---
title: Is your company ready to embrace the new normal of employee expectations?
description: Employee disengagement is fueled as return-to-office mandates are enforced and companies scale back on perks like four-day workweeks and summer Fridays.
---

[TrendWatching Daily | Trends & insights ](https://www.trendwatching.com/trends-and-insights)

# [Is your company ready to embrace the new normal of employee expectations?](https://www.trendwatching.com/trends-and-insights/is-your-company-ready-to-embrace-the-new-normal-of-employee-expectations)

 Written by [Franziska Füsting](https://www.trendwatching.com/trends-and-insights/author/franziska-füsting) | Jul 23, 2024 5:13:00 AM

[Quiet quitting](https://www.trendwatching.com/trends-and-insights/global-workforce-15-is-disengaged-and-62-is-not-engaged) is overhauling company cultures and outputs, pushing businesses to seek cheaper (remote!) talent from abroad while simultaneously enforcing return-to-office policies.

According to [Autodesk’s State of Design & Make 2024](https://damassets.autodesk.net/content/dam/autodesk/www/pdfs/sdm-report-final-022024-en.pdf) report, 59% of global employees (61% in Americas, 54% in APAC, 61% in EMEA) say their companies are recruiting remote talent from low cost-of-living areas. Meanwhile, 62% (63% in Americas, 57% in APAC, 65% in EMEA) report that their employers are mandating a return to the workplace.

And it’s not just [RTO policies](https://www.trendwatching.com/trends-and-insights/what-do-philadelphia-and-patagonia-have-in-common-rto-mandates). Companies are scaling back on perks like [four-day workweeks](https://fortune.com/europe/2024/07/08/asda-scrapping-physically-exhausting-4-day-workweek-why-it-can-fail/) and [summer Fridays](https://fortune.com/europe/2024/07/12/summer-fridays-pwc-hits-brakes-growth-slows-salaries-squeezed/)… 🏝️

These actions will further fuel disengagement and exacerbate tensions between employer and employee. Smart companies will take a different approach. Instead of clinging to pre-pandemic norms (which didn’t work for many people anyway), they'll embrace a new vision on labor.

[View full post](https://www.trendwatching.com/trends-and-insights/is-your-company-ready-to-embrace-the-new-normal-of-employee-expectations)

```json
{
  "@context" : "http://schema.org",
  "@type" : "BlogPosting",
  "author" : {
    "@type" : "Person",
    "name" : "Franziska Füsting"
  },
  "dateModified" : "2024-07-26T06:25:58.395Z",
  "datePublished" : "2024-07-23T05:13:00Z",
  "headline" : "Is your company ready to embrace the new normal of employee expectations?",
  "image" : {
    "@type" : "ImageObject",
    "height" : 934,
    "url" : "https://www.trendwatching.com/hubfs/employeeexpectations.jpg",
    "width" : 1400
  },
  "mainEntityOfPage" : "https://www.trendwatching.com/trends-and-insights/is-your-company-ready-to-embrace-the-new-normal-of-employee-expectations",
  "publisher" : {
    "@type" : "Organization",
    "logo" : {
      "@type" : "ImageObject",
      "height" : 60,
      "url" : "/hs/hsstatic/content_shared_assets/static-1.4092/img/default-amp-logo.png",
      "width" : 60
    },
    "name" : "TrendWatching Daily | Trends & insights"
  }
}
```