Work-life balance has soared in importance for workers around the world, becoming their top motivator and pushing pay into second place, according to an annual international survey of thousands of employees.
It is the first time that finding or keeping a job that fits in with the rest of their lives has outranked salary in the 22-year history of the international recruitment company Randstad’s annual review of the world of work, highlighting the corporate revolution caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Work-life balance was the highest-ranking factor for staff for their current or future jobs for 83% of the 26,000 workers surveyed across 35 countries, in line with job security (83%), and slightly ahead of pay (82%).
The research underscores the new baseline for the world of work, the Dutch company said, where workers demand more from their employers, even in the face of a challenging economic environment and technological changes.
Almost half (45%) of respondents said they had campaigned for better conditions at work, while almost a third (31%) reported having left a job because it did not offer enough flexible working.
“Work today is about more than just a pay cheque. Talent globally are looking for workplaces that align with their personal values, aspirations and circumstances,” said Sander van ‘t Noordende, the chief executive of Randstad.
“Compensation is still important but talent today have multifaceted expectations.”
Almost five years since Covid lockdowns sent office-based workers to their kitchen tables, spare rooms and sofas, the world of work has undergone a seismic shift, as hybrid working is far more common now, even if it is not possible for all jobs.
Shifting workplace demands and expectations is more common among younger workers, who value balancing their professional and private lives most highly, emphasising generational differences among colleagues.
Workers belonging to Gen Z – born between 1997 and 2012 – were most likely to rank work-life balance far above pay. Three-quarters (74%) of workers surveyed in this age group said work-life balance was their top priority, compared with pay (68%).
However, the significance of work-life balance and pay increased for older respondents; 85% of baby boomers – aged between 61 and 70 – ranked work-life balance highly, compared with 87% for pay, suggesting that income becomes more important as workers near the end of their professional lives.
Flexibility in when and where employees carry out their roles also appears to have become entrenched in organisations across the globe, Randstad found. The proportion of workers who said their jobs offer flexibility has risen significantly year on year, in terms of their working hours – which rose from 57% in the 2024 report to 65%, a relative increase of 14% – and their location, which climbed from 51% to 60%, a relative increase of nearly 18%.
Almost two-thirds of workers (64%) reported they were able to choose the intensity of their work, an increase on the previous year, suggesting that workplace flexibility has normalised, Randstad said, as employers have given their staff more freedom to fit their jobs into their lives.
Even in a time of greater flexibility and home working, the vast majority (83%) of employees said they wanted their workplace to provide them with a sense of community. Workers are also not willing to remain loyal to their employer if they feel they do not belong in an organisation, and more than half (55%) said they would be prepared to quit for this reason, a substantial rise on a year earlier (37%).
Workers in the UK were found to broadly agree with their global counterparts on what they value in an employer, and were more likely than the global average to report flexibility in the workplace.
