2023 Workplace Trends

It’s customary to publish workplace trends at the end of every year. And so, in 2023 many consulting houses and many organizations brought out their take on the trends that will mark 2023 at the workplaces.

We have been monitoring the trends at the workplace for one full year now through our Weekly Workplace Wellbeing Bulletin. Here is our take on what 2023 will see more of at workplaces

Methodology

At plugH the “plugH research team” decided to combine all secondary research with our own primary research. Since these trends had got published by the end of December 2022, we did a study of all what the world was saying in terms of predicting what was going to happen at the workplaces. We studied the trends deeply. (Sources given below) There were many more than these, but we used our judgement to sift out the ones which were more like “advertorials” than “editorials”

We then used our secondary research to arrive at a universal list of trends and put it to a community of HR leaders to vote. At plugH we have a community of more than 350 HR Leaders who discuss issues, their solutions and also comment on what they see as a future. Combined with our experience at these for our work at client workplaces, our conversations with leaders driving change at workplaces, we have come up with what we think will be the trends that would mark the workplace of 2023.

Secondary Research Findings

Here is the universal list of trends that we collected going through published reports.

Healing pandemic trauma opens path to sustainable performance
An Emphasis on Strategic Transformation including Change Management & Organizational Design
Leadership investment – for e.g., leadership courses, empathetic, authentic, and adaptive leadership
Workplace surveillance / Performance management
Increased Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Efforts
Employee Experience and Engagement
Retention over recruiting
An Emphasis on Continued Employee Growth
Going back to the office for friendships
People want more autonomy
Commute-worthy Workspaces
Finding company culture in hybrid work
Pay transparency gathers momentum
Focus on Flexibility
“Quiet hiring” offers new ways to snag in-demand talent
Pursuit of non-traditional candidates expands talent pipelines
Talent Shortages and Widening Skills Gaps
A Continued Focus on Skills Over Jobs
Emphasis on Soft Skills
The balance of power shifts again in the war for talent/ Workers continue to have leverage
Getting personal with employee support creates new data risks/ adequate privacy and cybersecurity features
Algorithmic bias concerns lead to more transparency in recruiting tech
Greater Use of AI, Automation, new tools/software including the Metaverse

Transformation of HR Using Tech and Data using data strategy, data governance, data storytelling, a solid data architecture, and advanced analytics
Mobile app integration
Squeezed by competing leader and employee expectations, managers need support
Prioritization of Employee Well-Being/ Mental wellbeing
Renewed Focus on Sustainability

plugH Primary Research

Based on our findings from the secondary research, we put together all these trends in 5 broad buckets and decided to put them to vote. These were –

Business Performance
Employee Experience
Leveraging Technology
Talent Management (Acquisition & Retention)
Workplace Wellbeing

To these responses, we added what our experience has been engaging with our clients and prospective clients. You may look at it as our qualitative primary research. Based on the inputs that we got from business leaders and our experience, this is what we are plugH think will be the 2023 trends at the workplace.

Trend #1. The most important trend that will characterize every workplace is a renewed stress on employee health and wellbeing. Organizations will move away from traditional methods of looking at health and wellbeing like physical wellbeing (through menus in the cafeteria, healthy snacks, exercise regimens) and mental health to an integrated look at the total wellbeing of an employee. This is increasingly being referred to as happiness.

Trend #2 Employee experience is increasingly becoming the differentiator in a heavily contested war for talent. In terms of experience here are the 3 things from our findings

Willingness of workplaces to go beyond the lip service to DEI and actually work on getting the diverse voice heard and amplified
The advent of cutting-edge technology in making experience high tech, but workplaces continue to work on keeping it high touch. And therefore, all technologies which can humanize the experience will get more attention and buyers too
The hybrid workplace is here to stay and for this reason, flexibility at the workplace will be a need to have and no longer a nice to have. A lot of thought will go into finding new ways to monitor and leverage this phenomenon rather than being prey to it in terms of performance leakages

Trend #3 Technology has become all pervasive. Data analytics has actually become passe. What we are looking at now is artificial intelligence and similar technologies to humanize the employee experience in a bid to enhance the ‘feel good factor’. While all this is happening, privacy breaches are being viewed unkindly making organizations look at their technology adoptions with some amount of caution. The CIO will have to work hand-in-hand with the CHRO to ensure that the organization takes care of this risk prudently. With virtual reality getting into the employee experience space, employee privacy, data protection, data privacy will occupy a larger mindshare of the leadership

Trend #4 Talent Management will occupy the largest mind share in the mind of leaders and all the previously mentioned trends will be given priority on how it influences the employer brand in the eyes of the current employee and the prospective employee. Add to this workplaces continue to struggle with functional skills and behavioural skills (especially in the Gen Z) and therefore L&D will continue.

Trend #5 Business Performance concerns. Our research tells us that there are 2 areas which are of concern to leaders today.

One is the issue of business culture. How to create one and how to sustain one? In the face of the new way of working (hybrid workplace), organizations are still struggling between online meetings, 3 days at work, chai & coffee catch ups to find their natural rhythm. We think 2023 should see a year where organizations will discover their natural rhythm
The other issue is of performance management. The workplace is seeing both extremes – white collar lethargy, moonlighting as well as burn outs and often in the same organization. This year will see a lot of experimentation, a lot of different sands that organizations will take to see if it works. And as said earlier hopefully they will find their own rhythm, but this is going to take time as we see taking a ringside view.

References