The workplace of future will be quite different from the workplace of today. These key trends highlighted below will revolutionise the workplaces of tomorrow.
Raj Narayanaswamy, co-founder and co-CEO at Replicon said, “As businesses develop their strategies for success in 2016, we see workplace trends sitting squarely in changes to how people work – whether that’s from a geographic or legislative perspective.”
Here are the top five trends that will influence how workplace functions in 2016:
The National Living Wage in the UK and the minimum wage debate in the US made headlines in 2015, and discussions about wage and hour obligations will continue next year thanks to ongoing developments in independent contractor classification, exemption regulations and other wage and hour rules.
Businesses that hire a more diversified workforce – particularly “on-demand” companies with a significant number of independent contractors – must ensure they assess how they classify their workers to avoid the costly class action lawsuits that have punctuated this year.
Many companies have initiated employee benefits such as unlimited vacation policies, with the goal of attracting and retaining top talent. Unfortunately, people don’t always take time off from work – and a number of recent legal cases have exposed businesses to more costly and potentially brand-damaging consequences than anticipated.
In 2016, companies will be more judicious in how to encourage work/life balance and implement employee benefit programs against corporate, financial, legal and human resources implications.
See: Managers Prepared to Embrace Cognitive Computing in the Workplace: Accenture Research
Expect there to be a continued Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) transformation as enterprise technology vendors capitalize on the popularity of wearable to build and collaborate on software that will support how people work, such as capturing data to support workforce efficiencies.
This enterprise technology will be integrated with the Internet of Things, in an effort to automate processes, and capture, manage and optimize this data to support workforce efficiencies.
In industries such as manufacturing and retail, workers still use hard-wired time clocks to punch in and out of shifts. As companies continue to migrate to the cloud, these legacy technologies will become obsolete.
Rather, businesses will focus on providing flexible, application-based tools with a more modern user interface for people to use, with built-in visuals and real-time data to deter time theft from employees potentially using a co-worker to “punch” time for them that was not worked.
Many IT departments are establishing an “agile” culture and environment to build, test and release software more rapidly and reliably. This flexible and holistic product strategy requires constant collaboration between teams.
In larger product-centric and project-oriented businesses, expect the benefits of this approach to extend across the entire organization, emphasizing central access to real-time information throughout the project lifecycle to track critical hours and resources, and ensure projects are on-time and on-budget.
Also read: These 5 Workplace Trends for 2016 May Surprise You
Image credit: actioncoachireland.com
