- March 3, 2021
Workplace Trends We'll See in 2021
Did you know that, according to the BBC, over half of the world’s workforce is now currently working remotely, in large part due to the current COVID-19 Pandemic? This has effects not only now, but will also continue to impact the state of the workplace in 2021 and beyond.
If you run a business and have a decent number of employees, then you’re probably curious about the workplace trends that will emerge in 2021 and the future.
In 2020, many companies adopted new management styles not because they wanted to, but out of necessity. Now, in 2021 we are seeing the results of this change: whilst some companies, particularly in the financial services sector are already suggesting that they want staff back in the office, many are now going completely remote. The vast majority of businesses, it would appear are trying to find the right middle ground.
However you look at it, there has been a big shift in overall thinking. Companies now need to formulate strategies to create successful digital workspaces. Will you be prepared for this largely virtual business world?
If you aren’t sure about how to adapt, there’s no need for you to worry. In this article, we’ll inform you about the trends we’ll see in the modern workplace this year and in years to come. This way, you can effectively manage your business. Read on to learn more.
1. All Businesses Will Focus Much More On Customer-Experience
Whilst businesses have always attempted to deliver good customer service, real strategic planning around customer experience (CX) has traditionally been limited to certain types of business (ones with formal contact centre and corporates).
In 2021, CX will start to become a focused topic for more and more businesses, as they start to realise the need to offer digital channels of communication to their customers to support voice and email channels that they’d only offered previously. We saw how customers became accustomed to contacting businesses online in 2020 and we’re expecting this to continue to grow in 2021.
The statistics demonstrate this: some broadband communication operators reported Internet traffic going up as high as 60% after the Coronavirus crisis.
As a result, more businesses will start to remodel their operations to ensure that their customers’ remote digital experience works in line with online customer expectations. They will start to put into place technologies that enable them to stay better in touch with customers online.
This will include the ability to take inquiries not only on landline phones but also on online platforms.
Additionally, customers will expect to be able to communicate via text online—with staff who are online, ready to answer their questions, or with AI-powered chat-bots, for example.
2. Talent Will Prevail Over Location
In the modern workplace, talent will prevail over location. As businesses have shifted so that their employees can work remotely from home, your number of options in terms of recruitment has now risen exponentially. The talent pool you have is no longer limited to your local area. It is not even limited to only the UK.
Now, you have a global talent tool available to you. So you should take advantage of this opportunity by preparing with the right technologies and methods.
The companies that are best able to leverage remote on-boarding and training and hiring will be highly competitive going forwards. To do this, use a global hiring solution software so that you can find employees who will do the best work for you.
Additionally, place your adverts for roles in remote work websites such as remote.co, JustRemote, and Pangian. When it comes to the best on-boarding and training solutions, look for platforms that allow you to teach everything you need to anytime, anywhere.
Solutions that allow for video conferencing, such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom, are a great choice. If you plan on putting many of your trainings online to be accessed at any time, you can use a software program such as 360 Learning, made especially for corporate trainings.
3. Businesses Will Start To Develop Modern Workplace Strategies
If you’ve adopted various new technologies as a response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, you might not be entirely sure how to use them. Perhaps, you are using these technologies as a quick fix.
For example, you may have started using Slack to make communication between employees easier, now that everyone is working remotely.
Due to these technologies being rolled out so fast, it’s been very hard for businesses to think strategically, develop company-wide policies and procedures for working and train teams properly. This has resulted in people working their own way around technologies and doing the best they can to remain efficient and productive. However, now that new online technologies are part of the way nearly every office is run, it’s best to use these technologies in a more planned way. In 2021, businesses will start to reevaluate how they operate, how they create and share knowledge and information, how they best collaborate on work and how they communicate internally and externally. In doing so, they’ll start to establish new workplace practices that enable them to take best advantage of these new technologies and working environments.
The ones that tackle this challenge properly will really prosper. They’ll start to see efficiencies where technology is able to help them automate problem-solving and simple business processes.
4. Mental Health Moves Up the Priority List
A big change that occurred in 2020 was the importance of prioritising mental health in and out of the workplace. Many people had to adjust to the strange time of the pandemic, taking time off work if they needed to, booking mental health days.
As a result, mental health has now moved up the priority list in HR departments worldwide.
HR will become part of the executive committee in businesses, and they will be in charge of driving more decisions.
If you want your business to be successful, then you can demonstrate your commitment to your teams’ mental health when advertising new roles, training new employees, and when your current staff ask for work flexibility.
By demonstrating that you prioritise mental health, potential employees will choose to work at your business, whilst those working for you already will stay at your company instead of switching over to work with a competitor.
Additionally, consider implementing software such as Welbot, which helps your employees improve their mental health whilst at work.
They can use this software whether they are work on-site or remotely.
5. Security Changes
When it comes to 2021 predictions for the workplace, security changing is one of them. In 2020, when many businesses had to go fully remote, they discovered that the systems they had in place were actually quite insecure and their policies were not up to date. For this reason, they’ll have to rethink their Infosec policies and security designs for 2021.
You have to find a way to make information available to everyone at your workplace, making it easily accessible—whilst ensuring that it is secure in our digital world.
Do you know what devices are connected to your network that can access data? Are these devices in themselves secure?
By answering these questions, you can decide which security changes are best for your business.
6. Do We Really Need this Video Call?
Choosing to hop on a video call will start to become rarer than it was in 2020. People will get more strict with their time and, as a result, with time spent on video calls. Even though this was a popular choice in 2020, people are starting to experience video fatigue.
Some meetings will change to being audio only.
To address this issue, be selective about which meetings you ask your employees to show up to on video. Keep these to a minimum. Additionally, ask yourself these questions to determine when you need a video meeting versus an audio meeting:
How do you usually communicate between teams, departments, and colleagues?
With multiple ways of contact now available, does your company have any standards in place?
How can you best communicate within your workplace? What would be most effective and keep employees engaged?
By answering these questions, you can come up with communication methods that work best for your business.
7. User Adoption
In the 2021 workplace, companies will be investing more money on training people to use collaboration tools. Whether you’re running a hybrid office or one that is fully remote, the virtual work environment will be more important than ever.
As a result, you will want to focus on doc sharing, compliance, and messaging—whether this messaging is being done on mobile or with a software platform.
To create a digital workspace, we advocate using Microsoft Teams. By setting up the right channel structure, looking at security schemers and file naming conventions, understanding how to take advantage of Microsoft applications within Teams, and having a clear approach you can encourage your team to communicate online and work better together online.
This will create a feeling of being together at the office, whether or not everyone is working from home.
8. Managing Distractions During Work
One of our workplace predictions is that employers will have to find ways to manage distractions during work. Whilst distractions in a physical office are well understood, there are many more distractions when your employees are working remotely. Microsoft are regularly releasing features that help to achieve this.
After all, new remote digital world users are inundated with information from multiple sources, all the time.
Whether your employees are doom-scrolling aficionados or social media addicts, you must provide them with the tools that will help them focus whilst at work.
You can use tools such as SelfControl to block specific websites whilst working. You can also ask your employees to turn off notifications on their phones or to work with their phone in another room entirely.
It’s important to remember that this is a learning process for everyone, including your employees, who may not have worked remotely before the pandemic began.
For this reason, provide them with strategies that will help them concentrate. Additionally, come up with management strategies of your own to make it easier to concentrate on tasks you assign.
9. Regional Co-Working Spaces
A big change that will occur, once real life is back to normal, is that there will be a demand for co-working spaces. Already, before the pandemic, co-working spaces were popular among remote workers and startups. However, they will become even more popular after the pandemic and not necessarily in city centre locations, but in regional towns and suburbs.
The reason for this is simple. Whilst more people will be working remotely, this won’t necessarily mean from home.
It’s human nature to enjoy human interaction, to feed off the energy of others, and we will all be looking forward to experiencing it again. We expect co working spaces to open up in regional towns and city suburbs, near to where people live and we expect them to become extremely popular. In fact we anticipate that there will be a boom in the suburban co-working spaces sector. Additionally, people will start co-working in other places.
The hospitality sector will try and get in on the action and re position themselves as remote working alternatives to the home. Pubs will improve their WiFi. Local businesses such as cafes, and even restaurants, will be encouraging remote workers to work in them, providing coffee memberships and additional sockets.
Digital offerings at these businesses will make them more successful.
10. More Less Formal Office Spaces
Finally, one of the biggest workplace trends of 2021 is that there will be a larger number of less formal office spaces. Spaces will be “resimercial”—in other words, they will be a hybrid of residential and commercial spaces. Businesses will be doing this so that people will be incentivised to return to the office after having worked from home. To achieve this, they’ll start to create task based working areas, zones that support the different types of work types that employees complete in an average day. Office design will pay particular attention in creating suitable spaces for focused work, places where employees can concentrate without distraction.
To make your business more “resimercial,” we recommend you get in touch and learn how Formation Tech can help with your workplace design.
Need More Information On Workplace Trends?
Do you need more information on workplace trends? Perhaps, you want to learn more about how to implement these trends into your office now, to get ahead of the competition. Or perhaps you want to learn which trends, specifically, would benefit your company most.
Whatever you need, we’re here to help. At Formation, we’re experts when it comes to running your business. Whether your office is remote, hybrid, or traditional, we can give you the solutions you need to be most effective. To learn more about how we can help you, contact us here.