggle to fill vacancies and candidates are aware that there are other opportunities out there.

Unfortunately for employers, they are either going to have to be flexible instead of rigid in terms of working arrangements or they will have to pay a premium to get someone to work fully onsite. Even added financial incentive is not guaranteed to be enough as people highly value work-life balance and getting more time at home with their families.

The Future of Work

We must now wait to see if employers are going to offer the desired working arrangements moving forward or if there will be some discrepancy between what we want and what’s on offer.

Will we see large multinationals look to move away from their giant corporate offices? Will the workforce begin to spread more evenly across Ireland as the high cost of rent in Dublin could be avoided? It will be interesting to see what happens in 2022.

We are currently polling employers to understand the working model that they intend to deploy.