The top workplace trends for 2018 include:
- 1. Leaders encourage more human interaction.
Companies will continue to promote their workspaces and design them to facilitate interpersonal relationships between employees. In our research, in partnership with Randstad, we found that Gen Z's and millennials choose in-person conversations over using technology and prefer corporate offices over telecommuting. While technology can make us more efficient, and feel highly connected to one another, it will never replace face-to-face conversations. Leaders who encourage personal connections will have more committed, satisfied and productive workers.2. The next wave of learning credentials.
One of the most disrupted industries is education, with more third parties offering courses, credentials and certifications than ever before. More employers will be accepting different types of credentials as they seek to build diverse talent pools and expand their reach. Younger generations are starting to resist the traditional degree due to the ever increasing cost of tuition, which grew by nine percent from last year for four-year public schools. As companies continue to accept non-traditional credentials, students will be able to avoid debt and study at their own convenience, without fear of unemployment.3. Companies focus on upskilling and retraining current workers.
While the political discussion is focused on bringing manufacturing jobs back to America, and the news media continues to publish articles on how automation will eliminate jobs, we should really be focused on the growing skills gap. We not only lack the right set of skills, but the ones we currently have are becoming less relevant over time. Employers will be investing more money into their training and development programs in 2018 in order to fill their skills gaps and reach their full capacity. IBM found that 84% of employees at the best performing organizations are receiving the training they need compared to only 16% at the worst performing ones. When teams are appropriately trained, companies save an average of $70,000 annually and receive a 10% increase in productivity. As Generation Z enters the workplace, they face an even greater skills gap, where 65% of the jobs they will need to fill don't even exist yet.4. Artificial intelligence becomes embedded in the workplace.
The topic with the biggest buzz in HR circles is AI because there is both excitement and fear around the topic as it relates to how we do our jobs. Almost every new device and service will contain AI in the next few years. Companies are using chatbots as personal assistants, for on-demand customer support, to mine data, streamline business processes, recover product information and to answer employee questions. As more employees see the efficiency benefits of chatbots, and AI, they will be adopted at a more rapid pace.5. Financial and mental wellness get prioritized.
With 78% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck and student loan debt at over $1.4 trillion, workers are struggling and it's affecting their health. Workers are stressed out, burned out and it's affecting not only their productivity but their satisfaction on the job. Northwestern Mutual reports that more than a quarter of millennials say financial stress affects their job performance and made them feel physically ill and depressed. Nearly half of employees have financial concerns, causing them to lose an average of six productive work days annually. Now HR is taking on the role of mental health counselors, helping support employees who have all sorts of mental health issues like depression, anxiety, bipolar and ADHD. While many of these disorders are hidden, 84% of employees have experienced physical, psychological or behavioral symptoms of poor mental health. - 6. Employee burnout causes more turnover.
Employees are burned out from working longer hours with no additional compensation, while companies are posting record profits. In a study, in partnership with Kronos, we found that almost half of HR leaders say employee burnout is responsibility for up to half of their annual workforce turnover. They believe burnout is caused by unfair compensation, an unreasonable workload and too much after-hours work. In order to prevent employee burnout, companies are focused on creating wellness and flexibility programs that allow them to take time off and stay healthy.7. Workforce decisions sway consumer behavior.
For years, HR and talent leaders have desired a seat at the table, influencing the CEOs agenda. Now, with the advent of big data and new research by my firm and others, they can finally draw the connection between a positive employee and candidate experience and actually revenue. Aside from candidate behavior, when firms don't invest in their hiring and training programs, they lose out on top talent, which ends up costing money and productivity.8. Companies take diversity more seriously.
While the subject of diversity has become the topic of conversation for years, it has almost reaching a tipping point, where companies are investing money in improving the composition of their workforce. More companies are creating employee resource groups to support all types of diversity, including gender, ethnicity and age. They feel like these support groups will help promote the positive aspects of having a heterogeneous employee base.9. The deregulation of labor laws.
Under the current administration, more labor laws are being deregulated, which is costing companies money, and impacting their ability to promote diversity and protect worker rights. These deregulations will both cost companies money, and save money, at the same time - but most are really bad for workers.10. The aging workforce.
The workforce is continuing to age, with baby boomers living longer than previous generations and retiring later. About three in every four Americans plan to work past retirement age and almost two-thirds said they will continue to work part-time. As baby boomers maintain their leadership positions, it will be harder for younger workers to rise up in their organizations and could lead to higher turnover, stress and frustration.
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To be un-disruptable today requires much more than steering companies through singular (if monumental) events—it demands leaders navigate constant turbulence, continuously adjusting their actions accordingly. Today’s CEOs seem required to maintain constant pressure to transform their organizations by cultivating a high-tolerance, if not a passion, for ambiguity—and to infuse others with the same mindset. In a volatile world, today’s leaders need flexibility, agility, and a willingness to extend their organization’s capabilities into new and, sometimes, unexpected areas to keep ahead of relentless competition.
To better understand this shifting CEO role—and to uncover the qualities and skills leaders need to meet the demands of their positions in the future—we interviewed the CEOs of 24 massive, complex, global organizations in industries spanning banking, pharma, technology, natural resources, food processing, health-care delivery, retail, and manufacturing. Our mission was to attempt to answer this question: What does it take to be un-disruptable today, and what will be demanded of CEOs and their organizations to avoid disruption tomorrow?
What emerged were 20 factors identified as important to cultivating resilience to disruption, and five characteristics that were particularly significant. The five characteristics are:
- EMBRACE AMBIDEXTERITY
Yogi Berra once famously declared: “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Deciding to pursue more than one path—focusing simultaneously on the present as well as on the riskier future—may not seem particularly radical.2 Yet the CEOs we interviewed saw a different breed of ambidexterity: an urgent, continuous need to relentlessly and simultaneously execute both exploitation and experimentation. - CULTIVATE EMOTIONAL FORTITUDE
CEOs need to display—and cultivate within their companies—an ability to use fear of the rapidly changing landscape to fuel more productive outcomes, and accept failure is a risk when placing big bets. We call this emotional fortitude: the need for leaders to combine a sober assessment of potential risks and roadblocks with the fearlessness to pursue lofty visions. - ENCOURAGE A BEGINNER’S MIND-SET
The Zen Buddhism concept of Shoshin means “beginner’s mind.” In the words of Shunryu Suzuki, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” This captures one challenge CEOs consistently raised: seeing the world from the perspective of someone who does not know much about it. - MASTER DISRUPTIVE JUJITSU
Striving to become masters of disruptive jujitsu is precisely how CEOs aspire to handle disruption: recognizing threatening disruptions, breaking them into their components, selecting those components that can strengthen their organization, and then finding a way to “hijack” these disruptive elements for their own competitive advantage. - BECOME ULTIMATE END-USER ETHNOGRAPHER
It’s no secret that companies need to focus on their customers. But CEOs in our interviews spoke of a desire to better understand not only customer needs and attitudes, but to gain insight into experience of the ultimate end-user, becoming their most trusted champions by discovering their most subtle habits, desires, and subconscious concerns.
The five attributes we identified lay the groundwork for a new or more nuanced leadership model. Rather than five isolated factors, we increasingly see these characteristics as an organized whole, far more than the sum of their parts.
Finally, who would have ever expected strawberry pickers to be replaced by robots. But here they are.
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