Trends in the Future of Work in 2022

The digital transformation of the new normal explored...

Digital Transformation of the Workplace at Scale Occurring in 2022

While I want to write more about programming this Newsletter and specifically related to Data Science Learning.

Digital transformation in the workplace is so fascinating. So many new life-work balance issues are arising let’s take a look at some of the biggest trends for 2022.

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So without further adieu, let’s get into it:

1. Great Resignation Leads to Significant Talent Shortage

With a huge number of people over 55+ in key positions taking early retirement the labor market is having a supply-demand and geographical crisis.

Heading into 2022, talent scarcity is one of the key lenses through which we will see the entire world of work. This will lead to wage inflation, bottlenecks, remote work scaling, more distributed teams and even quicken automation in several industries.

2. Mental Health Impact of the Pandemic on Labor Shortages

With pandemic fatigue and coping with remote work, people are re-orientating their professional priorities at work as well. This includes a dissatisfaction with leadership, outdated in-office pressure and more power of choice for the job seeker.

As some companies fail at providing adequate hybrid work and remote work environments, the lack of decent working conditions, the push towards higher education in place of work-based training pathways, and the mismatch between education and workplace needs all contribute to the issue, among other factors.

Don’t underestimate the mental health crisis and pressure professionals face with caregiving burdens, more fractured company cultures and rising inflation on the consumer. There is a significant psychological stressor most companies aren’t meeting. Talent has never been so aware of life-work balance and quality of life at their jobs.

More CEOs and Managers are also making weird calls and going off the deep end leading to less confidence in leadership and management generally speaking without the usual face-to-face signals of corporate hierarchies and the smoothing of egos that usually takes place in person.

The cost of remote work company cultures also impacts employee retention leading to productivity pitfalls as some companies go all-in on digital transformation.

3. The Creator Economy will Leverage Metaverse Hype Creating New Jobs

With TikTok likely to implement both subs and tipping at scale for creators, Instagram will as well. With rising subscription type ecosystems around audio and writing, the Creator economy could accelerate and create more indie jobs for young digital natives.

4. Great Reshuffle Turns into Great Renegotiation

With labor supply demand blockages and talent shortages more employees have more negotiation power as a result of the Great Resignation. This means hybrid work, a 4-day work week and other work-life balances and concerns are met more frequently in companies that aggressively understand what the new wave of talent wants as well as significant inflation wage adjustment, for instances signing bonuses.

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5. 4-Day Workweek Pilots Increase in 2022 and 2023

With digital transformation improving productivity, some smarter organizations can afford to prioritize the mental health nd life-work balance of their employees without a reduction in productivity. This is leading to more 4-day work week pilots.

In the U.K. a four-day work week will be trialed for a six-month period starting in June, with 30 companies already committed to participating. In 2019 a pilot of Microsoft Japan employees showed that 4-Day work week somehow boosted workers' productivity by 40%, Microsoft Japan said.

With pandemic fatigue and employees more isolated, giving another day for potential family and socialization also can reduce their mental health burden that might along with hybrid work just become the new normal of the future of work.

6. AI-Human Hybrid Work

Pandemic lockdowns and supply-chain issues has also lead to more automation in the workplace, a budding RPA industry and more robotics automation systems. In the office, that gradually leads to more AI-human hybrid work where A.I. is helping more with our repetitive tasks and making our jobs easier.

The World Economic Forum predicts that AI and automation will lead to the creation of 97 million new jobs by 2025. AI-human hybrid work may also facilitate the advent of a 4-day work week making organizations more productive. In most industries how AI is impacting repetitive tasks is just beginning to start to have an impact that will scale over the next few decades.

7. Talent Scarcity and the War for Talent

With a record amount of early retirements since 2020, there’s a severe shortage of labor and talent in many sectors from trucking to software engineering to cybersecurity professionals.

There’s also a geographic mis-match between labor demands and supply. The initial exodus from more expensive cities in a remote work era also complicates this to some degree.

However talent scarcity isn’t just about digital transformation. Workers are getting more picky too. A crisis of leadership, poor understanding of what young talent needs, the lack of decent working conditions, the push towards higher education in place of work-based training pathways, and the mismatch between education and workplace needs all contributes to the issue and compounds the shortages.

8. The Problem of Talent Retention Becomes Global

With more choices in a remote only or hybrid work new normal, we’ve all witnessed how the Great Resignation turned into a great reshuffle and great re-evaluating of our professional direction and work-life balance preferences. Many industries like financial services and banking have not caught up to the new normal yet, and even some technology companies lag behind others.

As the new normal of the future of work takes place we aren’t just seeing talent shortages but talent retention issues at scale as white-collar workers have more choice as to the setup, industry and kind of company or job they are looking for.

9. Tech Companies Began to Penalize Remote Workers or those who Moved to Cheaper States

Remote workers who want a digital-only lifestyle are often being penalized financially by companies. The same goes for employees of companies such as Facebook, who moved to less expensive States. Facebook said in mid 2021 that it will let all employees work remotely even after the pandemic, however, company may reduce their pay if they move to a less-expensive area.

This sort of cost-benefit analysis means there are major HR issues and problems with our negotiation of what will be the new normal. Compounded by the spike in inflation, housing prices, used-cars and food prices, hybrid-work and remote work aren’t without their obstacles and problems for companies and fair pay.

10. Hybrid Work Becomes Dominant in Some Sectors

Hybrid work existed before the COVID-19 pandemic, but not to the extent that we will continue to see in 2022 and beyond. There’s pretty substantial evidence various levels of hybrid work will become the new normal in 2023 and beyond.

11. Hybrid and AI-Human Augmented Work will Create More Tiers

The use of A.I. in the office and hybrid work that combines remote work with in-office work will create more tiers within organizations, between a spectrum of privilege and less flexibility. This will create many ethical, legal and functional issues for HR departments, management and leadership.

Just as Google’s “consultants” are a lower tier population at Alphabet, and just as “gig-economy” workers have less worker rights in the U.S. economy, hybrid work and AI-human augmented offices will also have pros and cons for certain groups that won’t always be inclusive, equitable and on-board.

12. Employee Monitoring in Digital Transformation

As more workers spend more time doing remote work or in the home office, more employee monitoring analytics, tracking and surveillance by software is the likely trend. This is somewhat inevitable and a dream of BigTech. Controversial though it may be to some workers, research shows that employers are increasingly investing in technology designed to monitor and track the behavior of their employees in order to drive efficiency.

Hybrid work therefore also drives Surveillance capitalism in a quite literal sense of employee snooping. Some employees may not even be aware that they are being monitored and their behavior on a suite of “digital transformation” tools is being so closely tracked and analyzed.

13. Crisis of Leadership and C-Level Conduct

As the future of work evolves, there’s also an increasing credibility problem for C-level executives, management and leadership policies. You might say this is an leadership transparency and accountability crisis. Dozens of companies have PR issues due to poor behavior from male leaders often involving sexual misconduct, bullying or inappropriate behavior.

With multiple new pressures on employees and talent, how leaders better understand their workforce and show compassion for their workers will make a world of difference. As some tech companies pivot to digital only workplace cultures, this problem is exaggerated.

14. Centralized Communication Improves in Digital Transformation

A team that communities well is around 20% more productive. Thus companies in the hybrid work era really invest in improving communication meaning Managers and leaders are taking more input from their workers in a digital-first environment. This is breaking down silos and making “skills” primary over “roles” in the new atmosphere of the future of work.

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15. Great Resignation Persists into 2023

The supply-chain issues will be persistent in 2022 but so will the labor shortage problem and economies with millions of jobs that disappeared during the pandemic. That great reshuffle continues for so long as Covid-19 is disrupting care-giving, mental health and start-stop situations in society coping with pandemic fatigue. There’s no sign of it letting up at least in early 2022.

The labor shortage and talent issues around the GR should persist into 2023.

16. Soft Skills Shortage

In an era of unprecedented inclusion, diversity and challenges for remote organizations, soft skills are seen as a deal breaker when workers have equal skills and resumes.

You can argue that soft skills, once referred to as “power skills,” were important prior to the pandemic. But the need to build relationships virtually and work with reduced oversight has made soft skills in the workplace even more important.

Young professionals are therefore well placed if they polish their soft skills as digital transformation permeates our organizations and work structures.

17. Human Resources Automation and Deep Learning Software

Going into 2022, more organizations are transforming their human resources departments as they leverage data analytics in direct sourcing and talent acquisition. HR workers can also use data to find out why employees are leaving their organizations and stem turnover.

New screening tools that leverages A.I. or even facial recognition are being used to improve analysis of interviews and potential candidates. AI is a powerful technology that can help HR improve how we recruit, hire, measure, compensate and develop people. Heading into 2023 the labor shortage also improves how organizations utilize data analytics and A.I. to optimize their HR processes.

18. Workplace Benefits, Signing Bonuses and Wages Correct to Inflation

In 2022 as inflation is more persistent and labor-shortages and talent wars intensifies organizations must rapidly adjust with workplace benefits, signing bonuses and wage increases that make sense to and with the new normal.

The future of work is dynamic and includes the various changes in society simultaneously. With Covid-19, supply-chain disruptions, early retirements, care-giving pressures, mental health issues, pandemic fatigue and a great reshuffle of employees wanting to change their jobs in the next six months to a year - there’s more flux than perhaps ever before in the future of work.

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19. The 996 Problem of Long Work Hours Continues in Some parts of the World

Needing regulation, it appears that a third of mainland Chinese employees find their work hours ‘distressing’, study by insurance giant AXA shows. While more attention has been brought to the unrealistic expectations in China’s tech sector for 996, an almost suicidal commitment to long working hours, young workers are not fairing too well with a marked decline in fertility levels.

At 31 per cent in China, that was the highest proportion of any country polled, and compared with 23 per cent in Hong Kong and Japan. This is a major mental health burden and a serious detriment to starting a family or even getting married for many workers in China.

Those who felt supported at work in terms of “mind health”, which refers to emotional, psychological and social wellbeing, were 1.7 times more likely to be happy and twice as likely to “flourish”, the survey found. It’s not clear if China’s regulatory efforts in 2021 and 2022 have improved the ‘996’ situation.