Ogletree Deakins’ Annual Benchmarking Survey: The Biggest Concerns for Today’s Employers

What’s top of mind for today’s employers in a post-pandemic era? According to Ogletree Deakins’ second annual benchmarking survey report, Strategies and Benchmarks for the Workplace: Ogletree’s Survey of Key Decision-Makers, remote work and the tight labor market are at the top of the list.

The survey, which had nearly 1,000 responses from in-house counsel and senior HR professionals, showed that the most challenging issue employers are facing is hiring and retention, with 62.4 percent of companies citing a lack of candidates as their biggest challenge in recruiting and hiring employees. In response to these issues, 82.6 percent of survey respondents have increased their base pay while 31.2 percent have enhanced the benefits they are offering employees.

Coming in second and third among employers’ most challenging issues are COVID-19 issues and multistate compliance. While the pandemic seems to be waning, employers continue to grapple with remarkable challenges. Currently, 62.5 percent of respondents do not have a vaccination or a testing policy, while 15.4 percent of respondents have a mandatory vaccine policy. With regard to multistate compliance, the survey shows that the most challenging multi-jurisdictional compliance issues are leaves of absence, wage and hour laws, handbooks, background checks, and marijuana laws.

Numerous other topics are covered in the survey, including remote work, vaccination and testing policies, contingent workers, artificial intelligence, and more.

Many of these topics—and much more—will be covered during our annual Workplace Strategies seminar on May 4-7, 2022, at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix, Arizona.