Nine2Five
If you’ve looked around your office lately (assuming you actually work at an office), you’ve surely noticed that gone are the days of the 9-5 nuclear workforce, tied to their cubicles, working independently toward an individual goal. I recently ran across an article in the Chicago Tribune that pinpointed and articulated some of the changes in today’s workplace culture, including some trends that more closely resemble the prior movement. The pendulum swings and often all that is old becomes new again.
Flexibility over Salary:
Today’s employees value flexibility in how and where works gets done as a deciding factor in weighing two job opportunities.
Collaboration is Key:
While the trend continues to support working remotely, some companies are actually tightening the reigns a bit and bringing remote employees back into the office to foster greater collaboration and idea sharing among teams and peers.
Remote with Boundaries:
The desire to work remotely does not come without drawbacks. Work-life boundaries continue to erode and the recent push is to build up some of those boundaries, the breakdown of which has led workers to feel overwhelmingly ‘on’.
Other trends mentioned include attention to job stress and overtime pay, an increase in females in leadership roles, and the trend toward hired freelancers to keep up with cost control and changes in workflow.
No matter how closely your workplace incorporates the aforementioned subject matter, one thing is for sure. The way we work continues to be a fluid, ever-changing movement, the goal of which is an ideal balance between employee satisfaction and maximum productivity.
