A deep dive into the future of work

Headlines indicate a variety of global talent trends: Inflation’s strain on workers’ wallets, their desire for more pay to keep up with the cost of living and the continued impact of AI. Employers and employees also still spar over new work models. 

But, in a webinar cracking open a recent report, Mercer’s Global Talent Advisory Leader Kate Bravery said there’s more uncertainty on the horizon. “But at the same time,” she said, “we've also seen greater convergence in views this year across generations and geographies.”

Mercer’s report — which polled 12,200 HR professionals, as well as executives, employees and investors — identified a few key trends that will shape the future of work.

Artificial intelligence demands different human talent

Many employers polled mentioned looking at AI as a matter of product integration. But generative AI is becoming a part of the fabric of work in general.

Mercer noted 20 priorities for HR leaders in 2024; no. 5 was “Redesigning work to incorporate AI and automation.” This means 40% of HR professionals polled by Mercer have AI workflows on their people agenda. (Also in the top 10 HR pro priorities were enhancing EX, improved health benefits, workforce planning and people analytics.)

In covering the report, Bravery noted the significance of the AI at work conversation. Referencing Mercer’s approach to researching humans in a “machine-augmented world,” Bravery said, “We know that it's humans [who] will effectively unlock AI’s real potential.” 

More than 50% of executives polled by Mercer expressed their belief that their businesses won’t survive past 2030 without “embracing AI at scale.” 

What are gold standard C-suites doing to successfully embrace AI? They prioritize human-centric productivity, foster trust, ensure equitable work practice and lean into a “digitally-infused future,” the report found.

“As risks become more connected and less predictable, [organizations that outpace their competitors] understand that a new level of risk awareness and mitigation is essential to building a ready and resilient workforce,” researchers said in the report.

As new work models emerge, EX should be re-examined

“I don't think you'll be surprised, but HR’s top concerns this year are rising labor costs, and ensuring new work models — flex, gig, short-term work models — are really delivering long-term value,” Bravery said. 

A whopping 98% of employers are planning “work design changes” for 2024. The main goal is to tweak workflow to increase productivity; Mercer identified the concept of fixed roles, flex roles or “agile roles that benefit from skills-based planning and credentialing.”

Hybrid work continued to reign as a key factor in productivity. “While it may seem that employers have finalized return-to-office plans and codified their post-pandemic flexible working policies, in fact 41% are planning further changes this year,” researchers said in the report.

Mercer broke down flexible work into “six dimensions:”

• Where, as in location and infrastructure;
• When, as in hours and scheduling;
• What, as in job content and sharing;
• Who, as in alternative workforce and automation;
• How, as in scaling and technology; and
• Why, as in mission and purpose.

The idea of value was persistent across the webinar. For one, more workers said they were sticking with their employer this year — which is poignant, given that panelists acknowledged the Great Resignation and how it changed the work landscape.

Bravery also highlighted, “More employees shared that their needs are not being met — especially older workers and Gen Z. We've got work to do there.” 

Engagement will be an area that stakeholders “need to watch out for this year,” across the board, Bravery said.

Although 56% of workers worldwide consider themselves to be ambitious, 47% say they’re not focused on progression or climbing the ladder at their jobs, according to Randstad’s Workmonitor report. 

A new sense of “ambition” is emerging, the report authors noted, which emphasizes work-life balance, flexibility, equity, belonging and upskilling at the heart of workers’ career decisions.

“There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, as workers’ ambitions, motivations and priorities are becoming more fragmented and personalized,” Sander van ’t Noordende, CEO of Randstad, said in a statement.

“It’s crucial that employers communicate regularly with talent about their wants and needs, whether that be flexible work, career aspirations or learning and development opportunities,” he said. “Embodying a talent-first mindset and truly understanding their personal motivations and priorities will help set businesses apart.”

In a survey of 27,000 workers worldwide, 47% said they’re willing to stay in a role they like, even if there’s no room to progress or develop. In addition, 34% said they never want to take on a managerial role.

Instead, workers are more likely to value work-life balance (93%), schedule flexibility (81%) and mental health support (83%) over career ambition (70%).

In addition, 72% of employees noted the importance of training and development opportunities. Nearly a third said they’d quit a job if they weren’t offered opportunities to “future-proof” their skills, such as training around AI.

Workers also want a more equitable workplace where they feel they belong, according to the report. About half of workers said employers should bear the responsibility for improving equity in the workplace, and 45% said employers are liable for enhancing workplace culture.

However, despite these expectations, workers don’t appear to feel as confident about leaving if their priorities aren’t met, the report indicated. For instance, in 2023, 54% of workers said they’d quit a job if they felt they didn’t belong, which dropped to 37% for the most recent report. This shift could be driven by increased concern about layoffs, with 45% saying they’re worried about losing their job this year, as compared with 37% in 2023.

Employee experience programs may face significant cutbacks and budget restrictions in 2024, according to a Forrester report. The advisory firm, which previously anticipated declines in employee engagement and “culture energy” in 2023, predicted an “upcoming EX recession” will affect diversity, equity and inclusion programs in particular.

HR leaders also report waning optimism around engagement and retention, according to a report from The Conference Board. In response, most said their main human capital management priorities for 2024 are focused on employee experience, organizational culture and leadership and workforce capabilities. 

Even as retention and labor market concerns proliferate, hiring intentions remain stable for 2024, according to a Robert Half report. More than half of managers said they plan to add new permanent positions during the first half of the year, and nearly 40% said they plan to hire for vacant positions.

Sponsored content

By Lyra Health

It’s been four years since COVID-19 changed the way we work and live. Since then, the workforce has been left to navigate this collective trauma from the pandemic while juggling their work and personal lives. To understand the challenges faced by organizations, business leaders, and workers across the globe, we surveyed HR and employee benefits leaders and thousands of employees across industries in the United States, Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Japan, and the UK. The results revealed that the volume of stressors bombarding the typical worker makes it tough, if not impossible, to manage their mental health alone and that they need more support from employers. 

Key findings and insights

Historically, the fallout from traumatic events on a global scale has taken months if not years to manifest fully. So it follows that the prevalence of complex mental health challenges is on the rise.  

Serious mental health issues are more common

In 2023, 65% of U.S. workers reported that their mental health impacted their ability to do their jobs, up from 60% in 2022. And the number of employees reporting a severe impact nearly doubled, from 4% in 2022 to 7% in 2023. The flip side is also true: Our survey found that work is the second biggest stressor contributing to employee’s mental health concerns.

Because the workplace environment and work itself can directly affect mental health, employers have both an opportunity and responsibility to proactively make changes that improve employees' mental health. 

Prioritize mental health in a way that meets employees’ needs

Workers’ expectations of employer-provided mental health support continue to rise year over year. Even when employers believe they are prioritizing mental health, they may be missing the mark. More than half of U.S. employees (55%) said they’re unsure or disagree that their company’s leadership team understands their mental health needs. 

This misalignment can jeopardize recruitment and retention. Prospective employees increasingly consider mental health benefits when making decisions about job offers. We found that 80% of U.S. employees ranked a prospective employer’s mental health care benefits as “somewhat” or “very important” to their job decision process. 

1 in 5 workers considered leaving their company last year due to their mental health’s impact on their ability to work.

Proactive approaches to addressing mental health in the workplace

Organizations must confront these issues head-on, and shift their focus from individual workers with mental illness to a holistic approach that includes both access to effective care and the strategic building of healthy companies and cultures.

Check out the full 2024 State of Workforce Mental Health Report for more findings and expert tips on how to address these and other challenges facing your workforce.

About Lyra Health

Lyra Health helps leading companies improve access to effective, high-quality mental health care for their employees and their families. With Lyra’s innovative digital care platform and global provider network, members receive the best care and get better faster.

After investing in improving employee experience during pandemic-driven talent shortages, employers in general are pulling back, which could affect how their employees feel about work — and employers’ bottom lines.

In its “Predictions 2024: The Future of Work” report, Forrester found that employee experience will be taking a back seat in 2024, leading to what they call an “EX winter.”

Companies are “less interested in employee experience in general,” thus making it an easy target for cutting costs or cutting corners, said J.P. Gownder, vice president and principal analyst on Forrester’s Future of Work team. Strategies that improve engagement, productivity and ultimately growth, are being stepped back.

For example, Forrester noted that the number of employers who said they were funding an internal DEI function dropped from one third of those surveyed to 27% from 2022 to 2023; the firm predicts it will fall further to 20% by the end of 2024. Some companies will default to checking a box to say that they’ve met DEI goals, he said, instead of truly funding DEI initiatives that make a difference to employees.

One reason, Gownder said, is that the labor market isn’t as tight anymore. “Oftentimes employers will invest in employee experience when there’s a lot of attrition or things are going poorly on the employee front and they can’t keep talent,” he said, as was the case during the Great Resignation.

That’s not the case anymore. When companies “aren’t so desperate to keep people, often they take their foot off the accelerator” when it comes to talent.

They may spend, but may not spend in the right way, Forrester found: 66% of technology decision-makers who work in software say they’ll increase investment in EX/human capital management software in 2024, but those investments won’t be used to their full advantage. Forrester instead predicts that those investments will make HR functions efficient instead of improving EX outcomes.

An EX winter will continue to freeze out employees

Employee engagement already took a tumble between 2022 and 2023, and will continue to do so in 2024, Forrester said.

Between 2022 and 2023, employee engagement fell from 48% to 44%, and culture energy fell from 69% to 66% in the U.S. Forrester predicts that in 2024, those numbers will fall to 39% and 64%, respectively.

Employee engagement as a measure of employee experience “is crucial to productivity, to creativity, to driving most of the interest and motivation that people have at work,” said Gownder. “If you are losing that, then folks are not giving their all, and not getting the most out of their employment.”

That hurts the company overall, he said. “When you disinvest in employee experience, and you go back to cost cutting and treating people as merely resources rather than valued partners, your organization will see engagement go down, and therefore other things go down as well.”

Zig where others zag

Not all is lost, Gownder added. An EX winter can be avoided by bucking these trends, and keeping the proverbial foot on the accelerator. That means investing in genuinely engaging with employees instead of cutting costs or relying on checklists that fake it.

“The employee experience thesis states that investing in employees, in human-centered experiences raises engagement, lowers attrition, raises productivity and makes customers happier too because happy employees lead to happy customers,” he said.

For companies that are going to continue to invest in employee experience, they should also be measuring and understanding how employees are feeling about those investments, he said. “These two things often go hand in hand.”

And that listening part is often left behind. In their report, Forrester found that just 31% of business and technology professionals who say improving employee experience is a priority also feel that collecting employee feedback is a key action they’re taking to bolster employee experience. Forrester expects that to rise to 34% in 2024.

Efforts to measure engagement include collecting data about things like digital activities, badge swipes and analytics about time off, but the challenge is still for C-level leaders to effectively use data to listen and learn how employee success improves organizational success, rather than just tracking work compliance.

The key is to focus on both investing, and how those investments truly impact employees.

“Keeping an eye on both of these things are critical, but if you don’t invest in EX and your numbers go down, you know who to blame,” he said.

In the ever-elusive quest for work-life balance for workers, some countries are legislating slamming that laptop shut for the weekend. 

Increasingly more nations, including France, Argentina, Ireland and recently Australia, have passed what are known as “right to disconnect” laws, giving workers the legal right not to respond to that email after hours — and not face negative repercussions. 

It’s a shift that’s come on the heels of advancing technology that allows employees to be connected around the clock — and workers’ reprioritization of their personal lives accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In some cases, like in Chile and Mexico, the laws only apply to remote workers, but in others, they are universal. 

“It’s a double-edged sword. It’s nice to be able to work and not be at your desk, but then people can always reach you,” Tom Spiggle, an employment lawyer and owner of The Spiggle Law Firm, told HR Dive. 

While a few states and at least one city — including Washington, California and New York City — have considered the right to disconnect, the U.S. doesn’t have any such legislation on the books, Spiggle said. 

“It’s interesting [these laws] haven’t passed in some of these states that are worker-friendly,” Spiggle said. “There isn’t the political will. … If I’m a betting man, these don’t pass, but I could be surprised.” 

That doesn’t mean U.S. workers are completely without protections when it comes to their time. The Fair Labor Standards Act requires that nonexempt, hourly workers be paid overtime if they work more than 40 hours, and the Family and Medical Leave Act prevents employers from contacting workers, for the most part, while they’re on leave. 

A cultural shift

A right to disconnect movement in the U.S. likely will be led by individual organizations, followed by states, Alan King, president and CEO of Workplace Options, a global employee well-being company, told HR Dive. The American system of government, with its confluence of state and federal law, makes it more difficult to pass legislation like this than in other countries, King said. 

“We have so much changed into a society that never shuts off; we’re always connected. I think some form of rules that help structure that is a good thing. I say that, in part, because these are rights to disconnect; they are not forced disconnections. They put the onus on the employer and the individual,” King said. 

Workplace Options has employees in every time zone and, as such, is held to right to disconnect laws around the world. But, instead of changing its policies only in those countries, the company is undergoing an overall cultural shift, King said.

“Ultimately, you have a law that is about the culture of an organization. If an employee feels like they’re going to be penalized for not doing something, that’s about that company’s culture,” King said. 

In response, King’s company is changing its approach to meetings. Whereas before, calls were scheduled at times that were favorable to the majority of employees, they are now slotted for windows where everyone is “equally advantaged or disadvantaged,” King said. And the company is reducing its reliance on meetings. 

“We have way the hell more meetings than we need to. Way more things could be an email or an asynchronous chat that delivers on time,” King said. “When we do have to have those conversations together, we do it at a time that’s as convenient for everyone as possible, Or, if it’s inconvenient, we share the burden of time. … It’s not always on the onus of the employees in a different time zone to bend to you.” 

That means having open communication with workers to figure out solutions together, he explained. Ultimately, it’s about adhering to the spirit of the law and asking employees’ boundaries and for their permission to work in certain situations. 

“This is about how people engage with each other and how you engage with them,” King said. 

Anthony Horton, CEO of Corporate Relocation International, a relocation management company, said the issue “really boils down to setting boundaries in our perpetually connected world.”

“I question whether it is a thing that needs to be legislated since, really, it is us, as leaders of corporations, who need to be listening to the evolving needs of employees and ensuring we understand the impacts” of technology, different work arrangements and evolving standards for employee well-being, Horton told HR Dive via email. “I think responsible companies will do this on their own.” 

Ultimately, leaders who make sure employees feel they have the right to disconnect and that their well-being is prioritized will see a positive impact both on their workers and on their business, Laura Lomelí, a principal executive advisory consultant at BetterUp, a coaching and human transformation company, told HR Dive via email. 

But, she cautions to ensure that right to disconnect policies be tailored to a company or an industry. 

“The underlying premise and motive of the policy should be embraced. Yet, a policy like this should not be viewed as a one-size-fits-all and instead should be customized to the industry and company culture,” Lomelí said.

As the AI revolution rolls along, employers are looking at what skills their future workforces will need, and how to get from here to there.

And it’s not just a few companies here and there: it’s just about the entire working world. According to a recent report from PeopleScout and Spotted Zebra, about 90% of HR leaders believe that up to half their workforce will need to be reskilled in the next five years.

But what does that actually mean? It depends on the company and the work that needs to be done, but whatever the process, it’s important for employers to keep the employee in mind. That means communicating to them what this future holds, addressing any fears and making sure they’re getting the skills they need as AI adoption continues, experts said.

“When we introduced machinery into agriculture a couple of centuries ago, it changed the work within the farm from one day to the next,” said Helen Poitevin, distinguished VP analyst in Gartner’s human resources practice. “Look at how AI gets introduced in just about every industry, in every workflow. It’s very incremental.”

Teaching employees how to work with AI

Part of that reskilling is helping employees work alongside AI, especially now as it starts to enter more parts of daily life. According to a 2023 Gartner survey, 79% of functional leaders will begin or continue to implement generative AI across the next 12 months.

“When you introduce AI into the way people are working, there’s an immediate need for learning the new ways of working,” said Poitevin.

With that comes addressing fear surrounding the technology, whether concerns about the technology itself, working with it, or that it will be taking their jobs — a fear that’s not unfounded as, in the same Gartner report, leaders said they expect generative AI to reduce head counts between about six and 10 percent.

Just making workers are aware of AI, and the opportunities it offers, “is very low impact, but it’s very easy to do,” Poitevin said.

How — and who — to upskill

Because the technology is still new, and these changes are incremental, it might not be obvious what kind of reskilling employees will need, said Poitevin. It’s important for employers to “set themselves up to monitor and capture the cases where jobs don’t make sense anymore, so they can be redesigned.”

Employers can shift from “thinking about what jobs will go away” to thinking instead about the work that will need to be done, she added.

HR managers should not be identifying current employees for upskilling — or job candidates — solely based on technical know-how, because that’s not necessarily needed to learn new skills to work with AI, said Steve West, head of global talent acquisition at Verizon. “It’s a behavioral element of having the ability to learn, and coachability, that you can adapt to using these new ways of working and not necessarily have to be a programmer to code AI,” he said.

It's also important to keep the person at the center of the process, and consider why this is good for them first. “We’re not upskilling people just to upskill them. We’re upskilling them to ultimately make them better to make us better,” he said. “These are skill areas that are going to be delivering or critical capabilities to drive our strategy.”

Employees want to be reskilled, if employers help them

Actively working with employees can also set an employer apart. That same PeopleScout and Spotted Zebra report found that only 7% of HR leaders noted an active investment in their reskilling program, and 45% said they had no plans to undertake a workforce transformation initiative.

“Skills-based talent strategies are essential, and the clock is ticking for employers across all regions and industries,” Nick Shaw, founder and chief customer officer of Spotted Zebra, said in a statement. “Without future-focused skills strategies for both hiring and development, organizations will suffer lost revenue and productivity when critical jobs are left unfilled.”

Acknowledging the reality that is coming, and preparing workers for it, also can be important in retaining talent. “Pretending like it’s not happening is never good. You can diminish trust,” said Poitevin. “But also encouraging people to focus on what’s to be done and seek out the opportunities in using AI to help make a difference or to work in different ways is key.”