How Top Tech Talent’s Values Have Shifted Post-Pandemic

Standing out to top tech talent used to be all about the perks your business could offer. Tech companies offered amenities like yoga classes, gyms, restaurant-quality food, nap pods, game rooms, and more.

In the post-pandemic world, however, those types of perks don’t mean much to potential hires. The proliferation of remote work and the flexibility that affords employees in terms of where they can live, when they can work, and how work fits into their lives is much more valuable than any sort of in-office perk.

Why take a fitness class when you can work online and live near amazing hiking trails? Why would you care about a nap pod when you can work from home and nap in your own bed? Why would you want a ridesharing reimbursement when you don’t need to commute at all?

At a time when the competition for top high-tech talent is fiercer than it’s ever been, businesses are finding out that traditional perks just don’t cut it anymore. “At the end of the day, mental health and the ability to live your life and work—those are the main perks that companies should be focused on,” Sarah Vedas, Director of Employer Brand, Advocacy, and Social Marketing at Intel, says.

What Work Will Look Like After COVID-19

Opinions are split regarding how big of an impact working from home has on employee productivity. A recent study co-authored by researchers at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, predicted that working from home is here to stay.

“Our data on employer plans and the relative productivity of WFH imply a 5% productivity boost in the post-pandemic economy due to re-optimized working arrangements,” according to the research paper. They note, however, that only a fifth of this productivity gain will show up in traditional metrics because they don’t capture the time savings from less commuting.

Amazon, however, is making a push to reestablish an “office-centric culture” as quickly as possible, according to the Washington Post. At the moment, Facebook is returning to its one-day-a-week policy from before the pandemic.

Why Work-Life Balance Is So Important to Potential Hires

As policies continue to evolve, however, conversations around who gets to work from home and how often have become even more heated. Many businesses that don’t offer flexibility will find themselves with a retention problem.

Work-life balance has transformed from something you pay lip service to on your website to a core value you need to commit to sincerely. “What we’re hearing from talent now is they’ve been setting boundaries and expectations for themselves, and talent’s leaving—they know there are other opportunities,” Vedas says. “If you want to continue to hire and retain top talent, you really have to live into those values of mental health, wellness, and having that break from work to live your life.”

Coming out of COVID-19, there are a few things leadership can do to create a more supportive and sustainable culture:

• Offer flexibility, not perks. As we’ve seen, the things tech companies used to focus on to stand out no longer appeal to talent in the same way. Flexible work-from-home and time-off policies are everything.
• Focus on outcomes, not hours. As long as the work gets done and trains run on time, you don’t need to micromanage every minute of your employees’ time. Give your team the flexibility and autonomy to figure out how to accomplish their goals, and they’ll remind you why you hired them.
• Continue leveraging collaboration technologies. During the pandemic, we all went through the growing pains of learning how to work with new platforms and communication tools to keep things running smoothly. In a post-pandemic world, sticking with these tools will help work-from-home and in-office employees collaborate effectively.

To follow Sarah Vedas’s work in employer brand, connect with her on LinkedIn. For help identifying the values and culture, you want to create in your company, get in touch.