Over the last two years, we have seen significant changes in our working life, driven by both necessity and security concerns. The pestilence of COVID-19 has undeniably changed the workforce. Now, a growing number of businesses are recognising and promoting remote and hybrid work methods. Artificial intelligence (AI) and automation have grown significantly more prevalent and crucial for corporate success and outcome within organisations.

 

Hybrid workplace without a doubt has had a minimal impact upon cutting edge workers in healthcare, retail, education, transportation, and security, among numerous different enterprises. However, as innovation offers up new techniques for working and continues with reshaping the connection amongst us and our working environments, they are probably not going to be unaffected by different improvements within the following.

Working environment Trends in 2022

 

Obviously, there are significant number of areas to consider as far as work environment advancements in 2022. This is what to expect in the new year as far as work and beyond.

 

1. Hybrid Working

There will continue to be three basic models in terms of where we work: centralised workspaces, decentralised distant associations, and the Hybrid “best possible solution” approach. What will almost certainly change in 2022 is that we, as employees, will have a choice rather than being forced to follow whatever model your organisation has chosen due to justifiable necessity.

 

Organisations’ attitudes regarding the concept of a centralised workplace are clearly shifting. According to KPMG research, at the height of the pandemic in 2020, 69% of large corporates predicted an overall decline in the quantity of office space they would use.

 

In a FlexJobs survey of about 4,600 job seekers conducted in summer 2021, 58% said they want a fully remote role post-pandemic, and 39% favoured a hybrid model.

 

According to PwC’s 2021 Health and Well-Being Touchstone Survey, 91% of employers said they added “flexible work arrangements” to their employee benefits due to COVID-19.

 

 

According to a recent Loom report, 90% of employees surveyed – are happier with the increased freedom they have, to work from home, indicating that this is likely to be a trend that will continue into 2022.

 

Reasons for increased interest in remote work:

2. Automation and AI-augmented Workforce

Artificial intelligence and automation have transformed the workplace in countless ways. They have improved and expedited internal processes whilst guaranteeing tangible results and surprisingly expanding employee commitment.

 

The World Economic Forum predicts that AI and automation will prompt the making of 97 million new positions by 2025. Nonetheless, individuals working in many existing positions will likewise observe their job roles and responsibilities changing, as they are progressively expected to increase their own capabilities to align with AI innovation.

 

With these workplace trends, the abilities employees need to accomplish positive business results for their associations are evolving. As specific positions are supplanted by AI, automation, and other new advancements, up-skilling internal capabilities- rather than recruiting new representatives, has now become an expense saving and a significantly effective solution.

 

3. Continuation of the Great Resignation

Workers—especially in the U.K. and U.S.—are quitting their jobs in record numbers. In the U.S., for example, 4.2 million employees quit their occupations in October 2021, near the record high found in the earlier month. As a result, employee retention is now a crucial concern for many teams and organisations. What many are alluding to as the “Great Resignation” is expected to continue well into 2022.

 

As verified in this BBC article, the Great Resignation is frequently misconstrued. Some experts say the reasons behind this trend are multi-faceted (and not tied solely to the pandemic). In addition, many media reports are highlighting surveys illustrating that a high percentage of workers intend to switch jobs. Yet, the overall number of employees resigning still makes up a small percentage of the workforce. People want to switch jobs for reasons including poor leadership, with their current employer, the lack of remote work as an option, and lack of transparency, relating to career paths.

 

Information shows numerous unemployed individuals are not rushing to fill open positions, either. Some economists say we face more of a “Great Hesitation” about returning to the workforce, rather than the afore mentioned “Great Resignation”.

 

4. Talent Shortages and Upskilling Within Organisations

The abilities needed within numerous businesses are evolving. Furthermore almost 7 out of 10 organisations internationally revealed ability deficiencies and hardships employing in 2021, a 15-year high.

 

European organisations specifically are battling to fill open potions. One solution for companies is to retrain current staff to fill internal positions. In fact, according to a World Economic Forum report, around 40% of the global workforce will require up-skilling, for at least six months by 2024.

 

5. Prioritisation of Employee Well-Being

Prior to the pandemic, the main requirement seemed to have been to hire people who could form effective associations. The accentuation has shifted immovably, regarding flexibility during and after the epidemic. Though inherent excess or excesses in abilities may have been considered wasteful in the past, they are now considered a reasonable preventative measure.

 

This clearly encompasses another sub-pattern, namely, organisations are beginning to recognise the fundamental need of including representational medical services and prosperity (including psychological well-being) operations into their strategy. Many organisations are now attempting to take on more responsibility for aiding their employees in maintaining physical, mental, and financial well-being. A test that businesses will confront in 2022 is figuring out how to accomplish this whilst not interfering unnecessarily with representatives’ security and personal life.

 

A basic component of strength is ensuring that a workforce is sufficiently strong enough to keep a business operational, but it also covers the execution of more flexible cycles, with built-in redundancies to provide cover when disaster hits, causing functional effectiveness to be impaired. As we approach 2022, these cycles are certain to have a disproportionately substantial impact upon employees’ daily lives.

 

During the pandemic, associations used this “general representative” focus to attract and retain people. According to a PwC investigation:

 

Because of the pandemic, 53% of employers added emotional well-being projects to their representative’s advantage. 44% of the organisations surveyed stated they have implemented or enhanced time and wellness programmes for their employees.

 

6. A Focus Upon Skills Over Jobs

Global research analyst Josh Bersin argues in his report “HR Predictions for 2022” that in the past, organisations saw staff training as vital but not necessarily as a competitive advantage. As a result of digitalisation and automation, this is rapidly changing.

 

“Focus less on roles – which group unrelated talents – than on the skills needed to drive the organisation’s competitive advantage and the processes that fuel this advantage,” according to Gartner, “to construct the workforce you will need post-pandemic.”

 

Skills are important as they address basic business issues and the competencies required in a workforce to handle them. Roles, on the other hand, explain how individual employees interact with the wider organisational structure or hierarchy. This trend has been brewing for a while, with the shift toward more “flat” organisational structures rather than strictly hierarchical teams with a direct reporting, chain-of-command approach to problem-solving and communication. Organisations may address the fact that solving challenges and answering basic business questions is the key to fostering innovation and success in information-age businesses by focusing on skills.

 

Focusing on building skills rather than further developing ability to perform their function, from the employee’s perspective, puts them in a better position to take advantage of new career prospects. This change, from the perspective of jobs to skills is expected to be a major trend for both employers and employees in 2022.

 

Organisations can bridge their skills gaps by focusing on employee up-skilling and career pathing. In contrast to more typical job grading, this necessitates the use of a completely new set of techniques to identify different skill sets. Skills development may assist organisations in meeting their most pressing business requirements, and skills can be measured using “skill data.”

 

7. Employee monitoring and analytics

Even though it is controversial, data reveals that businesses are increasingly investing in technology that allows them to monitor and track their employees’ behaviour to increase productivity. Managers overseeing remote workforces are finding platforms like Aware, which allows organisations to monitor activity across email and applications like Slack to gauge productivity, extremely beneficial.

 

It builds upon the functionality of earlier products like Hitachi’s Business Microscope, which tracked staff movements around physical office blocks and could be used to track things like how often employees took bathroom breaks and which employees spent the most time talking to others rather than sitting at their workstation.

 

Certainly, it appears that organisations might easily utilise these technologies in a way that their employees would perceive as overbearing or intrusive, which, in our opinion, would be a formula for catastrophe. However, rather than focusing on individual activity and using them as means for implementing discipline, the goal is to use them to obtain wide overview into employee behaviour. Organisations that invest in this technology must walk a tight line, and it is unclear if the overall result will be a rise in productivity or a “chilling effect” on individual liberties. If it’s the latter, the companies involved are unlikely to benefit. However, for better or worse, it appears that, by 2022, this type of technology will play a larger part within the workplace.

 

More executives are striving to implant a growth mindset into their organisation’s culture as they prioritise upskilling and reskilling in the workplace. The conviction that you have the ability to learn, and progress is the foundation of a growth mindset. A fixed mindset, on the other hand, is the assumption that certain characteristics of an individual (such as talent or intelligence) are innate.