Will remote positions still be a key driver for acquiring talent at your organization?

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We spent the last year hiring people from wherever with the idea that we pick the best talent we could. I think some would say we're still doing that, but I think it remains to be seen. We've talked about that if you're of a certain seniority level in your career we might offer remote as an option. But if you're a new college grad or in that 1-3 years experience range, maybe we don't give you remote as an option. I think the interesting part for me is that we made the decision that a lot of companies did that, &#34;Hey let's open up and hire the best talent wherever they are because we're going to be remote in the future. We're going to do this hybrid thing.&#34; We've hired a lot of people in the last year that are not in Palo Alto. Now if we go back to this “everyone return to the office” culture, those remote workers are back to where they were a year ago.

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We're a tech and data company, so we were targeting a growth opportunity in Austin because of the strategic shift in talent. It's an interesting conversation because the Acxiom headquarters is based in Arkansas, and your salary and your comp strategy there are much different compared to some of the other tech hubs. What's happening for us is a leveling of the playing field around comp and comp discussions. So many companies are now working from home, and they're offering comp packages that are equivalent to East Coast/West Coast. We are looking at an interesting dilemma because of that shift.

For the US and our EMEA locations, we’re working from home. I don't think we're targeting a return to the office this year. We are looking at a change in what we categorize as hot jobs. Potentially those hot job categories do need to be able to work from home because there's so much demand for those jobs. Other core operational jobs that are important to our business are expected to be in Arkansas. Our parent company however is based in New York City. As we start looking at a return to the office, we continue to balance those strategies. It's always interesting to see what that looks like. We are definitely feeling the shift in salary comp and benefits package now that the playing field is leveled out.

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I'm actually hiring a whole bunch of people, and some of those roles need to be in Cincinnati because that's where my security operations center is going to be. We're looking to run everything 24/7 out of Cincinnati. But if I want a particular skill set, chances are I'm not going to find it in Cincinnati. I'm going to have to hire that where it is. A couple of years ago we were hiring Cincinnati-first, but I found a great talent that was in St. Louis. I said, &#34;I got to have this guy.&#34; They said, &#34;Okay.&#34; So if I can make the case for somebody, then I feel like it's going to be okay. But for a security operations center, I've got to have people who are sitting in the office. The CSO is going to want to see people sitting there working and responding to security alerts if he goes into the office. But for an organization that's as large as we are (70,000 people) and because we've got branches everywhere, there's an opportunity to hire remotely. As long as somebody can get to a branch if they have to connect to the corporate network. We're looking to hire talent where we can and where we need to, but some of our work needs to be in particular locations. Some of it is for regulatory reasons.

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Our company is going to continue with our strategy of 100% in the office. I has impacted recruiting negatively, and will continue to do so but it was decided by the CEO and won't change

Will remote positions still be a key driver for acquiring talent at your organization?

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