2023 Workplace Trends
By Sara Mackey, Marketing Communications Specialist, Wisconsin Technical College System
If you’re the person writing communications from the HR department or the C-suite, you may be at the center of changes in company priorities. If you’re not writing the communications, perhaps you’re involved in other ways. Many corporate communications include a more focused and articulated concern for employees’ mental and physical health and well-being. This is just one aspect of the myriad ways culture is changing dramatically around workplaces.
There are several advantages to focusing on employees’ well-being, but many factors, including the distance created by hybrid or remote workplaces makes that focus much more crucial. Companies are finding they can indeed be successful with work from home policies, and many are even succeeding with 4-day work weeks, as long as employees remain connected to their colleagues and management. Other changes many workplaces are making include:
- Adding or improving Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) as resources for mental health support. The Pandemic, inflation and societal changes are just a few issues contributing to stress among many workers.
- Wellness plans frequently include financial or other incentives to encourage employees to focus on physical health. Not just to keep insurance premiums down, but to retain a holistic approach and continued motivation to focus on health.
- Work-life balance via hybrid or remote work is winning many employers over. A happier employee tends to be a more productive employee, benefitting both the employee and the employer.
- Skills of all types are more valued than ever. Not just technical skills – employers place more value on personal skills, making them at least as important as technical or hard skills, since the most valuable employee skills cannot be automated. These personal skills include communication, customer service, leadership, attention to detail and collaboration.
- There is also emerging interest in employees who value professional learning, who focus on achievement and cultural and social intelligence. For this reason, continuing education is an increasingly important core value among many employers.
Speaking of which, more and more employers are hiring based on skills versus degrees. So, employees who continue to develop themselves may have an advantage over someone who acquired advanced degrees but may not have the best people skills. Digital badges – electronic credentials that employees can earn demonstrating they’ve developed certain competencies – are becoming increasingly more popular for their specificity, portability and short-term commitment.
Your local technical college is positioned to help employers evolve through changes and challenges from the rapidly changing work environment. The technical colleges offer short-term or long-term training in various areas; online, on your campus, or ours. They also offer consulting in compliance, lean enterprise, safety and other strategies. Contact your local technical college for more information http://www.wtcsystem.edu/colleges.
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