Review-Worthy Hybrid Work A Winner in the War for UK Talent

Key Findings

In December 2021, we named hybrid our word of the year after its usage grew over 1,000 percent in a year, but has hybrid work remained hot – or cooled off as the world approaches its post-pandemic normal? 

Since the end of 2021, Omicron-linked work from home restrictions have lifted and companies have brought their employees back to the office. At the same time, the share of workers in hybrid work has increased and more employees have indicated their desire to spend their days split between the office and home.

Glassdoor examined discussion of hybrid work and the job search activity of hundreds of thousands of reviewers in the UK between July 2020 and June 2022 to shed light on how hybrid work is impacting employees and their job hunting behaviours.

In line with the overall growth in hybrid work, discussion on Glassdoor about it has skyrocketed, increasing 1,600 percent in the last year. Hybrid-discussing employees are more satisfied and are less likely to apply for jobs after leaving a review, even after controlling for other factors that may be impacting application rates. These results suggest that a review-worthy hybrid work environment significantly improves workers’ experiences even beyond its impact on work-life balance and thus lowers the risk of attrition for their employers.

Hybrid Work: Here To Stay?

We first looked at discussion of hybrid work amongst current UK-based employees. The chart below shows the share of Glassdoor reviews mentioning the word hybrid since January 2020.

Although mentions of hybrid in a review is not a perfect proxy for hybrid workers, the strong correlation (Pearson’s correlation = 0.72) between the Office of National Statistic’s (ONS) statistics on the percentage of workers in hybrid work and the share of reviews on Glassdoor discussing hybrid suggest that the trends in hybrid reviews on Glassdoor reflect trends in the broader population of hybrid workers, particularly those with especially strong feelings.

During the first year and a half of the pandemic, discussion of hybrid work was nearly nonexistent as many workers had to either work in-person or at home full-time. Shortly after the end of lockdown number three, in April 2021, hybrid work discussion began growing steadily as workers returned to the office.

A slowdown in discussion at the end of 2021 was followed by an even steeper increase in both positive and overall discussion of hybrid work – reflecting the tenacity of hybrid work, even as many government and business leaders call for a broader return to the office. Over the last 12 months, the share of reviews containing mentions of hybrid have increased over 1,600 percent year-on-year. 

And like our past research shows, discussion of hybrid work remains strongly positive, with over 80 percent of mentions in the past year appearing in the pros section of reviews. 

Employees Who Discuss Hybrid Work are More Satisfied… 

Unsurprisingly, considering most mentions of hybrid are positive ones, hybrid-mentioning employees also left higher ratings on average than other employees.

Chart 1: Comparison of Workplace Factor Ratings for Hybrid and Non-Hybrid Reviews

As Chart 1 above shows, employees who mention hybrid in their reviews have significantly higher ratings in every single workplace factor, with the largest difference coming in ratings of culture & values and work-life balance. This result, along with the high share of reviews discussing hybrid positively, suggests that employees who find their hybrid work environments worthy of a Glassdoor review would agree with the sentiment that it supports a positive work-life balance – a result backed up by the ONS’s recent findings that an improved work-life balance is the most commonly reported benefit of working from home. 

…And Are Less Likely to Apply for Other Jobs

We also examined the job search activity amongst UK-based employees leaving reviews mentioning hybrid for the job they currently hold, looking at the probability that these employees clicked on a job on Glassdoor or began a job application within a week of their review. 

Though hybrid-discussing employees were less likely to both click on new jobs and apply to new jobs, the difference in job applications was starker. We found 22.1 percent of hybrid-mentioning employees clicked on jobs, versus 23.9 percent of other employees, with the former group 7.9 percent less likely to click on jobs. 

As the chart above shows, 2.4 percent of hybrid employees applied to a new job within a week of leaving their review, versus 4.3 percent of other employees – a 43 percent difference! 

Why Are Employees Mentioning Hybrid Less Likely to Apply to New Jobs?

While employees leaving hybrid reviews showed lower job search activity and left higher workplace ratings on average than other reviewers, could these apparent differences be the result of other factors rather than hybrid work?

For example, tech employees are both far more likely to be working in hybrid work environments (and thus use the word hybrid in their reviews) and leave reviews with higher job satisfaction, meaning that what may appear to be a link between hybrid work and high job satisfaction may instead be a result of working in tech.

To examine why employees mentioning hybrid were more likely to apply to new jobs, we ran several logit regressions to control for other factors like industry, overall job satisfaction, work-life balance rating and the quarter when the review was left. 

The results of all regressions indicated that mentioning hybrid led to a slight, though statistically insignificant, fall in job clicking rates and a much larger and significant decrease in application rates. Including all the control variables, a hybrid mention led to a 5.6 percent decline in the likelihood of clicking on jobs and a 41.3 percent decrease in applying for a new job within a week of leaving a review. 

Results were broadly similar across regressions, suggesting that hybrid work environments worthy of inclusion in a Glassdoor review may have a real impact on whether workers decide to apply for a new job – and further on, retention and attrition rates for their employers.

Conclusion

Mentions of hybrid work have grown steadily over the past year and show few signs of slowing down, suggesting that the hybrid work environment is here to stay for many UK workers. 

Mentions of hybrid work are associated with a significantly lower likelihood of applying to new jobs. While higher overall job satisfaction and work-life balance ratings also negatively impact job application rates, mentions of hybrid work have a significant impact even after controlling for these two variables, implying that a hybrid work environment worthy of discussion may result in lower attrition rates even above and beyond its impact on individuals’ work-life balance and general workplace happiness. 

Methodology

We first examined more than 527,000 reviews from current UK-based employees, comparing the percentage of reviews mentioning the word hybrid between 1 July 2020 and 30 June 2021 to reviews left between July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022. Mentions were considered positive if they were left in the pros section of a Glassdoor review and negative if they were left in the cons section.

We then linked search activity on Glassdoor with more than 230,000 reviews left by current full- and part-time employees between 1 January 2021 and 30 June 2022. Job clicking rates were measured as the percentage of reviewers in each group ( reviewers that mentioned hybrid  vs those who did not) who clicked on at least one job within one week of leaving a review. Application rates were measured as the percentage of reviewers in each group who applied to at least one job within one week of their review. Expanding the job search activity window to two weeks showed similar results, as did using average numbers of job clicks or applications instead of job clicking or application rates. 

We used logit regressions to measure the impact of discussing hybrid work environments on job clicking or application rates. We included several control variables: overall job satisfaction ratings, work-life balance subratings, past job search activity, time dummies and industry dummies. Overall job satisfaction, work-life balance ratings, past job search activity, the time dummies, and several industry dummies had a significant impact on the likelihood of applying for a new job within a week of leaving a review.  

The left-hand side consisted of one of the following measures of job search activity: clicking on at least one job within a week of leaving a review, clicking on a job within two weeks, applying to at least one job within a week of leaving a review, and applying to a job within two weeks – as the outcome variable. The right-hand side included a dummy variable for whether a reviewer used the word hybrid and various combinations of the control variables.

Since workers who frequently use Glassdoor might also be more likely to be working in hybrid jobs or use words like hybrid, we included a measure of past job search activity: the likelihood of applying for a job (or clicking on a job) between 21-28 days before leaving a review. We tried to choose a time period that was far enough away from the review to avoid capturing the impact of the hybrid variable but close enough to reflect general job activity. 

Time dummies for each three-month period between January 2021 and June 2022 (six in all) were included because hybrid work and job activity on Glassdoor (reflecting the tight labour market in the coronavirus recovery) have both increased a great deal since 2021, meaning that what may appear to be an impact of hybrid work may in fact represent a reflection of overall labour market trends.  

Significance was measured using a two-tailed difference of means test. Differences were considered statistically significant if their p-value was less than 0.05.