Workwire

For years, employers have treated employee experience as a collection of perks—free lunches and snacks, wellness apps, hybrid schedules, office makeovers. But the latest research from Monster suggests the organizations winning the talent battle have figured out something more fundamental: people stay because of how work feels every day, not because of what’s in the break room.

Ask anyone what a “vacation” looks like and they’ll describe a week at the beach or a few days overseas, phone off, out-of-office message set. New data from HR and payroll platform Deel, released in partnership with Andreessen Horowitz, suggests that’s mostly fantasy. Pulled from real PTO logs across startups, tech companies and remote-first firms worldwide, the findings paint a much choppier picture of how people actually disconnect from work. The headline: most “vacations” are a single day off.

Forget the polished resume and the buttoned-up cover letter. For a growing number of Gen Z workers, the job hunt starts with a scroll, not a spreadsheet. According to Zety’s Gen Z Misinfluence Report, based on a survey of more than 900 Gen Z workers, Instagram has quietly become the go-to career platform for a whole generation.

Picture the night before a big interview. You’re not rehearsing your answers. You’re lying awake replaying every way it could go wrong. Turns out, that’s exactly what most of us do. An Adobe survey of more than 1,000 people, including 756 job seekers and 251 hiring managers, found that candidates spend nearly five hours worrying about an interview but only three hours actually preparing for one. We’ve got it all backward, the study suggests.

Bosses are known to encourage employees to bring their “authentic self” to work. But for many of us, authenticity may be giving way to what one recent study describes as “confidence theater,” the pressure to project certainty even when self-doubt runs deep. According to a survey by MyPerfectResume, nearly two-thirds of employees say they feel pressure to appear more confident or knowledgeable than they actually are.

As employers continue to tighten RTO requirements, many leaders face a difficult balancing act. They want stronger collaboration, innovation and culture-building that often happens most naturally when people work together in person, yet employees have grown accustomed to flexibility—and expect the office to offer something more compelling than just a desk. New research suggests that the answer isn’t choosing between remote work and the office. It’s redesigning the workplace experience itself.

We’ve all known for some time that Americans—either out of desire or necessity—are working longer than prior generations. New research suggests that many older workers are not, in fact, delaying retirement by choice—and that once they begin looking for work, they often feel disadvantaged because of their age. A survey by resume.io of 600 job seekers age 50+ found that two-thirds say financial pressures have forced them to remain in the workforce longer than they originally planned.

Changing jobs has long been seen as the fastest route oftentimes to higher pay and career advancement. After all, many people who change employers get bigger salaries and better benefits than those who stay put. But new research suggests the equation may be changing. A recent study found that workers are becoming more cautious about job hopping as economic uncertainty, layoffs and inflation reshape career decisions.

Bosses have pretty much always assumed that higher pay and promotion opportunities are the primary drivers of employee motivation. New research suggests they may be overlooking something equally important: confidence. A recent report by Attensi, based on a survey of 505 hospitality workers in the U.S., found that more than half age 25-34 would choose better workplace training over a 5% pay increase.

A new report identifies a workplace trend with an ominous name: “doomjobbing.” The term describes job seekers who rapidly submit large numbers of applications with little time spent evaluating whether positions are actually a good fit. According to the latest research, nearly half of job seekers admit they apply for jobs without reading the full description, while around a third spend one minute or less reviewing a posting before submitting an application.