MFM Survey: Financial Staffers Largely Prefer Remote Work Environments Moving Forward

But what's the situation among members of the media financial community? How does their present work situation, and WFH desires for the future, compare with the larger universe of media and advertising staffers? The Media Financial Management Association (MFM) decided to find some answers to those questions by launching a survey of its members, which was conducted from September 26-30, 2022.

"The workplace environment and hiring, retention, motivation issues come up in almost every conversation I have with financial executives in every part of the media industry," said Joe Annotti, MFM President and CEO, in discussing why the survey was undertaken.

For comparison purposes, MFM coordinated its questions with those asked by a separate survey of the larger media and advertising community, which was conducted by MediaVillage's The Myers Report from June 6 to Sept. 9, 2022. The conclusions the two studies reached were generally similar, but with some slight differences. (The full Myers Report Survey is proprietary to MediaVillage member companies and was provided exclusively to MFM as reference for the MFM study. The full Myers Report industry survey of 2,500 professionals in advertising-supported media is available to MFM members at no cost upon request to MediaVillage. Contact MediaVillage's Jack Myers at jack@mediavillage.com.)

The questions pertained to three different work settings: the respondents' current work situation, what they expect it will be like in the next six months and what they consider to be an ideal work scenario. Three options were examined: working remotely, working at a jobsite, or a combination of the two.

Nearly 90% (89.5%) of MFM members stated they currently work remotely either all or some of the time. In comparison, 99.6% of the respondents to MediaVillage survey said they currently work remotely either always or sometimes.

A larger disparity between the two groups of respondents can be seen if you drill down into those numbers further. Within the 89.5% subset of MFM respondents, 66.7% said they sometimes work remotely, where 47.8% of MediaVillage users sometimes work remotely.

The expected work scenario in the next six months also showed some differences between the two sets of respondents. Across the entire base of MFM members who answered, 91.2% said they expect to work remotely either some or all of the time over the next six months. And just 14% indicated they expected to never work onsite.

The percentage numbers were higher among MediaVillage respondents when asked the same "expected" question. Almost everyone (99.5%) said they were likely to work remotely either sometimes or always. And 23.4% said they didn't expect to work onsite at all over the next six months.

When asked about their ideal work situation, 91.2% of MFM respondents said they'd prefer to work remotely all or most of the time. MediaVillage respondents were nearly unanimous (99.6%) in stating that their ideal situation was to work remotely either always or sometimes.

"No one seems to have found the silver bullet, but as our survey appears to suggest, flexibility around working remotely may to be the key to success," Annotti said.

Not only do the MFM and MediaVillage surveys map to one another, the results are similar to that of other work flexibility surveys, which largely report that people want -- and may continue to demand -- freedom and choice when it comes to where they work. Companies that track office occupancy rates say they're seeing slight upticks in the number of employees physically coming to buildings this fall, but not the larger increase that was expected earlier.

Some employees are using WFH or hybrid as a job negotiating tactic, others state they would take title and pay cuts to be able to work remotely, and some are simply refusing to return to the office, even when mandated. Businesses that agreed to allow their staffs to work remotely at least part of the time are facing their own challenges, particularly around performance. As a result, some employers are reported to be remotely monitoring WFH employees.

It's safe to say that the office work environment has forever changed, and the likelihood of returning to a pre-pandemic scenario is nearly zero. But how the work world will actually be impacted by future global events is anyone's guess.

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The opinions expressed here are the author's views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.com/MyersBizNet.