Flexiblility at the workplace ( the ability to work from anywhere) has emerged as the number one reason for employees to willingly forgo a raise, reveals Mercer’s Global Talent Trends 2023 HR leader pulse survey.

According to the survey, India Inc continues to identify an opportunity in enabling a skills-based organisation, addressing worker fatigue and increasing organisation adaptability, as the three main aspects of overall growth including that of employees. 

An upward trend post-pandemic has been observed in respect to supporting flexible workforces (expats, digital nomads among others), with 62 per cent of organisations indicating that they are supporting the needs of their mobile workforce better.

The survey observed that as many as 60 per cent of organisations understand the skills and talent development needs for today, but only 50 per cent of them have clarity on the nature and quantity of skills available for tomorrow, 

Therefore, human resources (HR) has a crucial role to increase companies’ ability to forecast for tomorrow’s skills and reskill today’s talent to stay relevant for tomorrow, it notes.

Amidst external challenging environmental situations laden with inflation, recession and tight labour market concerns, 45 per cent  of the companies in India are redesigning work with employee well-being in mind - ensuring realistic workloads, no-meeting days, and a positive work environment.

As per the survey findings, 93 per cent  of the respondents are focusing on how their benefit offerings can better support employee attraction, retention, and engagement in 2023.

Furthermore, it is seen that the majority of the companies in India are currently providing support for employees’ mental health and establishing innovations to help address health conditions including 21 per cent  of them investing in new health and risk protection programmes for the organisation.

“2023 will be a defining year as an optimistic and ambitious India looks to drive transformation amidst a BANI (brittle, anxiety-inducing, non-linear and incomprehensible) global environment. HR will have to lead the way in readying itself and the business for what lies ahead,” said Shanthi Naresh, Partner at Mercer Career India.

Naresh added that in an economically challenging situation, if organisations are looking for ways to identify non-monetary drivers that can engage and retain employees, then investing in supporting flexible workforces certainly seems to be an area of opportunity.

Every alternate year, Mercer conducts a comprehensive Global Talent Trends study that includes the perspectives of CXOs, HR leaders and experts, and employees.

A Pulse survey of HR leaders is undertaken every other year to determine whether the patterns from the previous year are still valid, where firms are making progress, and areas where there is scope of improvement. The current study is a pulse survey following up on the 2022 comprehensive Global Talent Trends study.

A total of 124 HR leaders participated in the pulse survey, representing approximately 800,000 employees across technology, auto, manufacturing, professional and financial services sectors.