Companies looking to attract and keep staff should look to work/life balance

Companies looking to recruit and retain staff should look to more than pay and benefits says Spring, one of the UKís leading recruitment companies. According to ICM research commissioned by Spring, 80% of employees want a good work/life balance.

Director of Spring, Dave Pye, said: ìIt wasnít that long ago that people seemed to be prepared to work long hours for the rewards of their job particularly in the 1980s boom time. Similarly, just a generation or so ago people would have had low expectations of a job other than to receive payment for working hard. Now though it seems that people are looking more to a work/life balance where work provides the money to enjoy leisure time and hopefully more of it. These findings could have serious implications for companies looking to recruit in a competitive and candidate driven market but which are not prepared to be flexible when it comes to hours.î

The research also showed that three-quarters of workers (75%) said it was important to them that the company they worked for was ethical - politically, environmentally and socially. This differed from region to region with those people living in the East Midlands, the South West, Scotland and Wales being particularly keen to work for ethical companies. Residents of Yorkshire and London were less concerned.

Added Pye: ìMoney is still the most important factor in taking a job with 85% of people citing it as the main reason. However the softer issues of offering a good work/life balance and an ethical employer were surprisingly high and something I donít think we would have seen even ten years ago.î

And when it comes to bosses, honesty and respect were the attributes that were most important to workers.