Here’s the Reason On-Site (not Remote) Workers are so Terribly Disengaged

LEAVE IT TO GALLUP to point out an obvious workforce fact that most people don’t talk about — “58% of American workers work fully on-site and can’t do their jobs remotely.”

Consider this the next battle in the war over remote employees returning to the office.

Gallup notes that this gets lost in the ongoing debate about remote work, and that many of the 58% on-site workers “are considered ‘frontline,’ meaning they interact with customers or manufacture products directly.”

They add this:

“During the pandemic, these required on-site workers were considered “essential” for keeping the economy — and society — going. And yet, Gallup’s data find that fully on-site, non-remote-capable employees have far lower engagement (29%) than fully remote workers (38%), hybrid workers (38%) and even on-site workers who are remote-capable (34%).”

On-site workers not bothered by remote workers

THE POINT OF THE RESEARCH was whether frontline workers — those who “have not experienced the benefits of remote work or hybrid flexibility — are less engaged at work because they don’t have the ability to work remotely or in a hybrid situation.

According to Gallup, “Our research suggests it does not, at least not directly.”

Here’s what they found in their research on this:

• Over half of on-site, non-remote-capable employees (57%) say they are “not at all” bothered that other workers are allowed to work from home some of the time. For those who are fully on-site but could work remotely, the resentment is higher: Over half say they are bothered, “a little” to “a lot” that other employees are allowed to have remote work flexibility while they do not have this option.
• When frontline workers were asked what type of flexibility they would leave their current employer for, working from home was one of the less-valued options (33%). According to Gallup, this desire for remote work or work-from-home options has declined significantly from 2022 to 2023, with 38% saying they would change employers for this benefit in 2022 compared with 33% saying the same in 2023.
• More importantly, frontline workers rate time flexibility higher than location flexibility, either because it seems unrealistic in their current career path or because they simply prefer working on-site.

Frontline workers want more flexibility 

YOU MIGHT WONDER where all of this is heading, and Gallup’s analysis on improving engagement for frontline workers concludes with this:

• Are employers favoring in-person employees? (From BenefitNews.com) What they found: “According to Executive Network’s 2023 Future of Working and Learning Report, 71% of senior HR leaders and 62% of senior business leaders agreed or strongly agreed that in-person workers are probably benefiting from a proximity bias, the tendency of leadership to show favoritism or preferential treatment to employees that are close to them physically.”
• ‘Return to Office’ declared dead (From TheRegister.com) What they found: “Efforts to convince remote workers to return to corporate offices appear to have stalled, based on data from the government, academia, and private-sector organizations. Stanford economist Nick Bloom … went so far as to declare the death of ‘return to the office’ – a campaign backed by those with real-estate commitments, commercial landlords, and cities deprived of labor force spending to undo the pandemic-driven pragmatism of working from home.”
• Needed — More incentives for return to work (From AP News.com) What they found: “There are some initiatives that could incentivize more employees to work in-person — or at least increase their satisfaction about already going into the office … Most hybrid workers (55%) say paying employees more for their in-office work would provide ‘a lot’ of encouragement for them to work in-person more often.”
• Mandatory return to office will apply to over 400K federal workers by January (From HRDive.com) What they found: “By January 2024, more than 400,000 federal employees will be required to be in the office for two or three days per week, research from JLL said. … The mandate would be new for at least 122,000 of those federal workers, according to the real estate services firm.”

All of this makes one thing pretty clear — despite the fact that the debate over remote work vs. on-site work has been going on for a while, it’s nowhere close to being decided anytime soon.

Holiday trends …

• What to keep employees? Don’t be a Scrooge, because holiday gift giving still matters even as employers cut back (From WorkLife.news)
• How to celebrate the holidays without inviting a lawsuit (From HRExecutive.com)
• Why holiday stress doesn’t need to derail productivity (From BenefitsNews.com)
• Stop giving horrible holiday gifts to your team! (From SmartBrief.com)

One more thing … Yes, a $4 check Steve Jobs wrote to Radio Shack just sold for $46,000

EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT Steve Jobs was pretty famous when he was living, and maybe more so since he’s been gone.

But here’s a reminder of just HOW famous Jobs is/was — a check that he wrote to Radio Shack for $4.01 on July 23, 1976 was sold at auction last week for $46,063. RR Auction, a Boston-based auctioneer that specializes in Jobs and Apple memorabilia, managed the auction.

The San Jose Mercury News added some details, writing:

“The check is made out on an Apple Computer Company account opened at a Wells Fargo branch in Los Altos. Listed is Apple’s first official address at 770 Welch Rd., Ste. 154, Palo Alto — ‘the location of an answering service and mail drop that they used while still operating out of the famous Jobs family garage,’ the (RR Auction) webpage says.”