In 1926, Henry Ford popularized the 40-hour work week, but it wasn’t until 1938 that Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, requiring overtime to be paid to all employees who worked more than 44 hours a week. By 1940, the 40 hour work week became the legal standard.
Today, we take standardization of the work week and fair labor practices as a given, but the workplace continues to transform. The gig economy has taken over many marketplaces, and the workplace culture fails to take into account that when the 40-hour work week was developed, it was designed mainly for middle-class workers who had the benefit of a stay-at-home partner to take care of the household labor and children. Yet, employees today increasingly value flexibility, more so than trendy solutions like co-working spaces, personality assessments, and even subscriptions to mindfulness apps. As modern workplaces have failed to adapt to the changing needs of the American worker, more and more employees have quit their jobs, in a seismic shift dubbed “The Great Resignation.” As a global pandemic raged on for well over a year, numbers hit record highs in November of 2021, with 4.5 million people walking off the job, according to the Labor Department. Employers, as well as employee benefit providers, are searching for an understanding of the motivations behind this trend, and how they can best respond.
Greenwald Research, a leading financial services and employee benefits research firm, partnered with Response:AI to conduct a syndicated research study with 1,200 Americans, aged 25-74, who are either employed or left the workforce in the past year. Numbers were staggering, with 34% of respondents reporting an employment status change in 2021 (either changed jobs or left the workforce), and 39% reporting plans to do so in 2022. Despite these trends, former employees are eager to share their needs with companies, and data doesn’t lie. The key is flexibility. The changes most likely to keep workers in their current jobs center around flexible work schedules, unlimited PTO, and the permanent ability to work remotely. But as we all know, in the end, money talks. In this case, money in the form of a signing or retention bonus is one of the most attractive solutions to those in the workforce. Perhaps surprisingly, benefits like student loan repayment, college savings plans, childcare assistance, and pet insurance have less broad appeal. However, an increase in wages and bonuses, as well as flexible hours and work-from-home solutions, may automatically solve the same problems as those less appealing benefits.
This study was co-sponsored by five major financial services and employee benefits management companies. The study was designed and analyzed by Greenwald Research, while the Response:AI platform gave them the ability to quickly and cost-effectively reach this broad sample of Americans. In particular, the power of Response:AI to automatically tabulate the data and generate a fully-designed PowerPoint took weeks off the process of delivering insights from the survey. This was the 3rd syndicated study our team at Response:AI has run for Greenwald Research. Previous studies focused on life insurance and perceptions of financial security in response to the pandemic.
Lisa Greenwald, President of Greenwald Research, sums up the key benefits of this partnership: “Working with Response:AI, we are able to deliver highly customized syndicated surveys, quickly and cost effectively. The easy-to-use platform, coupled with the outstanding technical support of the Response:AI team, allows our researchers to focus on their key value-add, interpreting the findings in strategic recommendations for our clients.”
The key to any good company is knowledge of its customers and employees, and designing a survey with Response:AI allows you to access the data you need with speed, accuracy, and quality. Whether you need to test our new ad campaigns, survey a niche demographic, or find out the priorities of your clients, Response:AI has the solutions you are looking for at the price point you can’t resist. Click here to set up a demo today! And don’t forget to visit our friends at Greenwald Research for more information on this and other related studies.