2023 Workforce Wrapped and 2024 Predictions

I read all the 2024 prediction reports so you don't have to.

Author

Eryn Peters
December 31, 2023

Happy New Year, pals!

It’s the last day of 2023 and what better way to ease into your 1H2024 plans than to have the future of work distilled into a 10-minute read for you? Save your energy for your resolutions and let’s dive in.

In today’s obvious agenda,

  • 🪞 2023 charts depicting this year’s madness

  • 🔮 2024 workforce predictions, summarized

🪞 2023 Workforce Wrapped 🪞 

It was a year of doom-scrolling as the global economy was entering its dumpster fire era. While layoffs certainly took over headlines, they peaked in Q1 and were soon taken over by voluntary departures according to Carta’s report.

The media might have been slightly overreacting - shocker. More and more end-of-year data reports show that things weren’t as bad as we thought.

Hampton, a private community for startup founders, confirmed that most businesses had a good year with revenue, profit, and headcount either stable or increasing.

While profits were stabilizing and growing, McKinsey reports that the global level of burnout reached ~20% when factoring in cognitive and emotional impairment, exhaustion, and mental distance. Psychological safety is at an all-time low.

Layoffs, doing more with less, and being made redundant by AI all contribute to falling employee engagement and satisfaction rates. Turns out the impending doom of being replaced by our digital overlords takes a toll.

AI flooded our newsfeeds daily with new trends, tools, and opportunities. Indeed shared that the demand for AI skills skyrocketed worldwide. P.S. Hey Ireland, what have y’all got going on over there? 👀 

AI adoption was hotly debated. With some touting it as the enemy of inclusion. DEI did have wins, however, with research emerging about the profitability of diverse teams. Accenture, in partnership with Disability:IN and the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) reported significant economic advantages within businesses that championed disability inclusion.

While we learned this year, there is still heated debate about what is to come. The #1 most engaging article on LinkedIn this year was a future of work topic: The Washington Post’s take on a 4-day work week. The 100K+ engagements on the post were a polarizing take on flexibility, remote working, and whether or not employees can be trusted.

Instead of debating the past, let’s fast forward to the future…

🔮 2024 predictions, summarized 🔮 

I read all the 2024 year-end predictions so you don’t have to. Truthfully? They were all so consistent that it felt like I read the same article 25+ times.

Here’s what the echo chamber had to say.

Human-centric leadership and focus on employee experience

  1. The recall to the office, layoffs, and doing more with less have employee engagement and culture energy at an all-time low. To retain top workers, futurists say that there needs to be a shift to prioritize employee experience.

  2. The most overlooked group? Working parents - namely, women. Childcare support is highly neglected as a benefit and parents will be leaving the workforce in droves. According to the research, 52% of mothers are considering leaving the workforce due to inadequate childcare.

  3. “Human-centric leadership” was tossed around in several articles. A big prediction is that the era of hustle-porn and the autocratic Silicon Valley leadership style is over. 

    The new wave of leadership fosters deeper connection and loyalty within teams. Ex. Sam Altman, CEO at OpenAI, whose 700+ staff signed a letter to the board demanding his reinstatement after termination. Would your employees risk their jobs for you?

Freelance adoption and the gig economy will grow

  1. The most innovative companies support flexible talent. Upwork’s 2023 Work Innovation report states that “Work Innovator Companies” are 2.6x more likely to know what work is better suited for freelancers than for full-time employees. Innovative companies seem to be more aware of their talent mix - 92% of Work Innovators knew their current talent mix compared to only 62% of non-innovators.

  2. A number of sources promote the idea of the “flexeteriat” worker - talent that prioritizes flexibility above all else. This is predicted to contribute to the already increasing freelance workforce, moonlighters, and the voluntarily over-employed.

  3. How often has a job description been accurate at the time of posting let alone 3 months into the role? A recurring prediction theme this year is the “skillification” of work. This not only allows for more internal talent mobility but also allows more freelancers to complete projects and skills gaps rather than fit into a full-time employee mold.

Remote and Hybrid negotiations will continue

  1. Predictions state that the call to the office will continue but flexible working will increase. Ie. Bums in seats but on your own time.

  2. When will remote work take off? Experts say 2024 will be the “Year of the Pancake” (flat) with a 3-year Nike swoosh bull run on remote work as office tenancy agreements start to expire.

  3. With the increase in decentralized workplaces and times, team diversity will increase. Not only does remote working accommodate those with different environmental requirements but it accelerates international and global teams. Expect cross-cultural management, timezone accommodation, and remote work best practices to be growing topics of discussion.

AI everything

  1. It’s no surprise that AI forces a shift in desired skillsets and roles. Those who can translate business needs into specs or those can can be human quality control for AI outputs will be key players. Ie. Product Managers, Prompt Writers, Editors, QA Testers, Fact Checkers, etc.

  2. We’ll see a surge in Generative AI preparedness and adoption this year. The digitization and “datafication” of work is required in order to be able to integrate AI into existing teams processes. Expect a lot of data related to team efficiency and man-hours. 
    (Sidenote - can we come up with more inclusive language for “man-hours”?)

  3. Look out for “mischief in hiring”. Forrester predicts that AI will fabricate both roles and applicants this year. There’s a suspected increase in “vaporhiring” as recruitment automation takes over in posting roles or auto-advancing candidates.

Some of the reports and summaries for those who want a deeper dive:

📚️Word of the Week 📚️ 

Flexeteriat noun INFORMAL | WORKPLACE TERM

an emerging subgroup of workers that put “flexible working” at the top of their working requirements. Fortune predicts that 2024 will be the year of the “flexeteriat”.

Related terms: flex-gen, over-employed (by choice), remote working 

Coined by Julia Hobsbawm, a workplace author and Bloomberg Workshift columnist

That’s all for now, pals. See ya next week.

Eryn