Remote work could become a secret weapon in the battle for top talent

Citigroup, HSBC, Barclays, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are all among the companies that have mandated at least some workers return to work five days a week.

The office is not dead. But for some experts, remote work won’t die either. If anything, it will only become an advantage.

Remote work as a competitive advantage

For Kate Palmer, employment services director at Peninsula UK, a provider of human resources, employment law and health and safety services, if back-to-office mandates become even more common, companies that continue to offer flexible working models will start to really push them to recruit new staff.

“There’s a big race for talent,” she told Business Insider, adding that “attracting talent to a business is hard these days.”

Palmer said that if remote and hybrid work options make a business stand out as an employer of choice, it will likely start highlighting it in job ads and descriptions. The firm would probably raise it as an advantage in interviews to differentiate itself from the competition.

Daniel Wheatley, a reader in business and labor economics at the University of Birmingham, said applicants in a post-pandemic world probably just expect remote working to be part of the package.

Now, as high-profile employers like Amazon begin to reverse this norm, flexible working will once again become an important part of the recruiting process for companies that stick with it.

“This would have been very common before the pandemic,” Wheatley told BI, citing the pre-pandemic status of remote working as an advantage.

RTO policies could affect recruitment

The experience of working from home is different for everyone.

Some expressed feeling isolated from their peers and unable to adapt to online communication. A remote worker at the tech startup previously told BI that they eventually left their jobs because they felt less connected to their company after losing the personal confidence and camaraderie of being in the office .

For others, flexible working has become a game changer and one they can’t look back on. Many say they are more productive and are grateful for the money they save from cutting back on transportation, work schedules and, in some cases, even rent.

Wheatley said some employers will begin to revert to pre-Covid-19 working habits, trying to replicate what the office was like. In contrast, other companies will continue to embrace the benefits of flexible working.

The RTO’s strict mandates could be quite detrimental to recruitment, he said.

“I think there’s a lot of benefit from continuing this push for remote and hybrid work,” he said, adding that we may start to see an increase in the number of people applying to companies that offer these options.

Amazon declined to comment when contacted by Business Insider, but pointed to Jassy’s memo to employees, in which he said the company “continues to believe the benefits of being in the office together are significant.

“We have noticed that it is easier for our colleagues to learn, model, practice and reinforce our culture; collaboration, brainstorming and invention are easier and more efficient; teaching and learning from each other is more fluid; and teams tend to be better connected to each other,” Jassy wrote.