How can leaders take a strategic and holistic approach in meeting the needs of employees, clients and communities while improving organizational performance? Sodexo, a leader in delivering sustainable, integrated facilities management and food service has published its fifth Annual Workplace Trends Report for 2016.

Sodexo’s 2016 Workplace Trends Report combines insight from principal research, clients, academia, and leading facilities management and human resource trade organizations. The company’s researchers use mixed-method research to monitor and collectively examine trends that affect the quality of life of consumers in the workplace.

This approach includes traditional quantitative measures such as end user satisfaction and preference surveys, psychographic analysis at client sites, social media monitoring and a literary review consisting of consultant reports, academic and trade journals, and information from industry associations.

“Companies spend a daunting $720 million on employee engagement annually. From how leaders are recognizing and rewarding employees, to more effective health and wellness program design, we see the importance of a personalized, holistic approach. This report shares a theme that programs effectively reward and recognize the varied individual employee motivators that are essential in today’s multi-generational workplace,” explains Mark Bickford, CEO of Corporate Services, North America, Sodexo.

“In our humanizing the workplace trend, we see the opportunity to leverage a range of design principles to help keep a “human-centric focus” in our work,” added Bickford.

Here are eight key insights developed towards improving the quality of life and facilitating better employee engagement at work:

1. Population Health Management: A New Business Model for a Healthier Workforce
   Population Health Management, or PHM, is a broad effort whereby individual, organizational- and community level interventions are used to improve the disease burden of entire groups or populations. By keeping people well at the onset, PHM strategies can be used to decrease overall healthcare usage and avoid future overuse of the healthcare system.  However, in order to bend the curve on health costs, programs that go beyond the typical employee wellness models towards a more integrated and comprehensive approach are required.
2. Humanizing the Workplace: Using Design Principles to Inspire Workplace thinking
   In these times of transition and change, it is increasingly difficult to make the right decisions in creating the right work environments. Design principles, act as a set of guardrails, can help shape the promise and trajectory of approaching the design and maintenance of workspaces, by inspiring new thinking, fine-tuning directions and guiding decision-making processes. This piece highlights seven design principles that can guide managers and leaders who are charged with humanizing the workplace.

See: Should HR and Internal Communications Collaborate for Better Employee Engagement?

3. Reaching Every Employee in an Organization: Engagement through Recognition
   The vast majority of today’s employees are disengaged, and studies indicate that engagement is one of the key drivers of business success. Corporate managers understand this imperative. Despite laser-like efforts, employee engagement scores in the United States remain lackluster.  Many organizations are embracing a corporate-wide approach to employee engagement today. There are generally two key areas that organizations should focus on in order to boost engagement and business performance: improving quality of life for employees and reaching every employee in an organization.
4. Smart Energy Management: A Win for the Environment, People, and Business
   There is growing recognition that human activities are major contributors to climate change. The new normal is likely to require consumers to become more active participants in the creation and use of energy. Smart energy management can enhance the quality of life of employees by creating a more comfortable work environment. By implementing an action plan and working toward increasing energy awareness among employees, businesses can reap a multitude of benefits.
5. Stories of Urban Transformation: The Rise of 18-Hour Work/Live Communities
   Cities all over the world are hotbeds of ideas, blending new and old concepts to create exciting urban experiences for residents, workers, enterprises and visitors.  This piece focuses on few of the most interesting stories that demonstrate early signs of urban transformations, which will spread into more and more cities around the globe in 2016 and beyond. Each story is about how the various city players are using innovation and technology to transform the work they are doing and shape the world’s future cities.
6. Gender Balanced Teams Linked to Increased Business Performance
   Achieving gender balance is important for workplaces not only because it is “the right thing to do” but also because it makes good business sense. To better understand and leverage this trend, Sodexo had initiated an internal study which analyzed Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from 100 global entities and 50,000 managers in 80 countries. The preliminary results were powerful, indicating that entities with gender-balanced management performed better on all of the performance indicators.
7. Creating The Lab of the Future: A Shift Toward Greater Agility, Flexibility, and Efficiency
   Aging populations, chronic diseases, market expansion, and treatment and technology advances are expected to spur life sciences sector growth in 2015. However, efforts to reduce costs, improve outcomes, and demonstrate value are dramatically altering the demand and delivery landscape.  Accordingly, service providers must adapt to the new demands placed on them by more effectively anticipating trends in the industry.
8. Workplace Violence: Best Practices for a New Reality
   Each year, nearly 2 million American employees are victims of workplace violence. This violence has far-reaching negative consequences for employers, employees, and the larger society, primarily because of the central role the workplace has in our lives.  This paper discusses the emergence of a fifth type of workplace violence – terrorism. Alongside implications for costs and risk factors, this new understanding also impacts future prevention efforts.

Also read: 5 Best Practices for a Successful Employee Engagement Analysis

Image credit: questback.com