Navigating the Great Reshuffle

We are living through a moment of change unlike anything we’ve seen before in the history of work. We call it the “Great Reshuffle,” a time when everyone is rethinking everything. Business leaders are rethinking their entire working models, cultures, and company values. At the same time, employees are rethinking not just how they work, but why, looking for opportunities that best match their needs -- whether that’s greater flexibility, better pay, or deeper fulfillment. At the core of it all is the beginnings of a new, more dynamic relationship between employers and employees.

Managing this much change, especially all at once, is difficult. Over the past few months I’ve been receiving texts, calls and LinkedIn messages from other CEOs and leaders just looking for someone else to compare notes with in navigating the new world of work.

So, we recently took a look at the activity on our platform and surveyed more than 500 C-level executives in the U.S. and U.K. to understand how they’re thinking about work today and the changes coming in the future. Across the responses and the conversations I’ve had, there are a few things every business leader is thinking about:

Flexibility is the thing: Perhaps not surprising, top of mind for executives is the same thing that is top of mind for employees -- flexibility. With 87% of people saying they would prefer to stay remote at least half of the time, a majority of executives are focused on adapting to offer greater flexibility in the workplace.

Embrace this opportunity: What’s more surprising - and most exciting to me - is that despite all this change coming all at once, executives are optimistic about the opportunity to rewrite their playbooks when it comes to hiring, skills development, and engaging their talent.

Perhaps the most telling data is the continued growth of “remote jobs” posted on LinkedIn, which has continued to rise over recent months. The share of remote job posts on LinkedIn grew more than 8.5x since the start of the pandemic, increasing from 1.9% of global job posts in March 2020 to 16.3% in August 2021. And beyond companies continuing to post more jobs for remote roles, we’ve also seen an increased interest from job seekers. For example, the share of U.S. remote job listings on LinkedIn attracts twice the share of views and 2.5 times the share of applications when compared against onsite job postings. 

We’re going to figure this out together: The best of intentions aren’t enough to manage a moment as complex as this. LinkedIn is the place where employees and employers can find the tools and community they need to navigate this new landscape and here are a few of the new ways we’re helping:

As companies shift the way they work, they need ways to signal these changes to job seekers. To help with this, we’re making it easier for hirers to list if their open job is remote, hybrid or onsite. We are also making it easier to share how they are approaching the future of work on their Company Page, including testing or vaccination requirements, or whether they will embrace a remote, hybrid or fully in person culture. 

And job seekers can easily discover these companies and roles with dedicated remote, hybrid and onsite filters in our job search tool and within the Open to Work feature on Profile. 

With the global economy experiencing massive change, upskilling and reskilling have taken on a sense of urgency to leaders -- close to three-quarters (72%) believe that training is crucial to helping people work effectively in a hybrid world. We know employers are looking for ways to help their employees manage in this new world, so we’ve made nearly 40 LinkedIn Learning courses free, including ways to support your team through hybrid work, cultivating well-being during this time, and being a manager no one wants to leave. 

We’re also launching our new skill-building platform, LinkedIn Learning Hub, to help employers identify and promote personalized content for their employees to build the right skills, facilitate community-based learning, and provide deeper skill development insights to inform their learning strategy for the future.

With the right principles and tools in place, every leader can seize the opportunities that reside within the Great Reshuffle. It will require engaging employees with trust and empathy. It will require new working models, cultures and company values. Ultimately, it will require more discussion and dialogue between employers and employees to drive the best answers and bring people along as part of the process.

If we see that change take place across all companies and all societies - and in ways that are inclusive of communities historically locked out or who have seen inequities exacerbated by the pandemic - we will see something big happen in the world. We will create the possibility of unleashing greater levels of progress and prosperity than ever before. 

Whether we achieve that or not will be the test of our time. The test of the Great Reshuffle. And, at least from where I sit, it all starts one connection, one conversation, one course, one hire at a time on LinkedIn, as our community shows, every day, that we are In It Together.