Workplace Culture Trends 2016

As Baby Boomers continue to retire, the workplace is left to adjust to this stress. This stress has caused workplace culture to change attitude about issues affected by employees regarding their private lives, political opinions, and professional behavior, affecting how the workplace conducts its normal, daily duties. Workplace conduct has moved into a new arena where work accomplishment occurs in environments that intend to stimulate productivity, innovation, and efficiency. These environments develop from the changes seen through workplace culture trends. These trends affect how many businesses scout and attract talent, how employees prioritize themselves, and how the landscape of industry changes by the effects of the trends.

Retiring Talent

The greatest workplace trend is Baby Boomers retiring. This has left businesses without much of their experienced workforce, so they must find a replacement that is capable of understanding the job and its duties and applying their intelligence to solve situations quickly. This disrupts the normal productive operation run in a business and adds further delay to recovering to the same position once held because of seeking and vetting incoming talent.

Incoming Talent

The talent sought to replace retirees has a much different view about the world, work, and life. It is not a trend that talent needs replaced, but what the incoming talent provides is a trend. They seek to put work second to their personal lives, and some businesses were quick to agree. This has resulted in the work environment being decorated with living plants, an idea to support healthy and productive employees, encouraging breaks and naps to recoup from fatigue, and providing greater vacation time and maternity leave for new parents. These workplace trends focus on making the culture and environment conducive for productive results through happy employees.

Freelancing and Consulting Talent

Many in the workforce have abandoned the traditional route of attempting to work as an employee for a company. Many instead have switched focus and began providing their labor through freelance or consultant work. Businesses support this change because it allows them a wider field to consider when needing a job done. It benefits the freelancers and consultants because it provides them with ample control over how they schedule their professional and personal time. Freelancing is especially easier now because many of these jobs are available through crowd-sourcing websites that connect businesses and their requests to people capable of completing the task.

Automated Talent

Many businesses have begun to look towards automating their workforce as opposed to hiring new employees. This trend will cause the workplace to change not only because fewer people will be in that industry workforce, but the kinds of jobs will change as well. Dan Schawbel,Forbes, writes that “McDonald’s Europe installed 7,000 touch-screen computers that take your order and track food items. While many people think that automation is bad for workers, like in every era, old jobs will be lost and new jobs will be created.” This change requires new jobs where people determine what needs automating, where people design the automation process, design the robot hardware and software, and maintain them. For the loss of one job, multiple rise in place.

For 2016, the greatest workplace culture trend is replacing retiring talent with a person who possesses equitable traits in performance, commitment, and ability to adhere to the conditions specific to the situation demands. This trend proves best for businesses because it promises that prospects and new hires can maintain the operation, minimize the learning-curve downtime, and provide acceptable ideas for growth. Lesser trends support this push by providing policies that encourage timely productive updates through agreeable, positive affirmations like flexible break schedules, more vacation time, and paid benefits. These trends demonstrate the wide variance between the attitudes of the retiring and incoming talent.

Tangram helps businesses support an environment that encourages employee performance. For information, contact us.