On a recent call with 500 talent acquisition leaders, Kevin Oakes, CEO and co-founder of the Institute for Corporate Productivity, noted that the number one question they are hearing from applicants is how flexible the company is willing to be with work schedules. “How you answer that is going to impact your employer brand long-term—and all of this is part of culture,” Oakes says.
Employers need to think carefully about new employee expectations and act proactively in fostering a culture that fits that new reality. “I think it would be impossible to some degree to go into this [post-pandemic world] and still maintain the same culture,” says Stephany Foster, senior vice president and head of HR at QIAGEN, a global provider of molecular technologies.
Foster’s company decided to prioritize employee feedback in reshaping her company’s culture. “It’s all about listening,” Foster says. “We want to take the feedback we get and create an action plan to give back to our employees so they understand they’re part of building this culture—that it’s not just a top-down view of ‘Here’s what our culture is.’”