Talent Wars Are About More Than Compensation

Companies are ferociously competing for talent like never before. In the year following the onset of the pandemic, 3% of the workforce has resigned in what many have called the Great Resignation. According to Sanjay Rishi, Americas CEO of Work Dynamics at JLL, employees are looking for opportunities with organizations that are ideologically similar.

“Individual purpose is becoming aligned with organizational purpose, or at least individuals are seeking that alignment,” Rishi tells GlobeSt.com. “While salary and compensation used to be a big driver, people are now looking at an organizations value and purpose in a very different way.”

Employees are looking for responsible workplaces. Diversity and inclusion initiatives, equity programs and sustainability have become as important as compensation and benefits packages for new and prospective employees. “People are very conscious about diversity, and people don’t want to be associated with companies that aren’t making a difference,” says Rishi. “Companies have to be inclusive from all dimensions of diversity, from women to Black professionals to Hispanics.”

After the pandemic, health and safety are important to prospective candidates. Employees want to be assured of air and water quality. “It is more about feeling safe,” says Rishi. “We are going to have a hangover well passed the pandemic about how safe we are or how close we are getting to other people.”

Companies are meeting these demands, and they want clients to know. “We are getting demands from our clients on air quality,” adds Rishi. “They want to publish and have screens that talk about air quality on site.”

While there is some concern the employees resigning en masses are leaving the workforce indefinitely, Rishi says that is a small segment of the trend. “There is a segment of the population that is really questioning their purpose, and that is leading them to say that they are going to leave the workforce or do something else,” he explains. “However, that is not a significant majority of people.”

In the same way that companies have used luxury office amenities in the past to attract and retain talent, social programs are now serving that purpose. “People were amenitizing offices to be attractive in a different way,” says Rishi. “Amenitization won’t go away, but it is getting enhanced with all of this new information.”