It seems like ever since 2020 when the pandemic hit we keep getting hit with something new every year making us hope the following year will be much better. 2022 was a year for the books; employees continued to make a stance for fair pay and a better work-life balance, resulting in The Great Resignation.
Quiet Quitting began and companies continued to scratch their heads on how to attract new talent to their organizations while keeping their current employees happy and motivated.
Do you remember 10 years ago when company culture started to be a big buzzword for companies? Companies spent a lot of time redefining their culture and making changes to their office spaces and overall work environments, adjusted company perks, and truly identified what they wanted the “vibe” to feel like every day for their employees.
You would see pool and ping pong tables in the break rooms, breakfast bars, and top-of-the-line coffee machines for employees to enjoy, dry cleaning services, and gym memberships along with daily company happy hours and monthly community service projects. It seems a lot of those selling points companies once used to attract and retain talent has come and gone. Most companies are still working remotely in some capacity whether it is full-time or hybrid, and are struggling to keep their culture strong within their organization. Towards the end of this year, it became apparent to many companies that they needed to figure out how to continue to build and have a strong company culture while having most of their staff working from home. So what are some company culture trends we should expect for 2023?
Coming together as a team
Over the past couple of years, companies have been running in survival mode. What can we do to keep our employees healthy and happy and continue our mission? This mostly resulted in companies sending people to work from home in some type of capacity. Now that people are feeling more comfortable gathering, companies will more than likely set team meeting days where everyone will be in the office. This will allow individuals to work together on projects, bounce ideas off each other, conduct ongoing training, and build a relationship with each other face-to-face.
Increased flexibility
Employees made their message heard loud and clear that they need a better work-life balance. Many companies grew to expect their employees to put themselves first and their personal life and families second. Allowing individuals to work from home significantly helped increase the work-life balance but employees are looking for companies to do better. Many are making it known that they can do their job anytime during the day, it doesn’t have to be done just during a typical workday. They are looking for more flexibility with their work hours, whether that is later start times, longer breaks during the day, working in the evening, etc. At the end of the day, people want to work for an organization that does not frown on their employees for needing to take their kid to school, wanting to attend one of their children’s field trips, taking their child to basketball on Tuesdays, doing a spin class at 2:00 PM every day, so on and so forth.
Mental health awareness
Finally, companies started to understand there is such a thing as mental health over the past couple of years. The mental health awareness movement has been great, but so much more needs to be done. Companies will be more aware of their employee’s mental health, adding more check-ins with their employees and encouraging them to take the time needed to make sure they are ok. Some will give extra mental health days which will allow an employee to take off work and not use their PTO so they can decompress and reset. Companies will also adjust their benefits allowing their employees to have more resources at their fingertips in order to get help or sustain strong mental health.
Employee growth and investment
It’s no secret, companies are still facing many financial struggles since the pandemic. Due to this, companies decreased the amount of money they put toward their employee’s professional growth and development. In 2023 you will see more companies investing in continued education for their mid to senior-level employees.
Four day work weeks
To piggyback off increasing flexibility, companies started to consider 4-day work weeks more in 2022. Some gave employees the option to have a 10-hour day 4-day work week versus your traditional 8-hour 5-day work week year-round. Others allowed employees to work a 4-day work week during the summer months but required them to work 5 days a week during the remainder of the year if they worked 40 hours. Others gave their employees half days on Fridays during the summer months.
This year we will start to see more companies offering a more flexible work schedule between 4 and 5 days a week. Companies are realizing if their employees are getting their work done, it doesn’t matter how many days they are logged in for work.
Conclusion
Many have high hopes for 2023, the past few years have been filled with a lot of “news” in the corporate world. For many years, companies operated the way they always had. The one good thing the pandemic did was shake the norms up and start opening companies’ eyes to see that things can be done just as well if not better in a different way. These 2023 culture trends listed above will be exciting to watch play out and the companies that adopt these trends will be the companies that will have fewer issues attracting and retaining their current talent resulting in a stronger and happier company culture.