Survey Feedback - Remote working

We recently surveyed our wonderful universe of clients and candidates on all matters relating to remote working.?

The first question we asked was whether they believed remote working impacted their career development?

?It was made quite clear; 65.4% of respondents stated that they felt hindered in their ability to professionally network and they have likely missed out on career opportunities whilst working from home.

The ability to formally and informally network is something that is closely related to career development as many opportunities are informally socialised in this way, both within organisations and externally to broader social and professional networks.?

Do you feel you may have missed opportunities by working remotely?

While many companies will formally advertise all vacancies on their internal careers pages or intranets, many more people apply for internal jobs as the results of conversations, whether at the coffee machine, the lift or the food stand in the lobby.

When people talk, opportunity happens. 45.8% of the respondents agree with this sentiment.

Until people are comfortable coming back into the workplace on a semi-regular basis, this is unlikely to change.

Thirdly we asked, Do you feel you have missed out on professional learning and development by working remotely?

A more surprising result from our survey was that people did not feel they had missed out on professional development as a result of working remotely. In fact, 72.9% of respondents were either ‘unsure’?or felt they did not miss out on any professional development opportunities. This is contrary to research that tells us informal and observational learning is far more important for workers’ human capital development than formal training courses.

While you are in your home office you may be doing your job, making your calls and jumping onto Zoom, but you are not observing how others are working the way that you would if you were in the traditional workplace.?

Changes to the candidate pool

Finally, SEEK has informed us that applicant numbers are at a record low while there is a record high number of job opportunities being advertised, indicating that there is an imbalance in the job market.?

?This is caused by a number of things. People may be looking at the uncertainty in the world and thinking ‘I’d better stay where I am’, perhaps people have become disillusioned with the impersonal nature of online job board applications, or we have just become complacent working from home in our track pants? Either way, the sooner people can get back to socialising and networking some of these vacancies will start to fill and people will feel less like they are missing out.

Clearly there is contradictory evidence to unpack, but that is the nature of the current job market. When facing uncertainty our best advice is to talk to one of our specialist consultants.?

Contact Lawson Delaney on 03 9946 7300 or [email protected] to get in touch with one of our consultants for a confidential conversation about your career pathway.