Laura Podesta, PR Manager at Fiverr joins Cheddar News. 

Fiverr Survey Finds 52% Want Employees to Return to the Office

if you're a fan of remote work chances are those days could be over. According to a new survey from five or 47% of bosses plan to change their remote work policies in 2023 with many of those companies pushing to get those employees back in the office five days a week. So joining us now to discuss is laura podesta pr manager over at Fiverr laura. Such a pleasure to have you here. Thanks so much for joining us. So what surprised you the most about the findings from the survey here. Hey, good morning baker. Thanks for having us. So what this survey was was 1000 managers nationwide as well as 1000 employees were questioned as to why exactly for the managers, why do they want employees back in the office? And employees were asked do they even want to return? So when it comes to the managers an astounding. One third said they want to have their employees back sitting in their seats in office because they want to have the ability to watch over them to monitor them. Another 1/4 of managers responded saying that they believe that employees, when they're in the office take shorter breaks. So this is a real big brother kind of response that we weren't exactly expecting. It shows a real lack of trust between managers and their subordinates. That's pretty alarming. And also, I mean according to the survey results, one of four managers, one of their employees Because they were paying too much just in real estate costs. Is that fair enough of a concern just how much the companies are losing by not having physical bodies in the office. Yeah, this is something that we had heard rumors about that bosses want to justify the fact that they own a building. Or perhaps that they are renting office space. And now we have the proof that 25% of managers want employees back just purely to justify the fact that they have a building perhaps in new york city or in another big city. So they want those employees to commute into the city and be there. I mean, obviously, this is sort of a tug and pull on the situation because that's clearly what the employers want. Employees have a completely different perspective on this. They actually say that they would consider quitting if they have to return full time. So how do you sort of think employers handle the situation? And do they budge on this if this was presented in a different way to them? I do think that they need to have more flexibility because as you mentioned, 42% of the employees who took part in the survey said that they would quit if forced to come back to an office five days a week. We're seeing a growing number of people over the last 2.5 years during this pandemic, do a lot of great work from home and a lot of them believe I don't need that sort of oversight that I would normally get in office. We're seeing a lot of people turning to freelancing to independent work. We're seeing a growing freelance workforce. So clearly people have trust in themselves and their own abilities to go off and and make money and do their own work on their own time without having a boss right next to them, looking at their computer screen, making sure that they are working. Yeah, so true. And this is why we've seen a lot companies continue to delay the coming back to the office because the fights that they have with a lot of the employees. What's interesting is it seems like the other alternative here is sort of the hybrid approach here because the survey by Deloitte, most gen Z and millennials want that hybrid or remote work sort of arrangement may be in the office for a few days work from home the other days. Is that sort of still seem like the viable alternative here, definitely going back to that word of flexibility. Because what we're seeing from this survey is that employees do not want to return. Many of them said there is no incentive that would get them back five days a week, something like 60% of the only incentive would be a salary increase. So managers have to look at data points like this fiber survey and others that are out there to show that there's a reason why employees do not want to return to the office that they're doing great work. And and this survey shows sort of that lack of trust um that managers still have. So it's really about going back to trusting the employee making sure that you have that line of communication open that the work is getting done and and then giving them the option to work flexibly remotely hybrid or in person whatever they would want. It's about listening. Yeah it's so interesting the trust angle that you're you're bringing up here because I feel like a lot of employees who work from home probably say they work more because they're on the clock. It seems like more because they're at their home. Let's talk about sort of the challenges and even the benefits here of remote work for both employees and employers out there. Well what was interesting about this survey is that there are a ton of employees who did say you know it's alright for me to work in office some days of the week because I do get a lot done. I am able to collaborate with my fellow colleagues. I am able to use the office infrastructure whether that's a printer or someone from I. T. You can come over to my desk and help me if I'm having an issue with the software. But there were a lot of employees who said I work well from home too. I'm able to work in time intervals that allow me to work hard for two hours, take a necessary break, work really hard for another two hours. What we're seeing is that employees do not want to be told what to do. They want their manager to trust that they the employee works best however they wish. So laura inflation and global uncertainty clearly taken a huge toll on these companies. And then even when we saw the september jobs report, we even saw a shrinkage in the in the labor force participation rate. We're seeing layoffs left and right, and a lot of these companies, because there's so much uncertainty of where the economy is going. So what's really the future of remote work? How do you sort of see this resolving itself? Well, I mean, here at fiber, we see the future as a whole lot of independent and freelance work. More people taking that leap of faith that they can find work and work on their own terms by going to a freelancing platform like Fiverr and and finding the jobs that they want to do and working as hard as they want to work, or taking breaks when they want to take breaks. So, we're seeing that growing freelance workforce year over a year, freelancers may something like $247 billion last year. Fiber keeps track every year, and that's the highest that freelancers have ever made. So, I I not not everyone is going to be turning to freelancing, but people are going to be looking for other options to make sure that they get that work life balance that they've had over the last 2.5 years and to be able to continue that work life balance. Yeah. No I think you're spot on with that laura podesta Pr manager over five or thank you so very much for coming on and giving us your insight.