Modern Workplace Trends—How to Adapt and Thrive

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In recent years, businesses have seen an acceleration in workforce changes, with a quiet emphasis on the employee experience within the organization. How can you take advantage of these trends and make them work for your team? We'd like to welcome Kristin Russum, Director, Org. Development, and Jason Lee, Divisional Vice President, Product Management, TriNet, to explain how.

Kristin Russum:
Jason and I would like to welcome you to Modern Workplace Trends—How to Adapt and Thrive. The best organizations to work for are people-driven. They understand the power of an engaged workforce. They invest in employees and create workplaces where great people want to contribute their best and thrive. We've seen unprecedented levels of change and disruption, and those require new thinking and really transformative approaches to leading and managing people. And that's the topic of our webinar today.

I've got a little poll that's popping up and I'd love to get your feedback about it. But really what we want to talk about today is this overarching trend is the intentional focus on the employee experience. Over the past few years, we've seen an acceleration of many workforce trends, but most significantly, employees have realized they have the leverage to demand change in the workplace.

So, let's talk through a couple of these. And starting from the bottom, we've got artificial intelligence and related technologies' impact. This is the latest buzzword here. Gartner predicts that gen AI will play a role in 70% of text and data heavy tasks by 2025. And that's up from less than 10% in 2023.

Many employees are really concerned that AI will fully replace their roles. But what we're learning is that roles will expand as AI automates more routine tasks. We continue to see humanization of the workplace. This is another way of saying putting a culture of belonging at the forefront of your business.

There is a growing emphasis on organizational values and culture specifically on this culture of belonging. Employees expect their employers to demonstrate a commitment to ethical business practices, sustainability, and then diversity, equity and inclusion. We continue to see a lot of conversation around distributed and remote work teams.

We know that remote or some hybrid work is here to stay. And although it can be beneficial for flexibility, it also can be very disruptive to your company culture. A remote team can have difficulties with collaboration. There could be some concerns about career progression due to isolation or no face time.

In remote or hybrid work settings, there's even a greater emphasis on fostering inclusion and belonging. Employees expect employers to implement inclusive policies and practices that ensure that all team members are valued and connected, regardless of where they're located. Employee well-being is a focus on mental health awareness. Employees expect their employers to foster a supportive work environment that prioritizes mental health and well-being. This includes initiatives such as an employee assistance program or EAP, mental health resources and open communication channels for discussing mental health concerns. It's become even more important than ever to focus on both mental and physical health.

Employees are looking for places where they can feel supported. They also expect their leaders and managers to prioritize mental health and set a positive example by taking care of their own well-being, as well as supporting their team's mental health.

And then lastly, retention has become a strategic priority for many of our organizations. In any type of economy, the best employees can always find new opportunities. Companies must focus on ways to keep employees engaged and productive. So in order to keep up, companies need to have new strategies to gain new employees. And I don't know, Jason, do we have some results of the poll that we want to share?

Jason Lee:
We do, Kristin, and it's been very interesting watching these results flow in as you've been talking. We have roughly a three-way tie at the moment between AI related technologies, a flexible work environment, and retaining critical talent. Each of those receiving about 20% of the vote. The leader so far, which is very humbling and inspiring, is employee well-being, with roughly 29% of the vote right now, which totally plays into what you were just saying there in terms of really humanizing that workforce and putting the well-being of your employees at the forefront.

Kristin:
Absolutely. It's that wrapper of employee experience. We got to take care of our people, and they'll take care of your customers and your company.

All right, so let's talk about retention, even in light of significant layoffs, organizations have to focus on retaining their critical talent that's required for your business continuity and future growth. So that's one thing. We've seen historical pay practices that no longer pass legal muster as well as a lack of internal uniformity and setting pay rates that could result in pay inequities. There's labor shortages, which are not going to improve. Every article I read talks about this, the U.S., UK, Canada, Germany, Japan, the Nordics, China, Russia, the fertility rate has been low for a really long time. That means that we've got no new bodies coming into the workplace.

The World Bank sees working population shrinking within 10 years in almost every developed economy. We know also that purpose matters more than ever. Employees want to work where they feel valued and understand how their contribution impacts your organization. And then just as organizations want to grow, people want to grow.

I don't think anybody gets into this game going, "We're just going to remain static." And that sense has to translate into the employee experience as well. So what are some things that you can do? Well, get creative with incentives, such as work life balance programs and we'll talk a little bit more about that shortly.

You can look at different solutions for childcare, pet care, tutoring, language courses, tuition reimbursement. Really, the sky's the limit. There is an acceleration towards a four-day work week, which might happen sooner than anyone anticipates. Many employees are really trying to create a stronger balance between work and life. And we see a number of organizations who have already started to adopt a four-day work week.

You might need to think about getting serious now about resolving pay inequities as a result of some of the compensation volatility that we've seen. Compensation has been candidly, really sporadic and just off the chart numbers in the past couple of years. So really getting serious there.

And then providing some skills training, focusing on the skill gaps you have in your organization based on your desired state. All right. So Jason, I think everyone has heard the expression, only measure what matters. Can you tell us a little bit about that sentiment?

Jason:
Yeah, it's 100% true.

And thank you for the lead. And, what we see vetted out within our own customer base as well as through secondary research like that of Deloitte's is that high-performing organizations are 2% more likely to use specialized people analytics versus those organizations that don't. And so everything that Kristin just shared with you with respect to different strategies and tactics that you can apply, we at TriNet really want to make sure that we're backing up those strategies and tactics with reliable, helpful data. And so within our Workforce Analytics product, you'll find reconfigured reports as well as a ton of customization options for you as a customer to be able to get at those analytics that are really meaningful for your organization and for the objectives that you have in mind.

We also recently have added a compensation benchmarking report once again, to really attack pay transparency and pay equity issues. We are beginning to pull in data from other modules within the system, such as our applicant tracking and our performance management system so that we can really provide a 360 lifecycle view of where your best channels for recruitment are, where your best employees are performing and how to acquire more of those. And so we're very much interested in feeding you the data that you need to make intelligent decisions.

Kristin:
It's really getting that holistic view of everything, right? How they're performing, where they're coming from. I'm very excited about that, those new capabilities with WFA.

All right, so our next trend, employee well-being and that was rated high for this particular group as well. Every piece of data that I'm reading now talks about, especially in the topic of employee engagement, shows that employees are burnt out, they're tired, they're stressed and they feel that they're overworked.

What we see, some of the negative impacts of work-related stress are, you know, 26% of people are not motivated to do their best. 23% have a desire to quit and 20% experience lower productivity. There's a study from bright plan and the federal economic data and we found that 24% of knowledge workers have high or very high levels of financial stress.

And 48% of them have 8.1 hours of lost productivity per employee, per week as a result of that financial stress. This translates to $200 billion in lost productivity and engagement for U.S. businesses annually. So we see that nearly two-thirds, or say 63%, of employees say that their current benefit package helps reduce their overall stress.

Nearly as many, about 61% say their current benefit package helps them reduce financial strain in particular, right? There's no surprise moments of, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to have a $10, 000 medical bill. The more benefits employees are enrolled in, the higher their holistic health and employees see that value, too.

So 65% of employees say their employer recognizes the importance of benefits for their overall well-being. Benefit communication is more important now than ever. They need to know where to find the information, what it is, how much is it? There is this bright white line between work and home. And we know that leadership needs to set the example of not sending or responding to emails after normal hours.

They need to take PTO. I know that, Jason, you and I have probably, in our past, have worked with a number of folks that, you know, your leader never took PTO. And so how did that make you feel if you took a day off? And then making sure that you as leaders and managers of your organization are respecting and encouraging the use of breaks and vacation.

So I know we talked a lot about benefits, we talked a lot about setting the right example. I've been in HR for a number of years and I know benefits inside and out, but your average employee typically only looks at benefits maybe when they're hired or maybe once a year when you have open enrollment, or they turn around and ask their cubemate, "Hey, what benefit plan are you in?" I know Jason, this is a problem that we see and I'd like to know what your thoughts are.

Jason:
Thank you, Kristin. You're absolutely right. It is a significant challenge for our customers and for administrators of our customers, benefit administrators as well as our internal colleagues that are looking to support worksite employees through these open enrollment periods.

Part and parcel with what you just said, we do see that a large majority of employees don't understand the benefits package that is being offered. They don't know which benefits are being offered. They don't have the ability to compare and contrast those benefits and at TriNet, we're in the business of providing world-class benefits for our customers.

But again, that comes with a level of complexity, because there are a multitude of options that are available to meet the unique needs of each firm and each employee. So we've recently partnered with Healthee, who is a leader in AI digital tools for helping provide planned comparisons and plan overviews to employees.

We are delivering the first of a series of AI-assisted tools. This one called our Benefit Decision Support for Enrollment, which provides personalized, detailed, and 24 by seven information to employees to help them make the best decision possible.

Kristin:
I love it. It's a great resource. All right, moving on to our next trend about the new normal and how we're working together. From Harvard Business Review, we see 60% of employees say the cost of going to the office outweighs the benefits. Sixty-seven percent feel that going to the office requires more effort than pre-pandemic. Seventy-three percent say it feels more expensive. And 48% of the employees say return to office mandates prioritize what leaders want over what employees need to do good work.

From Gartner, we learned that 65% of Gen Z employees said whether or not they work flexibly would impact whether they stay at their organization. And 53% cited it as a reason they're currently looking for a job. We know that there's an extraordinary push-pull going on with return to office.

We see this day in and day out from our clients. So, what we suggest is really evaluate your need for in-office work. Is there truly a performance or productivity decrease? Can you truly measure that? Look for ways to increase the connection with your employees. This, frankly, is the biggest driver of engagement.

Explore the defunct or annual or semiannual offsite meeting, maybe as a way to cultivate connection with employees. Get creative with flexibility. There's new collaboration tools and manager training. You might find that the cost of these efforts outweigh your direct costs, such as office space. All right, Jason, I know we've had a lot of demand for enhanced tools to support clients who are working in a non-traditional setting.

Jason:
That's absolutely right, Kristin. So we see really two major trends that I would say are relevant for this topic. One is the increased globalization of the workforce. So we do see increasingly that our customers are looking beyond U.S. borders in many cases to find the best talent and the best talent that's available for the largest portion of their customer base.

So, TriNet has taken that upon ourselves and we've recently partnered with a series of employer of record services, which are third parties that provide international hiring in much the same way that we provide U.S.-based hiring through our PEO. We are providing that to our customers, again, through a series of two to three that we've recently launched with many more on the horizon so that we can help you hire in any geography in the world. These capabilities and these tools give you the ability to hire and onboard, to pay with confidence, to provide local benefits and local compliance, all of this through a single sign-on from our platform.

So this really gives our customers that have this need for the globalized workforce, the flexibility and the integrated experience that they demand. The next sub trend I'll say, is really the increasing use of mobile and mobile devices to perform what were, in many cases, thought of as back-office transactions.

So, increasingly we see more and more small businesses embracing remote, embracing mobile-first and we've recently rolled out within our mobile app, the ability to do administrative and management functions, employee tasks on demand, the availability of resources and support and we're in the process now rolling out payroll on the go, which has been a highly demanded feature of our customer base for some time where administrators will actually be able to run, review and finalize payroll from their mobile device.

Kristin:
I love it. They could be on the beach somewhere.

Jason:
Yeah, I hope so.

Kristin:
That would be nice.

Jason:
Yeah.

Kristin:
All right. So, humanization of the workforce. What does this mean? We've had a lot of things going on. So, the Supreme Court recently overturned affirmative action in education, which has led to a lot of political backlash on employment related diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, even though employment wasn't the focus of the Supreme Court's decision. However, as we see here from this quote, employees want their organizations to see them as unique people with unique skills. So it's really important here that you make this intentional effort to create a sense of belonging with your employee population and make that the center of any diversity, equity or inclusion efforts.

We know that younger generations coming into the workforce will be living longer than existing workforce made up of baby boomers. So there's lots of volatility right now just in that demographic. So we suggest deliberate emphasis on building a culture of belonging in your organization. Harvard Business Review cites that inclusive leaders share a cluster of six signature traits to activate that culture of belonging that I've got listed here.

Leaders and organizations that incorporate these traits will be better prepared to adapt to diverse customers, markets, ideas and talent. So as I mentioned at the beginning, creating that culture of belonging requires intentionality and we have our DEI programming combines experienced consultants and proven methods to help you assess your current performance and provide some actionable strategies and insights to move your DEI goals forward. Our team supports your efforts to mold your culture and we start with wanting to understand your organization. What and why brought you to this particular juncture? We have assessments to help identify your organization's strengths and gaps. And then we work on doing a DEI plan development. This is where the fun really and the real work begins.

Lastly, just ongoing consulting support. So once your goals are set and you've started down this journey, we want to continue to work with you, whether it's biweekly, monthly, quarterly, whatever cadence helps to create some accountability within your organization.

And then lastly, we want to look at data analytics, helping you gain insights about your DEIB work and determine if what you've decided from your goals is actually moving the needle. Is it doing and having the desired impact? Are you going to reach your goals? All right, so last on the list of our trends is this impact of AI and related technologies in our work.

We've been here before. Surprise! Concerns have been voiced about the effect of new technology on existing jobs many times throughout history. In the 1930s, according to The Atlantic, a California mayor wrote to the U.S. president that industrial technology was a Frankenstein monster that threatened to upend manufacturing, devouring our civilization.

In the 1960s, a committee of scientists and social activists sent an open letter to the president. The cyber nation revolution will create a separate nation of the poor, the unskilled, the jobless who will be unable to find work and to afford life's necessities. First, agriculture technology replaced millions of farming jobs while the industrial revolution moved people into factories.

Then automation moved them back out of the factories, giving rise to the economy of services. Throughout these waves of creative destruction, however, the total number of people employed has risen. However, AI is different, but new types of jobs are expected to emerge. We're currently seeing AI influencing several aspects of people operations, and more will come online.

An example is with recruiting. So many applicant tracking solutions include an element of AI. We know that AI is expected to impact almost every area of work and this is going to require retraining and reskilling of your existing workforce. This upskilling or reskilling can help soften the economic impact disruption that is inevitable with this kind of change.

So we expect more intentionality to focus on the gaps that are created by AI and determine the best approach to mitigate organizational risk. I've listed six steps here to consider in building your upskilling or reskilling program. We do know that upskilling and reskilling wouldn't be complete without the option of some formal learning programs. Jason, can you walk us through that?

Jason:
Love to and thank you very much for the lead in. As is illustrated here on the slide, you do see that 68% of workers, according to recent research by BCG are aware of the coming disruption and are looking for those training opportunities and that's what we've heard loud and clear as we've spoken with our customers.

So we've recently partnered with 360 Learning, once again, a leader in their field who also offers an insane amount of AI based assistance and recommendations for learning. But this is a self-service learning platform published course where clients can customize the course where to their environments to their jobs as well as take advantage of both curated and self-discovered learning paths, so we're very excited about this. In fact, look for an upcoming session where we're going to highlight our approach to collaborative learning.

Kristin:
I love it. We're super excited about this. I know we get asked about it all the time. It'll be a fun opportunity for us. All right. So to wrap up, get creative, get thinking about new ideas and ways of working. Think about what areas of your business could use a creative makeover. Get to know your people and what's important to them. Ask for input for creating a flexible work policy, job sharing, or cross training programs, or a flexible PTO policy, or a holiday schedule.

Think about what makes your team excited to come to work. What structures, what procedures present challenges and see how you can get rid of some of those roadblocks. Gather genuine information through pulse surveys or focus groups, through informal conversations, those lovely one-to-ones, maybe create some structure around that.

Cultivate the conditions for employees to succeed. Identify clear paths for individuals at all levels to accomplish their roles and continue to develop. Help people find meaning and fulfillment in their work. How will employees be inspired to connect to the bigger picture? Do they all know what that bigger picture is? Provide the leadership tools and resources people need to win. Invest in training and opportunities for interpersonal connection and consider creative ways to engage.

All right. Well, that is the end. I think that we need to understand that challenging times allow us to recognize opportunities where we haven't seen them before. If we do it right and it gives us the tools to make our organizations more profitable, sustainable and more attractive places to work. I don't think we have any time for questions, but if there are, please you know, please continue to post them. We'll try to get to them as we can. We do hope that you appreciated our time together and join us at one of the TriNet information booths. Jason and I will both be there and we can answer additional questions and for that, we thank you for your time today.

Jason:
Thank you, everyone.