[Future of Work] Future of work trends

The importance of employer branding in recruiting the right candidates and the rise of social media as a tool for talent search, are two of the most important trends in human resources and recruitment.

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These are some of the biggest trends that will change organisations by 2020 and impact on the future of work:

1. Understand millennial mavericks

Talent expectations are different among millennials, says Merle O’Brien, futurist at Lacuna Radar. Current HR trends are creating new opportunities to achieve differentiation within the corporate recruitment space. Harvard Business Review wrote about how “newer, hipper, more entrepreneurial and web-savvy companies” founded or run by millennials are better at reaching younger consumers who are a big part of the market and will soon be “the part that counts the most”. HBR recommends that established companies need significant process changes internally, even new infrastructure and definitely a new mindset, to meet the needs of this new millennial generation.

PwC’s NextGen research reports that millennials value greater flexibility, appreciation, team collaboration and global opportunities. They don’t work in the same way, nor are they motivated by the same things, as the previous generation: a new talent strategy is needed.

2. Hire innovators

Innovators produce 10 times more than the average worker in the same job, helping position leading brands in the marketplace, says Yolanda Gibbon, founder of Cardilogix.

“Innovative firms like Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon produce significantly higher workforce productivity (i.e., revenue per employee) than the average firm in the industry, because their focus is on hiring innovators. Innovators also allows a firm to be first in the marketplace, producing higher margins of profitability - which builds the product brand but also provides you with domination in your sector… Start hiring innovators!”

Gibbon says innovators are much more productive. They work smart and have the ability to multi-task because of a unique skill-set. These employees also have strong opinions and a great deal of self-confidence.

3. Data on demand

As with most industries, data is playing a key role in the HR and recruitment industry. Marc Privett, GM of Careers24.com says technological developments have made it possible to collect, store and share vast amounts of data which can be applied to help make business decisions. “Analysing data will, among a host of other things, reveal which sources are producing quality applications, which types of interviews and questions best identify future top performers and continue to produce quality applicants and hires. Data will still have to be backed up by hard evidence.”

4. Gamification and apps

Apps, mobile games and other tech are automating the recruitment industry to an extent to minimise admin and search for talented candidates. The step is necessary because so many candidates are using technology to search for jobs and apply via video interviews and social media.

CodeFights, for example, is a coding challenge developed to recruit essential tech staff.

5. Become marketers

Start telling your story, either as an employer or a recruitment agency, says Gibbon. “We have so many new online channels from which to source and where we can tell the world who we are and what we do. Companies and recruiters should start using it to our advantage.”

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The marketing objective is easy, Gibbon says, employees and talent must buy into your brand. “In an ever changing world we will have to think strategically and develop turnkey solutions just like marketers or brand managers do and add core marketing competencies into our talent acquisition toolbox to get the job done and stand out from the rest of the crowd.”

6. Headhunting surge

Paul Byrne, MD of CareerJunction, says head hunting will increase and recruiters need to know where to search. “Recruiters will have to work harder to source suitable candidates. It is important for them to have a good understanding of what mediums allow for a certain calibre candidate.”

7. Get social

Recruiters consider social professional networks, employer branding and passive candidate recruitment as key trends, as Tanya Eksteen, director of resourcing for Sage International (Africa, Australia, Middle East, Asia and Brazil), highlights. She quotes from a recent survey on South African recruiting trends, which revealed that the common thread is the “power of relationships” and that 36% of recruiters will focus on employer branding; 29% on finding better ways to source passive candidates; and 27% will focus on measuring the quality of hire.

8. Be flexible with the talent

Will the Hollywood project-based way of making movies be the future of work in other industries? Fast Company seems to think so. In an article titled ‘Why the future of work will look a lot like Hollywood’, the rigid employment system is on the way out for many professionals too and freelancing and ‘renting’ specialised teams is in the future of many companies, not just digital start-ups.

9. Office space

The need for physical office space at ‘the office’, is declining as teams no longer need to be in the office, and this trend will continue, says Allan Pike, CEO of Key Recruitment Group. The need for alternative workspaces that also fit the needs of the millennial workforce and are more dynamic and ergonomic, are also trending, as we see with standing desks; pause or quiet areas; and dedicated ‘play’ areas.

10. Work/life co-living

The sharing economy is birthing interesting new business models, including this one by WeLive, which is launching work and living spaces for entrepreneurs who want to live where they work to economise time. Coworking company, WeWork, has launched WeLive, which plans to offer energy efficient coliving spaces in buildings above coworking and complimentary retail spaces, in New York and Washington DC at first, reports Fast Company.

11. HR: business solutions practioners

Kwezi Madondo, HR manager at SAP Africa, writing on Memeburn, says HR needs to be part of business solutions, helping a business succeed, not there to check up on employees. “HR can be enabled to be the change maker, a means to shift company culture and advance the business. There is a myth that decentralised HR means the destruction of HR. This is simply not true. Companies need HR, but what they do not need are the paper-pushing cultures of the past.”

12. Top candidates have choice

“We are moving to a time where organisations won’t choose candidates – the top candidates will choose organisations. With an overload of information available to possible new hires, they will compare organisations to each other to find one that best meets their needs,” says Tanya Eksteen.

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13. Outsourcing functionality

The outsourcing of functional roles will increase rapidly as organisations look to cut overheads. “Our view is that people with specific skills will be called upon to effect various tasks and will be employed remotely. As a result a potential for stripping away corporate fixed overheads becomes an attractive option for employers. This comes with the challenge in the way business approaches its controls and measurement mechanisms to ensure they are getting a fair days work from remote employees,” reports Allan Pike, MD of Key Recruitment Group.

14. Nomadic workforce

The global recession has fuelled the rise of the nomadic workforce, created when companies started cutting overheads in 2008. It is now led by millennials who prize flexibility and the management of their own career over a nine to five job. It is enabled by technology, faster bandwidth and the wifi-coffee culture, as well as the disruption to many service industries and the flexibility of companies that employ knowledge and tech workers.

15. Open plan disruption

The open office trend shows no sign of reversing, with the latest trend being the removal of partitions between desks, putting people at long tables, and shoving teams together, no matter the discipline – in the hope that communications and creativity improve and different skills are brought to bear on problem solving. What has been noted, is that productivity suffers and distractions to work are heightened in open plan offices, so a move to creating more private pause areas and flexibility in allowing employees to work at home when they need to, is growing in response, as this Washington Post article highlights.

Fast Company even predicted in 2015 that the open office trend was on its way out because it was making people miserable.

16. Work-life balance

Companies are realising that happy productive employees are employees that are happy at home, whether it is through spending time with their families, or hobbies and friends. From Swedish companies trialling a six-hour focused work day so people can spend more time with their families; to a US company forcing employees to take vacation time; to sleep pods and cocoons at work to make employees more productive so they don’t have to face a commute; swings at a boardroom table and ‘nap desks’ that convert into a bed underneath… designers and some organisations are trying to make employees happier, as these more wacky trends highlighted by Fast Company magazine last year, showed.