Today’s modern workplace has a fluid, casual atmosphere where work-life balance is advocated. People are also working from home more frequently, and they are being busier and doing more work than ever before. So it’s no astonishment that the modern workplace is showing up in some surprising ways. New research from Google shows that an average office worker now spends nearly 40 hours a week working from home and another 30 working remotely. And, according to a study led by the University of California, San Francisco, your brain becomes more engaged and focused after a long period of working remotely — a strangely refreshing revelation from a job that’s all too often defined by hours spent in a cubicle staring at a computer screen.
The need for a happy, healthy, and productive workplace is becoming increasingly important. It’s not entirely clear why so many people are working these days remotely — perhaps it’s the ease of a flexible schedule or a growing acceptance that everyone’s needs have to be met, even if they’re not at an office. But, like it or no the modern workplace is changing, and business leaders need to understand how their companies are keeping up.
The workplace owners felt that the old, inflexible style of the workplace reduced the employees’ efficacy and abridged their power to meet new challenges. However, in the modern workplace, the environment is flexible, and the employees are more productive nowadays. Employees use software and tools like Skype, Google meets, and Google Docs to communicate and work as a team more effectively.
What are some Workplace trends that need to be adopted?
- Collaboration
Collaboration is a fundamental factor in problem-solving and idea creation, and we know that we’re most productive when we’re all on the corresponding page. However, there is a deficiency of data about how to make collaboration work in today’s workplace.
Here you’ll learn about some of the challenges of collaboration in the workplace and what you can do to make the cooperation a productive fixture in your team or organization.
- Think about the problem. One of the essential functions of collaboration is that it allows different parties to interact and develop a solution. While all things are relative, some of the vital factors in cooperation are:
- Utilizing technology to give everyone access to the same information
- Providing the proper tools for everyone on the team or in the organization to share and work out ideas
- Active and engaged participation from everyone involved
- Tangible, attainable goals to move the project forward
- Flexible Workforce
By 2020, the freelancer workforce will comprise 40 percent of the crew, up 32 percent in 2015. Freelancers are being used in the U.S. workforce due to the high cost of overhead for employers, and the ease freelancers provide in administering payroll, benefits, and other expenses. “The study found that the top reason for using freelancers was to save money, with 66 percent of respondents indicating that they used freelancers because of the lower cost, compared to 40 percent who used freelancers because of the higher quality of work,” said a recent outsourcing research study by Intuit.
Low overhead and high flexibility are the top reasons companies choose to hire freelancers over full-time employees. “Long-term, it will make sense for businesses to outsource their work, as they can more easily and affordably outsource critical tasks such as fulfillment, sales, customer service, as well as contracting administrative and finance employees.
The rapid growth in the number of remote workers in the office has presented a new set of challenges and opportunities for managers. A manager needs to manage the employees in a secluded setting skillfully, but those employees may live anywhere in the world. They can now communicate and collaborate remotely using the latest communications tools. A manager has many responsibilities, not the least of which is prepping employees for remote working. And it is constantly evolving. Managers need to stay up to date on the latest communication and collaboration tools, to communicate with their employees, and ultimately, to manage their remote.
- Work-Life Balance
The need for employees to stay connected and a near-constant business cycle has placed more pressure on employees to be connected at all times. Unfortunately, when employees are forced to work outside of the office, productivity and morale can hit. According to a study by The Work-Life Balance Council, work-life balance is becoming a top priority for companies of all sizes. Unfortunately, traditional time management techniques don’t continually improve this situation. Work-life balance is defined as having your work demands and personal life needs aligned and balanced.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the idea of work-life balance or work-life harmony is making rapid growth in workplaces across the country. Why? Because employers realize that the more they can accommodate life outside the office, the more productive their employees are.
- Considering Traditional Performance Reviews
The traditional performance review process has been dysfunctional. It’s an annual, top-down HR process that evaluates employee performance without any reference to the larger environment of the workplace, the employee’s responsibility around project completion, or the prevailing climate of the organization. And while the traditional review process may have served as a valuable means to evaluate employees over the years, the relationship between employee performance and overall company performance is more complex than the simple metrics and scores used in the traditional review process. While more and more employers recognize the need to adjust the conventional review process, it’s clear that many companies are still fighting to understand the relationship between employee performance and overall company performance.
- Substitute presentation methods
In current times, tools and software like Prezi and Keynote are some of the replacements for PowerPoint presentations as modern and latest companies demand superior graphics and designing to impress their clients. PowerPoint presentations can seem to be monotonous, especially with repetitive templates that have been seen by almost everyone. Keynote has animations and transitions that excite the clients and make them understand things better.