Employer flexibility is crucial. But workers want full-time jobs, not gigs. They expect their pay to rise. Most importantly, career development is top of mind.
Those are just some of the findings of a study released last week by ADP Research Institute, which tracks worker sentiment worldwide. Even with the COVID-19 pandemic lingering, workers all over the world seem less concerned about contending with present challenges and are most focused on what’s next.
“While flexibility and mental health are still recurrent — and I think permanent fixtures in the workplace — what is dominating this year’s report is career progression,” says Nela Richardson, ADP Research Institute’s chief economist.
The study, “People at Work 2023: A Global Workforce View,” found that workers still care most about salary and job security, but they care a little less about both of those than they did last year. Career progression was the standout, with 40% of workers saying it matters most in a job, compared to 23% in the previous year.
“Workers now have their eye on the ball, on the ball of the next phase of their career,” says Richardson. “We’ve gotten through that shock of the pandemic when people were just trying to grapple with this new world of work. Things have stabilized quite a bit, and now it looks like the global workforce has turned the corner … and is looking at ‘how do I progress my career?’”
ADP surveyed more than 32,000 workers in 17 countries to find out employees’ attitudes toward work. Here are some of other key trends.
Worldwide, the majority of all workers expect their salaries to increase in the next 12 months.
A majority of U.S. workers (75%) say they expect their salary to increase over the next 12 months. The average expected increase over the next year is slightly higher at 6.7% than the average of actual increases in 2022, which was 6.5%.
It’s not surprising for workers to expect a pay increase forthcoming since the majority of workers worldwide (62%) received an increase in pay over the previous year. The rises in 2022 averaged 6.4% — under the International Monetary Fund’s global inflation forecast of 8.8%, which means, in real terms, workers received a slight pay cut.
Workers are less likely to trade their full-time jobs for the flexibility of gig work. That’s because the alternative arrangements born out of the pandemic, such as remote and hybrid office-remote work, have stuck around. Workers who want flexibility can find it.
A third of workers in the U.S. say they have complete flexibility, while 27% say they have some flexibility between the workplace and home, according to the report. About 37% still say they are in the workplace every day.
“One thing that the gig economy doesn’t match as well as is job security, which we know is important,” says Richardson, adding that, as a result of more flexible work arrangements, they are no longer boxed into their immediate area.
Looking ahead, nearly one-third of workers say they believe remote work will become the norm in their industry.