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The top workplace trends for 2017 include:
- Companies focus on improving their candidate and employee experiences.
Companies have always created marketing experiences for customers, and prospects, in order to delight them, increase loyalty and grow their revenues. Next year, you will see the walls come down between your HR, marketing and customer service departments in order to develop experiences for both candidates and employees. A recent study found that nearly 60% of job seekers have had a poor candidate experience and 72% of them have shared their experience on an online employer review site such as Glassdoor.com. In another study, it was discovered that 83% of HR said that "employee experience" is either important or very important to their organizations success, and in order to enhance the experience, they are investing more in training (56%), improving their work space (51%) and giving more rewards (47%). - The blended workforce is on the rise.
In the past five years, the gig economy has become a major trend impacting the global workforce, and has created a new kind of diversity, with full-time permanent employees working side-by-side with freelancers. A study exploring the gig economy found that 93% of companies already identify the blended workforce as they’re seeing freelance workers teaming up with employees to work on projects together. In addition, the top reason why outperforming employers are benefiting from the blended workforce is "more flexible teaming". - Annual performance reviews evolve into more continuous reviews.
One of the biggest discussions in HR circles is performance reviews, how to transform them and implement something new that serves both managers and employees. Professionals today desire instant feedback, a behavior they've adopted from the instant gratification they receive on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Younger generations are especially impatient and are unwilling to wait a whole year to learn about their strengths and areas of improvement. A whole one-forth of employees feel that annual performance reviews don't help improve their performance. - Millennials meet Generation Z in the workplace.
2016 marks the first year that gen Z is in the workplace, while a third of millennials are in management roles, some of whom have direct reports. Just like with all generations studied, millennials negatively stereotype gen Zs as being lazy, which will cause some friction. Both generations will continue to put pressures on companies to transform the office, reward employees, embrace flexibility, and align the companies interests with a cause. - Augmented and virtual reality revolutionize recruiting and training.
Virtual reality hardware revenue is set to reach over eight billion in the next two years and the amount of money invested will be over four hundred million with 25 million users by that time. We've found that one-fourth of gen Z and millennials want their companies to incorporate virtual reality into the workplace and I predict that this will increase next year as more adopt VR consumer technology. The technology that employees are experiencing outside of work will naturally influence them to desire the same tech at the office. Virtual and augmented reality can help close the experience gap for job seekers and allow employee training to be more engaging, less expensive and free of distractions. - The war for talent heats up as the employer and employee contract continues to evolve.
The average tenure for employees, regardless of age is a mere 4.6 years in the United States and based on numerous studies we've conducted, millennials leave after two years. Employers have recognized that there is no lifetime employment contract. With all of this competition for talent, an entire 90% of employers anticipate more competition for talent, especially in emerging markets such as India, North America and Asia. This is why you will see an even greater emphasis on the employee experience in 2017 because companies are being forced to focus more on corporate culture and values than pay in order to retain employees. - Organizations restructure to focus on team over individual performance.
One of the most fascinating trends, despite the rise of the gig economy, is the emphasis of teamwork regardless of employment situation, industry or politics in a company. While individuals have their own career agenda, companies are now structured with teams because high performing teams will enable them to compete for the future. - Workplace wellness, and well-being, become critical employee benefits for attracting top talent.
Companies are using wellness programs to lower absenteeism, attract talent, and save on healthcare costs, while employees have become more health conscious in the past several years. - Companies get creative with their employee benefit packages and perks.
Fair compensation is most important to all age groups, genders and ethnicities almost unanimously around the world based on several studies that I've conducted over the years. Once you get past pay, then the two most important employee benefits are healthcare coverage and work flexibility, a benefit that wasn't mainstream a decade ago but is today because of the sheer demands of work and our "always on"society. In a recent study, we found that compared to two years ago, work flexibility is the top employee benefit (over healthcare in 2014) globally yet only a third of companies offer it. - Office attire and workplace culture becomes more casual.
Several years ago, Virgin Founder Richard Branson was on the cover of Forbes Magazine with a scissors cutting off his tie, calling for the end of business formal attire. With the rise of younger generations, and more employees working remote, there's no doubt that the workplace is increasingly casual. In 2017, you will see a continuation of this trend, with more employees demanding to drop their suits and ties in exchange for jeans and shirts.
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We recently asked members of the HBR community to gauge the extent of “bureaucratic sclerosis” within their organization using our Bureaucracy Mass Index (BMI) tool. Since then, we’ve received over 7,000 responses from a diverse group of participants. Here are our initial takeaways:
- The blight of bureaucracy seems inescapable. On our scale, a score of 60 represents a moderate degree of bureaucratic drag, while anything less than 40 indicates a relative absence of bureaucracy. Of the responses tallied, 64% reported a BMI of more than 70, while less than 1% had a BMI under 40. Not surprisingly, BMI scores were correlated with organizational size. The average BMI for companies with more than 5,000 employees was 75.
- Bureaucracy is growing not shrinking. Nearly two-thirds of respondents felt their organization had become more bureaucratic—more centralized, more rule-bound and more conservative—over the past few years. Interestingly, individuals working in customer service, sales, production, logistics and R&D were more likely to feel that bureaucracy was growing than those working in functions like HR, finance, planning, purchasing, and administration.
- Organizations aren’t becoming flatter. Despite, all the rhetoric about holacracy and “flatarchies”, the average respondent works in an organization that has more than 6 management layers. In large organizations (more than 5,000 employees) front line employees are buried under 8 or more layers of management.
- Bureaucracy is a time trap. BMI survey-takers reported spending an average of 28% of their time—more than one day a week—on bureaucratic chores.
- Bureaucracy is the enemy of speed. Two-thirds of respondents believe that bureaucracy is a significant drag on the pace of decision-making in their organization—a number that rises to nearly 80% in large companies.
- Bureaucracy produces parochialism. Survey respondents spend 42% of their time on internal issues — resolving disputes, wrangling resources, sorting out personnel issues, negotiating targets, and other tedious domestic tasks. Most swamped are executives in large companies who devote nearly half of their time to in-house matters.
- Bureaucracy undermines empowerment. When asked whether they had “substantial” or “complete” autonomy to (a) set priorities, (b) decide on work methods, and (c) choose their own boss, only 11% answered in the affirmative.
- Bureaucracy frustrates innovation. New ideas are the lifeblood of any organization, yet only 20% of respondents said that unconventional ideas were greeted with interest or enthusiasm in their organization. Eighty percent said new ideas were likely to encounter indifference, skepticism, or outright resistance.
- Bureaucracy breeds inertia. In a bureaucracy, change programs are implemented top-down. The problem is, by the time an issue is big enough or urgent enough to capture top management’s scarce attention, the organization is already behind.
- Bureaucracies are petty and political. In a formal hierarchy, competition for influence and advancement is a zero-sum game—hence the prevalence of backbiting and politicking revealed in our survey. Nearly 70% of big-company respondents indicate that political behaviors (like blame-shifting, resource hoarding, and turf battles) are “often” observed in their organizations.
Taken as a whole, the BMI survey provides yet more evidence of the toll bureaucracy takes on productivity and resilience. It is a tax on human accomplishment.
When we asked survey participants to identify the most significant barriers to down-sizing bureaucracy, 57% of them pointed to the reluctance of senior executives to share power, and 50% cited the widely-held belief that bureaucracy is essential for control. These average responses, though, are misleading. While nearly two-thirds of front-line associates viewed power lust as a barrier to cutting bureaucracy, only a third of CEOs shared that view.
Senior leaders and lower level employees agreed that a lack a lack of information and competence on the front lines is not a barrier to the devolution of authority and responsibility.
One of these barriers may be the lack of a step-by-step guide for disassembling bureaucracy. So while many may believe that radical empowerment is possible, few know how to make that happen. In most organizations the costs of bureaucracy are largely hidden. Our accounting systems don’t measure the costs of inertia, insularity, disempowerment, and all the other forms of bureaucratic drag.
Measuring bureaucratic drag is a first step towards changing all this. As the size of the bureaucratic tax on human accomplishment becomes more visible, inaction will become more difficult to defend. If, as they claim, leaders are willing to share power, and if, as our respondents believe, employees are capable of exercising it wisely, then there’s no excuse for not getting on with the hard but eminently worthwhile work of dismantling bureaucracy.
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To clearly communicate your point and build trusting relationships, here are three things that leaders with impressive communication skills always practice:
- They focus on developing a helpful mindset.
If you aren't ending all your conversations by asking, "How can I be the most help to you moving forward?" then you're missing out on a massive opportunity for connection. Obviously, you have to be authentic with your word and follow through, but offering help demonstrates that you care about people. Kelby Price, director of sales and marketing at IR Optimizer, explains how having a helpful mindset can not only improve communication but also lead to better solutions: "A leader with a helpful mindset checks his or her ego at the door. Instead of focusing on the individual, this leader looks at problems from a solutions-focused perspective. This outlook allows for communicators and leaders to be more open to team collaboration, understanding that working together often results in more effective and efficient results." - They show their presence with consistency.
This means communicating consistently in two main ways: through your tone and frequency. If you're communicating in a way that's really laid-back and fun one minute and then really buttoned-up and formal the next, you'll throw off people in your audience--and that just reinforces trust barriers between you. - They aren't afraid to be authentic.
When you're genuine, people can tell. It puts others at ease and makes them more inclined to trust you--which makes communication a lot easier and opportunity come more naturally.
Your communication skills have the potential to leave a lasting impact on others--make sure that impact is a positive one. Practice these three key skills, and you'll start noticing that expert communication opens endless doors of opportunity.
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