Employers should be doing more to encourage a healthy work/life balance in their office as it can be crucial in attracting and retaining staff, one survey has found.
According to Monster, only half of human resources professionals think maintaining a work/life balance is an important issue for companies, yet 89 per cent of employees deem flexible working and telecommuting as important considerations when assessing a new job.
Vice president of research at the firm Jesse Harriott commented that work/life balance schemes are valued by younger workers.
"Employers should look to improve their employment brand by creating and promoting a flexible, balanced work atmosphere as an effective means of improving recruitment and retention," he said.
He added that such work/life schemes can be an essential differentiator in today's "challenging recruitment market".
ClickAJob chief executive Yngve Traberg sees the employee's full-spectrum experience as crucial to on-going growth.
"The key motivation in any position is job satisfaction," he says.
"And merely bumping up the salary cannot compensate for the more compelling motivator that a staff member is properly engaged, recognised and appreciated."
Relating the issue to directly staff churn, he goes further.
"Employees in today's candidate short market should in no way be regarded as mechanised production units without needs or opinions," he comments.
"Effective companies should lavish the same focus and attention on their staff as they do to their customers, particularly in understanding how to engage them. Employers who ignore this inevitably experience higher staff churn and find staff coasting through their jobs instead of striving to achieve."
He concludes: "There really is no substitute for demonstrating to staff that they're appreciated and fundamental to a company's success."