Professional Documents
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Workpalce Trend
Workpalce Trend
experiences
Berwick, Isabel; Smith, Sophia
ABSTRACT (ENGLISH)
[...]as baby boomers enter retirement age, workplace demographic changes mean that this time around, workers will
still retain leverage. According to Culture Amp, which develops employee engagement tools, high performers
respond more strongly to recognition than lower-performing peers, so something like clear delineation between
standard pay rises and merit-based increases will help them see the return on their efforts. Another area ripe for
personalisation is training and career development. Approaching employee development like this can also boost a
company’s reputation and provide a long runway for training a replacement.
FULL TEXT
Happy New Year and welcome back to work —and to Working It! On the podcast this week, I talk about workplace
predictions for 2023, with Taylor Nicole Rogers, the FT’s US labour and equality correspondent, and Sophia Smith,
co-editor of this newsletter. One of the things that Taylor predicts is lay-offs among HR and diversity and inclusion
staff, as companies look to save money. “They need the finance people more than they need the people people,”
Taylor says.
Sophia points out that some trends come from the world of dating and romance —including “career cushioning” and
“job cuffing” —the latter is hitching yourself to a job for the winter months, in advance of a spring thaw and a better
jobs market. All of this may indicate another big trend for 2023: the rise of the personal over the corporate.
Lucie Greene, a brand strategist and futurist, gave some thought-provoking predictions which we could not include
in the final podcast —but we will return to in another episode. Lucie notes a blurring between work tech and our
personal use of platforms and websites. “People are using MailChimp and SquareSpace for both enterprise and
their personal side hustles,” says Lucie. Many consumers are paying to upgrade Zoom accounts to professional
ones —just for their personal use.
In a further indication of all-round “blurring”, Lucie also thinks a lot of business-focused brands will be making
themselves more like the mainstream apps we all use in daily life. “A lot of them are trying to look like Uber or
Instagram —being cool and culturally relevant is now synonymous with being a good product, even in a business
context.” Even factories and industrial companies, Lucie says, are hiring cool creatives to give themselves an image
makeover.
Next week, we talk about whether we should be more open about our failures at work —should we include the jobs
we didn’t get on our CVs? With Farrah Storr, Substack’s head of writer partnerships, and my FT colleague Brooke
Masters. (Isabel Berwick)
What would you like to see us cover in Working It this year? Write to us atworkingit@ft.comto let us know.
Top stories in the world of work:
1. The changes at work from 2022 that will last:Office life changed hugely in 2022. Pilita Clark predicts that some of
these changes —such as evolving rules about hybrid, and the increasing popularity of sneakers and backpacks
—will continue into the new year.
2. Life lessons from the self-employed:With so many people working remote or hybrid jobs, working life is
superficially much more like freelancing than ever before. Viv Groskop, a 21-year veteran of the freelancing world,
DETAILS
Subject: Hybrid work; Careers; Customization; Trends; Baby boomers; Layoffs; Employees;
Employment; Career development planning
Business indexing term: Subject: Hybrid work Careers Layoffs Employees Employment Career development
planning
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