Different working models and employee retention: a connection?

Home officehybrid working and in-person working are current issues that are being addressed almost at this moment every employee and employer deals with it. How would I like to work and how can I work most effectively? At the same time, the question arises for companies as to what measures are in place to retain employees, regardless of the working model pursued.

What is hybrid operation?

Hybrid working is a term that has become increasingly relevant. This can be understood as a flexible working model involving a mix of mobile working and office working. There are many different ones Hybrid working models.

what it is Employee loyalty?

Employee retention is important to keep employees in a company permanently through certain measures. There are six pillars of employee retention.

1. Work environment and work organization (e.g. hybrid working, flexible working hours)
2. Development opportunities (e.g. continuous training and further training measures)
3. Health, free time, well-being (e.g. health days, sports courses)
4. Company culture, communication (e.g. team events, employee surveys)
5. Employer branding (e.g. use of social media and employer rating portals)
6. Appreciation (e.g. work bike, travel allowance)

Connection between working models and employee loyalty

The study by HEUTE and MORGEN GmbH examined the connection between working models and employee retention in their trend study Presence, home office or hybrid? Work situation and employee retention in Germany examined. 1,500 professionals who had been working with their current employer for at least two years were interviewed. The focus was on their experiences with different working models and the factors that can influence employee retention.

It turns out that the majority of respondents (62%) currently work in person. Only 6% of employees surveyed only work from home. The remaining participants (32%) said they work in a hybrid way. This means they work alternately in the home office and in person. The 62% of those who work themselves can be divided into three categories:

• “Compulsory presence workers”: they can work in person only for objective reasons
• «Convinced Workers in presence”: They want to work only in presence
• “Dissatisfied face-to-face workers”: they can only work face-to-face, but would like to work more in the home office)

Among those who work on construction sites, more than half are «obligatory construction site workers» (69%), followed by «convinced construction site workers» (19%). However, 12% also said they were among the “dissatisfied presenters.”
Regarding employee loyalty, a loyalty index was used with a scale from 0 to 100 (0 = no employee loyalty, 100 = particularly strong employee loyalty). It can be seen that employees who only want to work in person (“strong presence workers”) have the highest loyalty (obligation index = 75) towards the company. This is followed by “people with mandatory presence” (bond index = 67). The “Unhappy Populations” have an index of 52.

Hybrid workers can also be divided into two categories:

• “Unfortunate hybrid”: the number of days of working at home is less – and rarely more – than the individually desired level
• “Happy hybrid”: The percentage of days working at home is exactly at the individually desired level

What is striking is that more than half declare themselves «unhappy hybrids» (62%). Consequently, they also indicate a lower bonding index (bonding index = 61) than “happy hybrids” (bonding index = 71).

What does this mean in practice?

It is necessary to identify important drivers of employee loyalty, who also work at a physical distance. Regardless of their working models, employees said the following factors contribute to retention:

• Your opinion matters in the company
• Employees receive adequate consideration in work planning
• Tasks are distributed equally within the company

It also shows that the more events (digital or in-person) are offered, the more positive the respondents are. Face-to-face events are the preferred form for all working models.

Even more important is the planning of staff deployment

Staff deployment planning software is an important part of maintaining an overview of different working models. You can store a wide variety of templates and assign them to respective employees. This allows you to plan automatically and at the same time take into account when, which employee works and where. This is especially important for companies that have fewer jobs than employees. In this case, you should plan exactly who will be present and when.

Conclusion

The world of work is becoming more flexible, as are working models. However, in order not to lose track, it is important to archive work patterns in a personnel deployment plan. Furthermore, it is essential that a company considers what measures can be used to retain employees.