The views of employees and their employers differ widely on how work should be structured in the post-pandemic world. This is what NTT concludes in a recent study, noting that greater use of data can improve the employee experience.
Many companies are currently seeking ways to operate in the post-pandemic world and provide the best work experience for their employees. NTT’s recent survey shows that employer and employee ideas on achieving the latter differ.
Employers see a rosy picture
Among other things, the research shows that a good majority of employers think that employees prefer to work in the office and are eager to return to the office. This is in contrast to employees, of whom more than two-thirds say they no longer want to work in the office full-time.
When it comes to employee well-being, the numbers vary as well. Senior management, such as CEOs, are more satisfied with the opportunities they offer employees in terms of ’employee experience’ than the employees themselves.
For example, CEOs are more likely to think that their companies are doing a good job managing work hours, preventing burnout and providing a good work experience. This contradicts the feelings of the employees and HR departments. The study finds that HR employees often report that employee well-being has deteriorated during the pandemic.
Employees’ responses also show that they have completely changed their minds about their working conditions during the pandemic. A mere third is convinced that their employer has their health interests at heart. Also, just over half of employee respondents indicate they would like to have an employer that advocates a better work-life balance.
Greater use of specialized employee tooling
According to NTT, these differences of opinion within companies exist primarily due to a lack of accurate data and insights about employee well-being. Nearly half of companies surveyed said they collect data on employee well-being through modern tools such as Verification of Employment (VoE) and workplace analytics in the form of real-time sentiment analysis. Yet, these tools remain less used than traditional employee surveys.
More insight into policies
NTT says more and wider use of modern tooling could give companies more insight into actual employee sentiment about the future of work. Moreover, said tools allow companies to measure how their employees think about both working conditions and desires and policy-related topics such as sustainability.
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