The 3 Topics Shaping the Working World in 2023

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The 3 Topics Shaping the Working World in 2023

 

Pay and Package Transparency Continues to Empower

 

Younger generations and minorities of all kinds are becoming increasingly comfortable discussing their income and potentially highly profitable income streams that would fit into the “side hustle” category. 

 

Young people are the tastemakers and trendsetters. What they do spills into the everyday life of particularly open-to-change adults who begin introducing these ideas to their peers (with varying levels of enforcement.)

 

Eventually these young people become the workers anyway; bringing with them their disruptive behaviour. Such as opening discussing their salaries, comparing and lifting those who are on less up. 

 

Though many  large corporations, especially banking and insurance, have pay structures and tiers all employees are made aware of from day one. Employees are told how it works and can very easily work out the ballpark colleagues operate in. Bonus and packages can however be less transparent. For smaller or younger companies the opposite is more often true. Perks and rewards are shouted about but salaries reflect the cobbled together nature of nepotism and networking required to build a business from an idea.

 

As those who were previously known as students become young working people they are likely to bring their transparency-or-nothing attitude to business of all sizes and ages.

 

The lifting up and breaking through of minorities in different spaces, especially tech, has the capacity to invite this change too. As workplaces become more diverse in terms of age, sex and race there will be subsequent shifts from the status quo. It will be up to businesses to decide how best to modernise inline with their workforce. 

 

Hybrid working still up for debate?

 

2020 was the year office workers were forced to work from home for reasons beyond anyone's control. 

 

In 2021, work from home continued with some gestures of returning to the office but enforcement was held back as the evidence pointed to employees being more productive, plus everyone very much still felt ‘in a pandemic’.

 

2022 - an impatience formed amongst business leaders and employees. The idea of returning to the office and getting back a little bit of the life lived pre-pandemic was top of the list. 

 

The second half of 2022 saw the impatience from the bosses get much louder and reports of companies demanding their staff back 5/7 were increasing. Hybrid working became the most common set up but the debate continues - where should staff be and when? 

 

Regarding hybrid working, 2023 will likely bring more of the same as 2022; more debate than action and while we’re debating the hybrid 2-3 days in the office model prevails. 

 

Though, there will always be some boss somewhere who thinks the ideals of a 24/7 work force are attainable. But… we can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

 

Life is definitely more manageable with hybrid working being a prerequisite. 5 days a week / 40+ hours a week out of your home week in week out is no longer sustainable. If it ever was. Giving people the freedom to work where they are most needed that day is surely the only reasonable way forward. I guess we shall find out.

 

Opening Up New Recruitment Lanes

 

Finding new ways to look for talent and in different talent pools has revealed itself to be a difficult walk to walk.

 

Gartner says that to fill critical roles in 2023, organisations will need to become more comfortable assessing candidates solely on their ability to perform in the role, not their credentials and prior experience. And that it’s more urgent than ever to rethink outdated assumptions about qualifications. 

 

Sure, the pandemic gave everyone the opportunity to rethink their work/life choices and we saw the “great rethink” and “great resignation” follow. But thanks to increased access to information on the likes of Glassdoor, LinkedIn or even more generic forums, an individual can find much about a job's day to day in order to effectively match up their skill set.

 

Employees are charting nonlinear career paths: 56% of candidates report applying for jobs outside their current area of expertise, and Gartner expects this figure to climb further in the coming years. 

 

The candidate is already applying outside their lane and so employers need to start looking outside the traditional lanes in order to sweep up the best talent also. But as Gartner says, ridding everyone of the shackles of traditional assessment, though urgent, is a huge challenge.