2022 employee benefits and workplace predictions: Tech touchpoints explode

You might have thought yourself something of a tech-savvy person, and then the pandemic hit. Suddenly you were juggling a half dozen meeting platforms, learning how to access databases via the cloud and tethered to company Slack channels.

Much as employers have given up their resistance to remote work arrangements over the past couple of years, they’ve also opened their eyes to the potential for new technologies and digital processes to revolutionize how work gets done. This doesn’t mean replacing workers with robots but implementing algorithms and AI that can cut waste and lead to a more productive and efficient workforce.

Take a look at just a few of the myriad ways industry experts predict technology will continue to shape the way we work in the coming year.

Decision-support becomes more commonplace

Decision-making is always a challenge, especially in complex areas like employee benefits. Whether there are three or 300 options, people want and like help. Employers know this, and in the war for talent that now encompasses employee benefits, decision support—including AI-assisted tools—is emerging as a highly effective tactic. From on-demand virtual assistants to personalized benefits recommendations powered by complex algorithms and machine learning, we expect advanced decision support features to become ubiquitous among today’s HR and benefits software. Increasingly, employees will come to rely on these technologies to aid their benefits decisions during open enrollment and throughout the year.

–Michael Levin, co-founder and CEO, Vericred

Establishing a tech-focused culture and tone will come from the top

From the C-Suite to the boardroom, technological fluency will be a major focus across the most senior levels of leadership. This effort is already being driven by great CTO and CIO leaders. They understand that when business leaders transcend tech literacy to fluency, they can become truly innovative and discover how technology can help solve complex business challenges, build trust and identify new opportunities to outpace the competition. Leaders that invest in tech fluency efforts will see benefits manifest across their organization through digital upskilling programs, which should be driven by CTO/CIO leadership and strategic partners.

–Will Perry, US cloud innovation & engineering leader, PwC

Companies will adopt next-generation culture apps for distributed teams

As many companies move into a hybrid work model where employees will remain distributed long term, they will look to adopt new tools for culture building and stop trying to solve all of their culture and wellness challenges over the company video meeting platform. Leaders will turn to tools like Weve for team building and Thrive Global for employee wellness. And that’s just the beginning as the innovators coming out of Covid enter the space

–Lisa Walker, workforce futurist, Fuze

Talent will be core to driving enterprise-wide tech enablement

Previous concerns that technologies like AI and automation would displace jobs have been replaced by one undeniable truth: talent is crucial for digitization. This will hold true when it comes to tackling the biggest challenges and opportunities leaders will face in the next year: navigating the massive cloud migration spurred by COVID-19, solving supply chain issues through a digitally intrinsic approach and pivoting toward the subscription economy.

What’s more, deploying a human-centric, experience-driven formula for tech enablement will help companies unlock the value of their cloud investments and actualize its benefits while accelerating individuals’ upskilling journeys, thus creating more value for your business and customers alike.

–Dan Priest, managing partner, Cloud & Digital, PwC

A blank slate for new tech systems

Just as organizations are currently expected to have succession and security plans within their DevOps Platforms, having a well-built remote work strategy will be critical to business continuity in 2022. Startups are building new digital-first tools and workflows that will leverage the virtual space in ways unimaginable pre-COVID.

New collaboration tools are being created from a blank slate, not bound to office-first legacy requirements, building for the future and pulling it into the now. Globally, we’re in the “awkward teenager phase” of remote work — we think we’re grown up, fully acclimated to digital-first environments, but many organizations are using old tools and workflows, not taking full advantage of the clean slate we’ve been gifted. We’ll see this shake out in 2022 as most organizations fully implement their workforce plans.

–Darren Murph, head of remote, GitLab Inc.

Technology will drive the growth of global hiring

One of the biggest hurdles to assembling a global team is that It’s expensive as hell. It also takes months, and sometimes years, to become fully compliant in a new country. For most businesses, that’s too much work. Governments take decades to get things done and I wouldn’t expect it to be any easier to hire globally––the traditional way––in 2022. I believe businesses will take matters into their own hands and will rely more heavily on platforms that allow them to hire the best talent, globally, with just a few clicks.

–Matt Redler, CEO of Panther

Automation will force new jobs to be created, with customer service at the focus

Though automation will replace some jobs, new jobs will be created as a result that focus on the customer service experience. For example, though Amazon Go is a cashier-less service, customer service representatives are still needed for any shoppers who have issues while in-store.

–Sanish Mondkar, founder and CEO, Legion