Despite what the generations before you might have told you, the professional environment is an ever-evolving landscape. The changes in the workplace can include changes in work culture, changes in technology, industry practices, as well as the well-being of the workforce itself. Keeping a finger on the pulse of what’s happening among employees as well as potential employees is an important part of ensuring that your organization maintains resilience alongside growth. It also helps your organization stay relevant in the job market, as you are in a better position to attract and retain top talent. This can be accomplished by aligning your business with evolving employee expectations and preferences.
2024 is a key year when it comes to changes in the workforce. This is the year that Gen Zers will outnumber Boomers in the workforce. This year, more Gen Z will join the workforce while more Boomers will retire, causing this difference. However, Gen Zers will not enter the game alone: along with the people, come the way they think about work and working. HR resource people and managers will have to strategize how they can meet these expectations to ensure that the organization’s goals are met along with the workers’. On the one hand, employees need to be mentored through the sometimes rather traumatic process of leaving a schooling environment behind for the corporate world. The onus can’t all be on the workers themselves, however. The world is always changing, and it is idle to expect that management theories will be the one eternal thing in the world.
Gen Zers specifically have come under the past few months for being ‘lazy’, ‘entitled’, and unprepared for work in general. A Gen Zer’s horror-struck TikTok expressing her concern over a 9-5 work week that went viral around the world is a striking example. The young lady works a full-time job in a marketing position in everyone’s favorite city, New York. “I don’t have time to do anything,” she complains. “I want to shower, eat my dinner and go to sleep. I don’t have time or energy to cook my dinner either. I don’t have the energy to work out, that’s out the window. I’m so upset.” Most belonging to the older generations were quick to jump on ridiculing the young lady for expecting to make a ‘softer’ living. The responses of other newcomers to the workforce are still garnering media attention. Joining ‘Fox and Friends’, Ramsey Solutions host Ken Coleman described the attitude as a mentality that the youngsters need to be coached out of, saying that “you’re going to have to coach these younger employees more than you have (those of) any past generation.” According to Coleman, their parents, who incidentally enough, belong to the previous hard-working generations, are to be blamed for their lack of work ethic.
It is too easy to pile criticism onto the younger generation for being too lazy, as so many previous generations have done to us. However, it’s important to reevaluate the merit of these statements to see if such criticisms are only pandering to dead beliefs. Technology has progressed into realms that Boomers and millennials collectively would have never dreamt of, and yet employees still work 40-hour weeks to ensure that organizational goals are being met. This is at the expense of family life, social life – even personal health. Coupled with the financial stress of making the salary meet the actual cost of living, the lives of workers who have to make a living, not to mention those who are entering the workforce, remain as dire as they were since reforms following the industrial era. Just because previous generations had it harder doesn’t mean that it has to remain so for future ones.
The coming year will be challenging for organizations and employees alike. Those who can decide their own work hours should not be quick to impose on those who cannot, and just because the road they took to get there need not become a rite of passage for everyone who follows it.
Glassdoor, a prominent recruiting site, forecasts a list of workplace trends that are illuminating for both employees and employers.
Wages and salaries increase, while non-cash benefits erode. This is more likely a corporate strategy intended to safeguard profit margins rather than a trend in the workplace. Salary increases that do not match inflation – or in other terms does not increase the purchasing power of employers – do little to benefit its recipients. On the other hand, it does not cost much for a company to make the gesture. Non-cash benefits, which are more expensive for companies on the other hand, are forecasted to erode.
Cash rewards will replace equity compensation. This is another trend that is more likely to be rewarding to corporations than it is to employees. Equity compensation gives employees ownership over the organization and makes them more invested in it. It also decentralizes authority and power.
The employee morale ramifications of the layoffs carried out in 2023 are also expected to last into 2024. This is a change from usual trends, wherein a company’s rating in Glassdoor rose sometime after the layoffs. As of now, ratings are on the decline months after layoffs.
Increased pressure on middle management to negotiate rising tensions between the upper echelons and employees.
Flexible and remote work policies become more attractive to workers, on par with compensation. Organizations that offer the benefit of flexibility generally offer lower salaries and less expensive benefits. Polls consistently show that employees prefer remote work over other options. While remote job opportunities are dwindling with the big companies, they continue to thrive in mid-size and small companies.
While these trends are reasonable enough to prepare for, other factors are as of yet unpredictable for how they will impact businesses. The large-scale, commercial application of AI will have a clear impact on labor productivity as well as employee satisfaction. How things will play out can only truly be evaluated this time next year.
(Theruni M. Liyanage)