A little less return to work, more work landscape today.
Microsoft is reportedly doubling its global budget for merit-based salary increases and increasing its range for annual stock-based compensation by at least 25% for employees at the senior director level and below. This is after Amazon doubled its maximum base pay range earlier, as well as granting more RSUs, or restricted stock units, to employees.
Business Insider reports on the “unsustainable” nature of tech industry compensation. I was quoting the piece.
Snap, Pinterest, Wayfair, Uber, and DoorDash, doubled or even tripled the number of RSUs granted in the same time frame. Roku’s RSU grants surged in the first quarter, up more than 3,000% from a year earlier.
“It is completely unsustainable,” said Aalap Shah, a managing director at Pearl Meyer who advises companies on compensation plans. “It’s really affecting some of the smaller companies, but even some of the larger companies because there always seems to be someone larger or willing to go deeper.”
Meanwhile, a new survey of employers indicates the change to work is happening — they plan to allow an average of 2.3 days per week at home up, from about 1.5 in summer 2020.
The Wall Street Journal gets into the game, too, reviewing the tension between workers and employers. One story – the resignation of Ian Goodfellow, a director of machine learning at Apple, in part over the return-to-work policy of the company. Further noted – how competitors are using it as a recruiting tool.
Just on cue, Apple is slowing its hybrid return to the office. As reported by The Verge, a memo to employees states that “we are extending the phase-in period of the pilot and maintaining two days a week in the office for the time being.” For those who are in the current two-day-per-week pilot, Apple said that if they feel uncomfortable coming into the office, they will again have the option to work remotely. Additionally, the company is enforcing mask mandates within some stores and office settings as COVID cases surge.
To give some context to the landscape, Microsoft, in its 2022 Work Index Trend report, found that 43% of employees are somewhat or extremely likely to consider changing jobs in the coming year, up from 41% in 2021. Also, 52% of Gen Z and Millennials might change jobs this year, up by 3% in 2021.
A survey of 1,000 UK knowledge workers by messaging platform Slack found that just over a third (37%) felt anxious or stressed about returning to the office.
Half of this group (49%) cited the potential impact on their work-life balance as their leading cause of concern. Another 49% highlighted apprehension over the associated costs of working from an office, such as travel and food expenses.
A recent study of US office workers conducted by Citrix found that 92% of employees are concerned about the rising cost of commuting, with 57% of employees wishing to work from home to avoid these expenses.
Why do we care?
Nothing like a good market correction, a pandemic shift, and new technology to uproot everything, huh?
Savvy employers know they shouldn’t spend any time fighting their employees when the market is tight. I don’t buy into the noise I’ve been hearing about the market being down, causing power to shift back to employers – and that’s because most employers are running focused-on-basics businesses. If you run a business that needs to make a profit, not just grow, then you’re not trimming.
We see corrections because compensation is still required to bring in talent… and combine that with the power employees have over where they work.
You have to make a deliberate set of investments here – and helping clients with that, well over and above the technology stack, is where the real value is.
