Six Important Work Lessons Learned in 2021

The corporate environment is now… different, to say the least. The biggest lessons we learn about the world of work in 2021 are painful on the one hand, but encouraging on the other.

If there’s one phrase we’ve heard constantly over the past two years, it’s this: “The work will never be the same again.” With 2022 knocking at our door, who would have guessed we’d still be trying to figure out what that means?

The year 2021 showed us, above all, that a return to “normal” in the corporate world is an ever-changing goal.

Here we look at themes that permeated the world of work throughout 2021 and that will remain in the next year—and perhaps for years to come.

1) The genie of flexible working came out of the lamp

It didn’t take long for employees who were able to do remote work to realize how beneficial this model can be. But by 2020, changes in work environments were subject to the pandemic and employees struggled to know which of those changes would remain.

A year later, it no longer matters what was considered temporary. Workers now live in a world of workweeks with different structures, asynchronous communication and, for some, permanent remote work. It is now unlikely that employers will ever revoke the changes imposed by the pandemic (regardless of what their initial plans were).

Many companies are giving their employees much more freedom in deciding where they will work. Others, like New Zealand’s Unilever — and even entire countries like Iceland, are experimenting with four-day workweeks.

More and more countries and private companies are developing experimental programs. Spain is expected to introduce its pilot 32-hour workweek in 2022.

These changes and experiences are good for workers. Many of them report better work-life balance with more flexible work systems—although the average global workday got longer during the pandemic.

There are workers who say they will resign if employers call them to work in the office on a permanent basis. Furthermore, in countries where there are more job openings than there are people willing to fill them, workers now have an overpowering power that can pressure companies to maintain these systems indefinitely.

There is, of course, a possibility that some of these new work systems will not be maintained, particularly if the labor market becomes tighter and employees have less of a voice than they currently have. But a surprising number of companies have already committed to new work practices to meet workers’ wishes — a sign that the genie is increasingly unlikely to get back into the light bulb.

2) Employers are changing to meet workers’ wishes

In 2021, an expression that made the news is “The Great Renunciation”. The mass exodus of workers and the redistribution of labor have been most extensively documented in the United States, where workers continue to leave the labor market, breaking records each month.

But similar trends are starting to emerge in the UK, where workers are increasingly reporting their desire to change jobs or are even trying their luck. In other countries, data on the phenomenon varies, but in Australia, for example, there are more workers changing jobs than resigning en masse.

Where workers are quitting, planning to quit, or moving to other positions, employers are under more pressure to offer better perks to attract and retain talented employees.

And there have been shifts in workers’ expectations: they report requests for more personalized benefits, access to mental health services, childcare assistance, help with working at home, and general flexibility in their work systems. In the United States, requests for better health plans and treatment coverage to get pregnant also grew.

Many companies have moved forward to meet these urges, while others have announced plans to do so. In the summer of the Northern Hemisphere, major companies like LinkedIn and Nike gave their employees collective vacations so they had enough days or weeks to regain their mental health—an unprecedented move in a productivity-driven, capitalist society.

But there are still some strongholds that do not necessarily recognize or react to new requests for different perks and work systems. Certain sectors, such as finance and consulting, are forcing the situation to return to the usual business level before the pandemic.

Some of these companies took less orthodox measures during the pandemic — such as finance group Jefferies, which presented its employees with Peloton-brand exercise bikes, and the Goldman Sachs group, which increased basic payment packages for junior bankers — but the leaders of some companies are already calling on their employees to return to their desks. Employers are shifting to meet the wishes of workers — or most of them.

3) The growth of inequality among workers

The benefits that many workers achieved in 2021 and their growing influence in the labor market were not for everyone. The pandemic exposed — and created — more inequalities.

For frontline and service workers, returning to work in a still uncertain and chaotic world was not an option. Many are suffering from the consequences of customer misbehavior — and are under enormous pressure as, in some countries, companies are operating understaffed amid labor shortages in sectors such as hotels and transportation, which are still have not fully recovered due to the pandemic.

It is also noteworthy that access to teleworking efficiently and comfortably is not the same for all knowledge workers — those who primarily use their knowledge, information and intelligence to carry out their work.

Basic features like reliable high-speed internet aren’t available to everyone, nor is the space to work in comfort and silence. Younger workers now entering the workforce often find themselves in very tight spaces—one of the reasons they ask to come back to the office at least a few days a week.

The inequalities that affect working women have also surfaced. As in 2020, the number of women in the labor market has dropped disproportionately this year. In the United States alone, by September 2021, hundreds of thousands of women had lost their jobs.

While there are some signs of a resurgence in women’s employment in certain sectors, growth has not yet caught up with men’s. Furthermore, unemployment for black women exceeds that for white women—in the United States, it is nearly double.

There is also fear that women returning to their careers may be left behind by male colleagues who work in the office on a regular basis, due to the culture of in-person attendance and proximity—which can widen the gender gap.

4) The high cost of the imbalance between work and private life

Some workers have reported better work-life balance over the past year—mostly due to remote and flexible working. But this is not always the case.

Without daily commuting or office dividing doors, many workers are finding it more difficult to draw clear lines between their personal and professional lives. They spend all their time keeping an eye on the phone, answering messages as soon as they wake up and sending emails late into the night.

The problem that existed before the pandemic — of being physically present in the office as an asset to productivity — has found its way into the digital world. In many situations, it’s not clear whether bosses really expect their employees to remain online at all times or whether the pressure comes from the workers themselves.

The fact is that the working days have been extended and disconnection seems impossible, regardless of the cause.

It’s no surprise that burnout and unpaid overtime has become widespread, especially among certain groups such as middle managers and women. In many countries, many companies are operating with a minimum of employees amid a lack of labor, which has placed immense pressure on workers who remained in the companies during the Great Resignation.

Some companies are trying to address work-life balance issues and encouraging employees to move away from their phones, but it’s still culturally difficult for many to avoid overload. So if remote work remains —as it seems it will for many— there is no guarantee that workers will hit the off button.

Reducing inequalities is the first step towards change, but it is unclear what can and what will be done, both individually and systemically — even more so under current conditions, where things are still unfolding.

5) We are far from being perfectly hybrids

By 2021, the corporate world was expected to embrace hybrid work in full force.

Employees and employers hoped to get back together in person in some way and thus make a new breakthrough. Several companies have even invested in new designs for their offices, often eliminating sets of desks and adding more collaborative spaces and isolation booths — all to meet the demands of workers now that the office has taken on a new purpose.

But we still haven’t hit a stable hybrid standard. Returning to the office has been piecemeal; some companies have brought workers back part-time, but these policies vary widely across countries, industries and employers. They have not been consistent due to the ongoing natural fluctuation of the pandemic.

This situation presents challenges. First, many employees are still held in limbo, not knowing how the hybrid environment will work—​or not—for them. It is a type of uncertainty that has been harming workers, emotionally and in their logistics, for about two years.

Furthermore, without hybrid work in action, employers lack the data they need to understand the successes and failures of their strategies.

As much as we continue to speculate about what will and won’t work for hybrid work, we’re doing just that: speculating. Neither workers nor companies have the real experience needed yet, which means that the hybrid environment we are promoting as the future of the workplace is, to a large extent, a work in progress.

6) Blind flight into the near future

We now know that we are unlikely to have stability in work and private life for some time. As new variants of covid-19 emerge, it’s impossible — or almost absurd to make solid plans for the future.

Circumstantial changes have pressured companies — including Google, which once had concrete plans to bring workers back into the office — to reverse course and announce entirely different guidelines. Furthermore, even if life stabilizes a little more, we are still debating the implementation of new policies, such as remote and hybrid work, which are essentially experiments whose effects and results are still unknown.

Looking ahead to 2022, it looks like change will be a constant, whether it’s with respect to corporate policies or day-to-day details. We are a long way from idealizing the “normal”, but we hope to have more answers than questions soon.