Future of Work – Predictions for 2016

The future of work is now and therefore rather than look at the year 2020 let’s take a look at what the next year will bring for businesses in 2016.

Based on research of technology, demographics, HR strategies and more here are predictions for 2016:

1. PC World confirms in a recent article that 2016 will be less about ‘tech’ as a focus and more about enhanced human experience, connection and leverage of tech to work ‘smarter’ not harder.
2. An INC. article states that getting health insurance through employers is going away – they will provide stipends rather than the current health insurance programs.
3. Current and future workers will gain skills through MOOC’s (Massive Open Online Courses) rather than relying on traditional college/university.
4. Josh Bersin of  Bersin by Deloitte provides many HR predictions including the ‘integration’ of HR into a ‘middleware’ that brings together onboarding, performance evaluation, succession planning and more.
5. In 2016 the words ‘trust’ and ‘transparency’ will no longer be just buzz words – they will be demanded by employees including transparency in salary, technology and management practices. An article in Forbes titled, 10 Workplace Trends for 2015 which was published in late 2014, pointed to the demand for transparency as a 2015 trend this will continue through to 2016.
6. 76% of employers will be welcoming ‘boomerang’ employees with open arms – Forbes
7. More millennials /Gen Y’s will become leaders and their approach will be ‘transformational leadership’.
8. Work flexibility is the top focus for 2016 – remote workers, flex time, work from home, shared jobs, and more creative flex work is THE focus for 2016. Hundreds of employees surveyed said they want to have a life and to have their work augment their life. Companies that have the most flexible work will be the most attractive in the war for talent.
9. Blended learning, gamification and mobile learning or “M Learning’ are going to be the norm for employee development- training will be employee driven and employees will seek training that will fast forward their skills for the changing workplace.
10. There will be an increase in the ‘entrepreneurial’ worker – workers on contract and interested in project work in order to control ‘time’.
11. Lastly – there will be a greater focus on ‘energy’ as the key to ‘leading change’ as employees recognize that being engaged is really about participating in something ‘larger than self’ and a desire to learn how to connect to expand ‘good in the world’ through business.

The biggest opportunity for leaders and their teams is to bring the future workplace a reality now! The flexibility needed is immense and focus needs to be on ‘leading the change’ we know is here and is coming beyond 2016.