The national employment firm Allison & Taylor has identified five employment trends that will have significant implications for all employees and job seekers. Here are the top five:
1. Working at home is on the decline as workplace well-being is prioritized. In 2017, Allison & Taylor noted that about one-third of global corporations offered workplace flexibility options such as working from home and the elimination of strict office hours.
However, this trend has now taken a downturn as many companies have discovered that when employees interact more with each other in physical environments, it can result in enhanced creativity and relationship building that lead to favorable outcomes.
2. As the economy continues to improve, employers will invest greater sums into the training and development of their employees. More training and development will be utilized to fill the gaps in employee skill sets and will help companies work to full capacity in an improving economy. This will be most essential for Generation Z employees, who are demonstrating a soft skills gap in the workplace.
3. An increasingly aging workforce will have ramifications for employees of all ages. While much is made of Generation Y and Z employees, the overall workforce is continuing to age, with baby boomers retiring later than their generational predecessors. About three in every four Americans plan to work past retirement age, with almost two-thirds projected to work part-time.
As baby boomers maintain their leadership positions, it will be more challenging for younger workers to achieve promotional opportunities and could lead to higher turnover levels.
4. Bullies continue to affect the workplace. A significant change in the reference checking process is that employers are more likely than ever to call the job seeker’s former supervisors rather than the traditional route of calling Human Resources. This is because employers have concluded that former supervisors tend to be far more talkative about previous employees than Human Resources – and a talkative, knowledgeable reference is exactly what they seek.
5. Technological/AI advancements will continue to influence the workplace. Trends that began in 2017 will accelerate in 2018, affecting employment opportunities across the board. Examples include fast food chains adding ordering kiosks and warehouses using automated order pickers. Chatbots - programs that facilitate text conversations - are expected to save companies millions of dollars in salary expenditures annually, as will similar forms of artificial intelligence.
