A new report by Zoom, in collaboration with FRS Recruitment, shows Irish job posts offering remote and hybrid work are up 43% over 12 months.
Ireland’s hybrid advantage: How flexible working is empowering Irish society and economy indicates growing demand for more flexible work options, with hybrid roles offering rural areas greater access to higher urban-based salaries.
Data supplied by FRS Recruitment provides a snapshot of hybrid and remote work opportunities advertised by the recruitment consultancy between October 2021 and 2022.
Key findings reveal 33% of all job ads across Ireland offered remote or hybrid work options, up from 23%. Remote or hybrid working is primarily concentrated in a few sectors, with 87% of these jobs stemming from the IT, accounting and finance, or commercial sectors. More than 50% of companies offering remote and hybrid work are based in Dublin or Cork, with salaries of city-based roles averaging at €60,814 vs €51,648 for roles within rural-based companies. Roles offering candidates flexibility are attracting a wider range of responses - especially among job seekers looking to move from their current employment. Level of demand for hybrid or remote working roles differs per sector. For example, candidates in IT predominantly look for fully remote while in the commercial sector, 80% prefer hybrid work with a mix of remote and in-office each week.
“Zoom’s latest report really underlines how employee expectations of how, when and where they want to work have drastically changed – and that employers have changed their hiring practices in response. Organisations looking to recruit, whether based in major economic centres or further afield, now recognise the positive impact remote and hybrid working can have on employee productivity and retention.
“Employers are increasingly open - as this data shows - to empowering workers with the additional flexibility they want. This has the potential to close the salary gap that exists between Ireland’s urban and rural economies and to spread prosperity and opportunity more evenly across the whole country, which is obviously welcome,” Zoom Government Relations Director for Ireland, Charlotte Holloway, said.
“For the first time we have candidates telling us that salary is less important to them than the ability to do their job remotely. For many people, the pandemic showed they can do their work from anywhere, which is enabling them to move to areas outside of cities where the cost of living and housing pressures aren’t so acute and without the burden of long commutes and high transport costs.”
“There is a huge opportunity to empower certain sectors to embrace the hybrid model of work. Many business owners may not be aware of Ireland’s world leading National Network of Remote Working Hubs which enable people to work from their community in a professional environment equipped with all the right tools for hybrid working,” General Manager at FRS Recruitment, Lynne McCormack, added.
