We’re only one month in, but it’s already clear that 2022 will be the year of the workforce. With rapid quitting and hiring set to continue this year, employers are digging deep to figure out what it is that employees really want. As the economy continues to recover, business leaders are making strategic decisions to ensure they stay ahead of the competition. 

So what does that mean for the employees on the ground? This year, we’ll see hybrid work schedules, an artificial intelligence-augmented workforce, greater emphasis on skills and the use of employee monitoring and analytics. These four trends will define 2022 and set the workforce up for future developments. 

Hybrid working

Unsurprisingly, hybrid working models are on the rise, with over 90% of employers planning to adopt a hybrid working model for their knowledge workers in 2022, according to researchers Brian Kropp and Emily Rose McRae at HBR. But as the year wears on, hybrid work may face some obstacles: 

• CEOs may blame poor business performance on the hybrid model.
• Employees working a hybrid schedule may quit more readily.
• Hybrid employees may moonlight at other jobs.
• There may be a perceived loss of company culture.

If these obstacles occur, it will be tempting for companies to scratch the hybrid model altogether and require employees to return full-time to the office. But if those issues had root causes besides hybrid work, they’ll find the problems continue. My advice: Be sure to examine the root cause of the issues you’re facing. Don’t automatically blame hybrid work!

AI-augmented workforce

When we discuss how AI will change the workforce, it’s often with a negative tone; the idea of people losing their jobs to robots can be hard to swallow. But in some good news, the World Economic Forum predicts that by 2025, “97 million new roles may emerge that are more adapted to the new division of labour between humans, machines and algorithms.”

AI is all about automating routine tasks so people can focus on tasks requiring imagination, emotional intelligence and strategy. In 2022, that might look like analysts with limited experience being empowered to find actionable insights, or cybersecurity systems getting better at anomaly detection. Either way, the human touch is still required as AI continues to advance.

Greater emphasis on skills than on roles

“The skills required in many industries are changing,” according to http://emeritus.org. “And nearly 7 in 10 companies globally reported talent shortages and difficulties hiring in 2021, a 15-year high.”

What will that mean? According to Mary Baker at http://gartner.com, “To build the workforce you’ll need post-pandemic, focus less on roles – which group unrelated skills – than on the skills needed to drive the organization’s competitive advantage and the workflows that fuel that advantage.”

Within organizations, companies will focus more on retraining and re-skilling their existing employees. And when it comes to new hires, it’s going to matter less that someone has experience as, say, a project manager and more that they have skills that will be helpful as the company grows and pivots.

Employee monitoring and analytics

It’s controversial, but it’s happening: Employers are increasingly investing in technology to passively track and monitor their employees, with more than one-in-four companies having done so during the pandemic. Employees are understandably concerned about their privacy, so companies need to be transparent about how they’re using the data they collect and why.

“As companies ramp up their investments in AI-enabled systems, understanding the psychological factors that influence people’s attitudes and behaviors toward those technologies is more critical than ever,” according to the University of Virginia’s business blog. “Only then … can we glean practical insights into how to effectively leverage novel technologies to create positive impact.”

After two years of change and uncertainty, employees want to have a better work experience, and employers are finding ways to accommodate this desire while still making fiscally competitive decisions. To that effect, we will see hybrid work schedules, an AI-augmented workforce, greater emphasis on skills and the use of employee monitoring and analytics in 2022. As companies move forward with these changes, it’s crucial that leaders listen to their employees to ensure that they have all the resources they need to succeed.

Peter Ord is the founder of GuideCX, a client implementation and onboarding project platform based in Draper, Utah.

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