2022 Employee benefits & workplace predictions: Settling into a hybrid world

2021 was supposed to be the year offices opened back up. Some did, some didn’t, and some opened and then closed again as new COVID variants presented new threats. But whatever strategy a company chose, one thing holds true: the 9-to-5 office workday is dead. Flexibility, remote work and hybrid offices are the new normal.

The new environment comes with a whole host of pros and cons. Employees, happy to ditch the long commute (and for many, pants), succumbed to increased burnout as the line between work and home life blurred. And employers have struggled to maintain a sense of company culture and keep the lines of communication with workers open.

So, what’s in store for 2022? Here’s what industry experts have to say.

Hybrid (everything) is here to stay

Hybrid solutions are not about compromise between approaches, they are about combining their strengths. A hybrid car combines the torque of an electric motor with the ability of the combustion engine to maintain high speeds. As we emerge from the pandemic, hybrid work models that blend home with office will be the norm for many companies. In 2022, more business leaders will come to realize the advantages of hybrid models in cloud data and analytics.

-Oliver Schabenberger, Chief Innovation Officer, SingleStore

Remote work is here to stay, too

Expect remote work to continue growing in popularity, post-pandemic and beyond. The days of the office model, as we knew it, are over for most companies: 70 percent (or more) of businesses plan to go hybrid, and many are going fully remote. Even traditional, legacy firms like PwC are letting their employees work fully remote––permanently. It’s a revolution in the way we work and it’ll continue to pick up steam in 2022 as founders realize they can build better teams if they hire remote.

The expansion of global hiring will be a huge factor to the growth of the remote workforce in 2022. Right now, lots of teams are going remote––but many are still all located in the same country. Next, many of these teams will realize that they have access to higher-quality talent if they’re able to hire borderless. No matter where you live, the majority of the world’s most talented people don’t live in your country. –Matt Redler, CEO of Panther

WFH will impact all aspects of the economy

Now that it looks like 50% of the workforce will remain remote, it will impact other segments of the economy. We as a society haven’t completely thought through or seen the impacts of a significant portion of the labor force working remotely long term. We’ll start to see impacts on the clothing market (remote employees wearing different clothes, what about dry cleaners and tailors?), car purchases (do we buy different cars if we’re not commuting? Do we hold on to them longer?), home design (will homes be designed with dedicated office spaces instead of spare bedrooms), commercial real estate (what will happen to Class A office spaces downtown?), among other industries.

~David Powell, President at Prodoscore

The physical workspace will continue to evolve

Companies are asking, “how can we make the most of the days that we are together?” leading to a reimagination of what physical offices will look like and what their purpose will be. We’ve already established that desk work can be done at home. With offices no longer necessary for everyone to come in, sit in, and work in all day long, offices will become spaces for collaboration, brainstorming, and strategy sessions.

Depending on the company, the vibe may be more geared toward comfort (bean bag chairs, chairs with ottomans so people could put their feet up), creativity (wall-sized whiteboards, and booths to record videos in, that are open to all for in the moment ideas or concepts to share), and collaboration (a range of board games, indoor balls/sports equipment, and art supplies) that can be used for their primary purposes in team-building exercises or to use to problem solve and more.

-Sammy Courtright, co-founder and chief brand officer of Ten Spot

The future of work will become more intentional and flexible

Changes brought on by the pandemic and a “work-from-home” lifestyle are leading employees to re-evaluate what work means to them. In fact, a recent study shows that nearly two in five workers are considering moving to a job with more flexible options, and eight in 10 workers want to be able to maintain a good work/life balance through flexibility. With that, home-centric approaches to work will become more popular as employees demand more flexible work options and choose to do individual contributor work at home.

For leaders, this will mean navigating ways to lead a widely dispersed workforce and becoming much more intentional about how they utilize time in the office and how they foster their company culture outside the building. Pre-pandemic, company culture was often defined as feelings of camaraderie during in-person moments. In 2022 and in the years to come, companies will need to reimagine and redefine what their culture looks like and how they instill a sense of belonging and inclusion despite having team members working remotely.

-Kelly Ann Doherty, chief administration officer at Mr. Cooper

HR policies and procedures for the hybrid workplace must be well-defined

The future of work is hybrid, meaning human resources professionals must collaborate with their organization’s leadership to provide much-needed guidance to their workforce around the new “rules” that govern work. This includes developing uniform, distributed HR processes and systems that provide leaders with the tools they need to manage their talent while ensuring all employees are receiving the same support they were used to in more traditional, co-located operating models.

In addition, there is a greater need for clarity in defining the expectations around results and performance standards across the company while simultaneously allowing localized decision-making to accommodate the fluid nature of remote work. Once the company goals and more adaptive “policies and procedures” are in place, managers and employees can “negotiate” the cultural norms that fit their unique work environment.

HR must also consider providing classic services in new forms. Examples would include “virtual” onboarding procedures, online support communities driven by social technologies, self-service offerings augmented by call centers and AI-driven knowledge management, and real-time, on-demand learning that maps to reengineered roles and responsibilities.

-Brian Powers, vice president of talent management & acquisition, Fuze