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🎉 Companies tracking office attendance? 👀

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Read time: 2.5 minutes

Good Afternoon Party People! 🎉

WOOO!! Welcome to the first Party of 2024! We’re so excited to bring you the latest in career news, layoffs, hiring trends, and memes.

PARTY PLAN 🎉

🏛️ Office attendance?!

🤨 Emerging job market concerns

👔 RIP work-life balance?

And, of course, MEMES!

MEME OF THE DAY

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Office Attendance?!

“Steve?”

Here!

“Sarah?”

Present!

A survey of 800 business leaders found that 8 in 10 companies are planning to track employee attendance in 2024. 95% of those companies say employees will face disciplinary action for not complying.

Productivity concerns are what’s driving the crackdown on attendance. Everything from bonuses to job security will be on the line with some companies.

33% of companies plan to fire employees who don’t go into the office when they’re supposed to. More than 50% say they’ll reduce salaries, benefits, and bonuses.

Companies have all sorts of methods for verifying attendance - badge swipes, wifi, under-desk sensors…UNDER-DESK SENSORS?!

Not at all creepy or dystopian.

Companies are also looking to incentivize RTO, rather than only punishing workers that don’t comply. 91% of companies plan to offer some sort of incentive for employees to work in the office.

The most popular incentives include happy hours, catered meals, upgraded office spaces, raises, and childcare benefits.

The ol’ carrot & stick method.

JOBS REPORT

Emerging Concerns With The Job Market

The November JOLTS report just dropped, and here’s what you need to know:

  • Job openings remained steady throughout the month, finishing at just under 9 million (8.8M) open jobs at the end of the month.

  • The trend of companies slowing down hiring continued as hiring rates slowly ticked down over the month.

  • Fewer workers are leaving their jobs voluntarily as quitting rates are also trending down (holidays likely played a role).

  • Layoffs have remained low and been equal to or even below pre-pandemic all-time lows.

The last few JOLTS reports have been extremely promising for the labor market, indicating that we were on track for a return to normal after the craziness of the pandemic and low interest rates over the last few years.

“A cooldown largely driven by a reduction in churn isn’t really a threat to the ongoing normalization of the market. But if more unemployed workers are out of work for longer, then the trend becomes much more troubling.”

Nick Bunker, Indeed Hiring Lab

This report shows that the labor market is still on the right track, but things could get a bit shaky if layoffs start to tick back up.

Tech layoffs were the big theme of ‘23. 1,183 companies laid off a combined 262,142 employees last year.

So far, 3 tech companies have laid off a combined 284 tech employees in 2024. Hopefully, the tech layoff trend doesn’t continue in the new year.

WORK

RIP Work-Life Balance?!

Wayfair CEO, Niraj Shah, is pushing for a change in company culture. But employees are already pushing back. According to an email sent to all employees, Shah wants to “blur the lines” between work and life and thinks more overtime from staff is “the recipe for success.”

You will sleep at your desk and you will like it!

“Working long hours, being responsive, blending work and life, is not anything to shy away from. There is not a lot of history of laziness being rewarded with success. Hard work is an essential ingredient in any recipe for success.”

-Niraj Shah, via mass email

While it is true that hard work is an essential ingredient to success, too much blending of work and life probably isn’t a good thing.

Since Covid, work-life balance has been a top priority for employees. A new report from Gympass surveyed 5,000 full-time employees worldwide and found that 96% will only consider interviewing for companies that “place a clear emphasis” on employee wellbeing. 

93% went on to say that wellbeing is more important than their salary, and 87% said they’d quit if a company doesn’t prioritize their wellbeing.

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