2023 workplace trends shaping the direction of organizational planning
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- Published: Wednesday, 16 November 2022 09:25
Workplace trends will have a big impact on the plans that business continuity and risk managers are making for 2023. Here are the top 2023 workplace collaboration trends that Poly expect will shape the future of work in the UK…
Hybrid work will be normalised, and more people than ever will work a four-day week
In 2023, ‘hybrid work’ will just become ‘work’. It will no longer be a trend, but normal everyday work life. As a result of this shift and relaxation in attitudes around work, we could see a rise in the number of people wanting to work a four-day week.
In 2022, more than 3,300 workers at 70 UK companies started working a four-day week with no loss of pay in the world’s biggest trial of the new working pattern. This number will boom in 2023, as more and more employees and employers see the benefits of taking up this option.
To prepare for this shift, UK businesses must adopt effective hybrid working strategies supported by the right processes. This requires organizations to focus on their company culture, and ensure employees are empowered to be productive, but without getting close to burning out. Employers should also endeavour to provide their staff with the right tools for them, allowing them to work to the best of their ability, regardless of location.
The 9-5 will die as work becomes more distributed and fragmented
In the last few years, organizations have got used to managing employees working from home. However, in 2023, they will need to adapt to managing people working from far flung locations. This is because more and more employees are working from locations such as the pub or coffee shops. We will also see an increasing number of employees taking ‘workcations’ working abroad to maximise their annual leave. In addition, we’ll see a rise in the number of digital nomad employees – those that work remotely full time from various locations. To capitalise on this trend, countries such as Portugal and Spain are offering special digital nomad visas to allow remote workers to work legally in the country.
Clearly, the traditional 9-5 will start to become a thing of the past in 2023. Organizations need to ensure they are ready to offer employees flexibility, especially if they want to retain and attract the best talent, many of whom will want to work abroad. Ultimately, 2023 will be all about creating a more flexible, attractive workplace for those employees that want to unshackle from the 9-5 culture.
Empty trends like quiet quitting will fuel employee and employer disparity
We heard a lot about quiet quitting in 2022, but we’ll hear a lot less about it in 2023 once employers realise that simply doing your job isn’t actually a bad thing. Quiet quitting defined employees that worked their hours and didn’t go above and beyond their job description. It suggested employees should work more hours and do more tasks than they are paid to do.
But in an era of hybrid work, the notion of only working your hours shouldn’t be a controversial one. According to research, organizations have seen a 72 percent rise in productivity as a result of hybrid work. Employees have become more productive in the hybrid era, and so in 2023 employers will see that staff are not quiet quitting, but simply getting on with their jobs and being more productive than ever.
This kind of trend highlights the different attitudes towards work between employer and employee, a disparity that could impact retention and growth. Expectations differ, particularly on issues like how often employees come to the office. Research shows that 54 percent of employees want to split their time evenly between the office and home. This contrasts to 52 percent of employers believing that hybrid work is just a blip. To make hybrid work a success, employers need to meet the needs of employees and provide the level of flexibility that they expect.
Get ready for ‘Wagamama Workspaces’
In 2023, we will see employers start to take inspiration from some unexpected places when they redesign the office to cater for the future of work. One such inspiration will be from restaurants, both in the form of booking spaces to work and how they organize their spaces. One workplace trend we will see much more of in 2023 is hotelling. This is where employees make use of a corporate booking system to reserve desks in their own workplace, for a day at a time.
This shift will also see organizations take inspiration from restaurant chains – like Wagamama – when redesigning their offices spaces. We’ll likely see the introduction of bench style hot desks to ensure that everyone has somewhere they can work when visiting the office.
