What the ‘new normal’ at work in 2022 should look like, experts say

We are entering the third year of a pandemic that has brought unprecedented changes to the world of work.

Despite the hopes of many workers, a return to full-time face-to-face work seems very unlikely as the omicron variant puts off the back-to-office plans of millions of workers. And given how today’s job market has increased employee power in many countries, pre-pandemic work structures are likely to remain in the past.

While it seems certain that this will happen, little is yet known about how the work environment will evolve in 2022. At this same time last year, many people hoped that 2021 would bring some degree of stability, perhaps even the slow development of the workplace. hybrid work. But the emergence of new variants of the virus has prevented these developments — and that situation could well last for months to come.

Amidst today’s ever-changing circumstances, it’s hard to pinpoint where we might find ourselves in 12 months’ time. But experts studying employment and the work environment have identified some trends that are already shaping the way we’ll be working in 2022 — and may just be a window into the future of office life.

Shorter workweeks may be adopted, but may divide workers

The yearning for shorter workweeks and fewer hours of work is gaining momentum around the world. Companies and governments are already exploring this possibility.

There is a need to reorganize the structures of our working time, according to Abigail Marks, professor of future work at the Faculty of Business at the University of Newcastle, UK. The 40-hour workweek, from 9 am to 5 pm, emerged during the Industrial Revolution — the last dramatic change in work — but is no longer sustainable, she says, due to the “increasing pace of work required by video conferencing programs and the need for continuous online presence”.

Marks adds, “Businesses and policymakers are willing to explore measures that can reduce the burden on workers, while still hoping to maintain that productivity increase. [para isso] it’s the four-day workweek.” And fewer working hours can mean better mental health and work-life balance for many workers.

While there is apparently hope that the four-day workweek will take off in 2022, according to Marks, measures like this will not be extended to all workers. She points out that moving to shorter workweeks may only benefit some employees.

“The four-day week can privilege a small group of administrative employees, failing to benefit many low-paid and low-skilled workers who will not have the contractual security or financial support to work four days a week,” says Marks. Think, for example, of IT workers or hourly workers who may not be able to reduce their working hours.

Marks is among experts who say it will be a challenge in 2022 to deal with the potential inequality that will be wide open between those who can benefit from flexibility and those who can’t—especially when calls for more flexibility and shorter working hours only increase.

“This year, we may have more divisions in society,” she adds. “Employees in high demand, such as data scientists, and workers with government support, including high-ranking civil servants, [poderão ter] hours [de trabalho] reduced, while the rest of us are still overworked.”

Personalized benefits can become the main attraction

“Do you remember the lack of labor and the difficulties in hiring in 2021 [em alguns países]? They will remain in 2022,” says Alison Sullivan, senior manager of corporate communications for jobs website Glassdoor. [por outro lado] increasing customer demands that companies will need to meet,” she says.

This means that employers may need to adopt tactics for hiring employees—and keeping them with the company—different from those used in the past.

Anthony Klotz, a professor of management at Texas A&M University in the United States, who coined the phrase “Great Resignation” — a trend that drove record numbers of American workers out of their jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic — says that job personalization could be the key to employee satisfaction—and retention—. “By 2022, we will see employers better responding to employee needs and desires to keep their current workers engaged and attract top-performing workers from other companies,” says Klotz.

This isn’t just good business sense. Flexibility and accommodation are becoming a privilege that workers expect to receive from their employers. “This imbalance between supply and demand for work means that employees and workers looking for a job have greater power to ask for more,” says Sullivan.

As a result, companies will develop “custom people management tactics,” according to Klotz. “Instead of one-size-fits-all development programs, companies have begun to invest time and resources in devising personalized career projects in conjunction with specific workers.”

Sullivan also cites higher salaries, student credit and expanded maternity leave as possible benefits employers can add to attract talent in 2022.

Another important personalization could be the priority for the mental health of individual workers. After all, between burnout (professional burnout) and boreout (boredom at work), more and more workers are saying “enough” and leaving their jobs (or at least thinking about quitting). “Even strongholds of the culture of uproar, like Wall Street, are stepping in and introducing sabbaticals,” says Klotz.

Workers will not return to the same offices

When the first workers finally return to the office, whether in 2022 or later, many will find a totally different layout and role.

Nicholas Bloom, professor of economics at Stanford University in the United States, says companies will reconfigure their spaces this year to meet the needs of a new hybrid workforce and what people really want when they meet in person: to work collaboratively.

Bloom, who has been studying the future of the workplace for years, says the return to face-to-face work so far has been confusing and uncomfortable. He says he’s heard “horror stories” from workers whose companies summoned them back to the office — which included, for example, sitting in half-empty offices to take the same Zoom calls that they would have at home (and watching colleagues do it. the same).

In other words, the pre-pandemic office does not meet the needs of 2022 employees.

As some companies that have developed hybrid models bring certain teams into the office on the same day every week, Bloom says that coordination will be most important in 2022 and that more offices will make permanent layout changes to make this change possible.

“The executive offices in style [da série de TV] Mad Men are on the rise,” says Bloom. “Meeting rooms, soundproof cubicles for video calls, and open-plan accommodation in the shape of large halls are on the rise.”

Workers “don’t like intense environments,” he adds, and want less congested offices, elevators, and restrooms. “Companies are remodeling offices to be social spaces for creative employees. They want to facilitate meetings and provide smooth interactions, with occasional Zoom calls.”

But one thing that may not change as expected is the actual size of the offices. While many people predicted at the start of the pandemic that offices would purge their expensive downtown space, Bloom says “office space isn’t shrinking, it’s [isso sim] changing.” While he predicts telecommuting will mean 30% fewer days in the office than before the pandemic, “companies are reducing space, on average, by 5%,” he says.

Even though the cost of rent remains stratospheric in the virtually deserted inner cities, companies still want workers to use these offices, especially as hybrid work is likely to dominate by 2022. It’s “impossible to reduce the office footprint,” says Bloom, even with all the destabilization of work life over the past two years.

continuous path to the unknown

Despite all our best predictions, there’s still a lot we don’t know.

Many analysts were predicting a move back to office in early 2021, when vaccines became more widely available, but that prediction continues to change. Variants such as delta prolonged public health concerns and telecommuting continued. Meetings at Zoom have remained the daily pattern for millions of workers around the world.

“We should have learned one fundamental thing over the past two years: to stop looking for a crystal ball,” says Kanina Blanchard, a professor of management at the University of the West in Ontario, Canada.

While some advances seem to move us back to some kind of pre-pandemic normal — like vaccines, new Covid-19-fighting medications, and shorter periods of mandatory isolation, with employees getting back to work more quickly — we all know that it is impossible to predict the future. And the arrival of the omicron variant accentuated this even more, as it reminded us that everything can change in the blink of an eye.

That’s why experts say it’s best to keep expectations low in 2022 — and, in the meantime, keep moving toward what we think will be “normal.” “We need this, even with the lack of consistency and predictability,” says Blanchard. “We know we will start, stop and start again.”

For her, what is certain is that public health interests will continue to dominate the agenda in 2022. And we also have another certainty: “that life will be crazy and confusing”, concludes Blanchard.