Announcing the Workplace Intelligence report: New Research from Greenhouse and HRWins
4 mins, 7 secs read time
Research takes time, effort and a massive amount of resources. It also takes a lot of enthusiasm and passion. Today is the culmination of a long research journey to uncover how people really feel about the most prevalent matters related to work today.
That is why I’m excited to share the findings from Greenhouse and HRWins’ Workplace Intelligence Report.
What is it?
Created in collaboration with HRWins founder, analyst and researcher George LaRocque, this is the first report of its kind that surveys both employers and employees to get to the heart of what’s affecting our work lives. The findings of the report come from several research surveys that evaluated responses from over 1,300 businesses and 4,000+ employees in the U.S. and U.K.
The Workplace Intelligence Report started with an ambitious idea: analyze the most important aspects of the workplace and uncover the trends impacting it. While many reports strive to identify the trends affecting work and its future, we set out to understand how business leaders and employees alike perceive work today in the context of these trends. Our report sheds light on what is driving the trends and sentiment around work.
We set out to address two important questions:
- What’s causing businesses to take action on Talent-related issues?
- What is the perceived business value of addressing these issues?
What came through in our findings is that business leaders are caught between two disruptions: technological disruption and, correspondingly, the impact of cultural, demographic and societal shifts that are changing the workplace.
Both are happening at faster rates than anyone could have a chance to keep up with, let alone harness and leverage as an innovative leader. Each is impacting the expectations employees and leaders have of their workplace and the technology that supports it.
Show me the data
When you dig into the findings, you’ll see that the report looks at six topics:
- People Strategy
- Diversity & Inclusion
- Transparency, Values & Culture
- The Multigenerational Workforce
- Engagement vs Longevity
- Hiring & Onboarding
With so much data analyzed and tons of interesting findings (not to mention videos and intriguing workplace photos from around the U.S. and U.K.), let’s dip our toes into the Workplace Intelligence Report data with these two interesting stats:
- There’s no denying that People problems are business problems: 48% of business leaders feel that Talent-related challenges are their most important business concerns.
How do Talent-related issues stack up against other concerns in the business? According to our research, two of the top three business concerns are directly related to People matters – “Improving Workforce Productivity” and “Finding and Retaining Top Talent.”
It’s no surprise to see that improving workforce productivity is a top-of-mind business concern. Since 2010, labor productivity has been lower than at any previous time, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Finding and retaining top Talent is the second Talent issue that weighs on the minds of businesses. This topic is now headline fodder as we experience sustained record-low global unemployment and an increasingly challenging skills gap. Much of the list of business concerns becomes moot without staff in place who are ready to be productive.
- Employers should think twice before abandoning remote work policies, as 69% of employees surveyed are open to working remotely and feel it would improve their work and their personal lives.
Given employees’ desire for flexibility, distributed work arrangements can be an extra incentive for people considering whether to accept or continue employment with your firm. 54% of employers surveyed say they offer employees the ability to work remotely. Those offering remote work arrangements are providing a mix of part and full-time options for working from home or a remote office.
In recruiting and retention challenges, this appears to be a way for employers to compete where they can.
How else can I engage with the report?
The Workplace Intelligence Report lives on an interactive digital site that allows visitors to view different segments of data. Head over to see how we sliced and diced the findings to unlock interesting insights about Diversity & Inclusion, Transparency, Values & Culture, The Multigenerational Workforce and more. You can view the data by generational demographics, business role, industry, location and more.
There’s also a full, downloadable report with extended methodology and more detailed context around the findings and the trends they’re shaping in the current state of work.
What’s next?
This is just the beginning. George LaRocque will be authoring several guest articles on the Greenhouse Blog this year, diving into interesting trends and the different areas of focus the report includes. He’ll also be onstage at Greenhouse OPEN 2019 June 12–13 at the Jacob Javits Center, delving into insights around employee engagement and longevity.
Greenhouse and HRWins are hosting a webinar to dig deeper into Actionable D&I; Data from the Workplace Intelligence Report on Wednesday, March 27, at 1pm ET. Please register to attend.
Dinah Alobeid
is the Senior Director of Content and Communications at Greenhouse. She helps shape and share the Greenhouse brand story and keeps its audiences informed on company news and industry knowledge. Dinah has over 16 years of communications and content experience in the technology field and prior to Greenhouse, she built and ran the communications team at Brandwatch. She's an avid writer, dancer, foodie and book nerd. You can connect with her on Twitter or LinkedIn.