2022 looks to be a pivotal year in professional talent. While the Great Resignation was the talent story of 2021, I believe 2022 will be when we see the patterns that turned the US service and travel industries upside down really impact professional workforces worldwide. Let’s take a look at three changes I think we can expect. We’ll circle back in December and see how I did.
Remote-first will become the standard, ushering in a difficult year for company culture.
We’re already seeing this transform in a big way, so this might be the easiest prediction to make. All it takes is a look at your recommended jobs on LinkedIn to see the shift. In a bid to secure scarce talent, even the most reluctant remote employers will find they need to cast a wider net. In 2022, this will be a mostly US phenomenon, but global hiring won’t be far behind, once companies tune their HR and legal processes to support it. But I think ubiquitous work-from-anywhere global roles are at least a year or two out.
2022 will be hard on workplace culture, especially for companies with an office-first mentality. As new remote talent joins without the ability to collaborate in-person, employees used to face-to-face collaboration will need to consciously include remote workers in conversations, decisions and meetings. The dynamic that emerges will be tricky to sustain, as office and remote culture are often mutually exclusive — finding a balance that works for the styles, personalities, and politics of each workplace will be tricky. This culture transformation will be yet another driver of turnover in the short term as teams re-sort and re-align themselves for the new workplace.
Inflation and competition for talent will drive increased salary transparency.
The whispers and confidentiality swirling around compensation are a time-honored employment tradition. 2022 will usher in the beginning of the end of the mystique.
This is happening in a context that already set the stage in 2021:
- Regulation – Equal pay legislation like Colorado’s and a patchwork of emerging legislation in the United States mean that organizations will need to share pay ranges as early in the recruiting process as the job posting.
- Information Sharing – Glassdoor is now part of basic due diligence for prospective employees, and LinkedIn continues to build its data capability to forecast salary ranges
- Inflation – Wage growth is at its highest in decades. So are consumer prices. Prospective employees are not going to jump unless the pay differential outruns their increasing costs of living, and employers are competing with each other to be at the front of the line.
2022 will cement a new transactionality in the employment relationship, at least in the United States. Barraged by recruiters, former colleagues and job posts, employees have ample opportunities to test the market and line up their current role with their potential next ones. Employers will need to recruit their current employees, leading to frank discussions about compensation and total rewards. Expect a matching downturn in the flowery “we’re a family” and “we’re in this together” language. The companies that implement across-the-board pay increases or new perks will be smart enough to trumpet them on social media where their employees will amplify the message to the market.
We’ll see a lot of the taboo around salary discussion continue to erode throughout the course of the year, and I think we will end the year in a place where compensation is part of the conversation on a regular basis. Employers who under-budget salary expense for 2022 will struggle to keep a lid on costs — and attrition.
Necessity will drive innovative work arrangements.
The same forces that caused such profound labor disruption in 2021 in the service industries will also impact the professional talent market. As COVID-19 variants continue to spread, schools will be forced to pivot to remote learning and daycares will unexpectedly close due to COVID-19 cases. Disruption will likely be the norm, through at least the first half of the year. That will manifest itself in a continued reluctance to travel and a need for employers to evaluate staffing levels for critical functions to ensure coverage when key resources are impacted.
Simultaneously, the gig economy will bleed to the professional market. Experienced workers have benefited from stable high wages, stellar stock market performance, fat retirement plans, and a record-breaking housing market, and many have built a sizable financial cushion. More and more well-to-do white collar workers will question how they’re spending their time and increasingly demand less from their employers — less responsibility, less round-the-clock availability, less stress.
That will create an opportunity for fractional jobs, contract work, and other flexible arrangements that match both short- and long-term needs with workers who are looking for something different from a 40-hour work week.
Do you agree with these predictions? How do you think the workplace will change in 2022?