Evolution of Employee Work Preferences Amidst COVID‐19: A Social Media Analysis

Retaining and managing talent is critical for a firm's competitive advantage. While human resource management (HRM) literature suggests several configurations of bundles of ability(A), motivation(M), and opportunity(O) enhancing HRM practices for enhancing individual and firm performance, it fails to capture the dynamic contextual changes at an individual and organizational level, rendering a given bundle of HRM practices ineffective in managing talent. This study contributes, first, by temporally analyzing the structural shifts in employees' work preferences, tracking changes in their contextual environment at a large, global high‐technology firm using Glassdoor reviews. Second, analyzing employee work preferences over a 3‐year period from 2019 to 2022 (covering three distinctive periods: pre‐pandemic, pandemic, and post‐pandemic) from a comprehensive dataset of 14,200 employee reviews, novel insights about structural shifts in employees' work preferences concerning compensation and work‐life balance were uncovered. Third, this study highlights the value of mining employee reviews from public platforms like Glassdoor. Finally, it showcases innovative methods for qualitative analysis of large datasets.