The nine workplace trends every organisation must learn to address ⁰

The latest company to set out its vision of workplace trends is food services provider Sodexo. The company’s 2016 Workplace Trends Report suggests there are nine key areas that managers should address, each linked by the common theme of striking the right balance between the organisation’s commercial objectives and the needs of its stakeholders. The report is a detailed meta-analysis based on primary research, client feedback and research from academics, trade associations and FM providers. The report covers the most talked about themes in workplace design and management including wellness, work-life balance, diversity, green building and workforce engagement. The authors acknowledge the challenge firms face in striking the balance between these complex and conflicting demands and call for an ‘holistic’ approach to resolve them (which may suggest they have as much of an idea about the right answers as anybody else).

“Companies spend a daunting $720 million on employee engagement annually. From how leaders are recognising and rewarding employees, to more effective health and wellness program design, we see the importance of a personalised, holistic approach. The 2016 Workplace Trends Report articles collectively share a theme that programs that effectively reward and recognise the varied individual employee motivators are essential in today’s multi-generational workplace,” explains Mark Bickford, CEO of Corporate Services, North America, for Sodexo “In our Humanising the Workplace trend, we see the opportunity to leverage a range of design principles to help keep a “human-centric focus” in our work,” added Bickford

The report is broken down into nine sections authored by experts in specific fields, who contribute to the report with insights on the following workplace trends:

Population Health Management: A New Business Model for a Healthier Workforce

Population Health Management, or PHM, is a broad effort whereby individual-, organisational- and community level interventions are used to improve the disease burden of entire groups or populations. By keeping people well at the onset, PHM strategies can be used to decrease overall healthcare usage and avoid future overuse of the healthcare system.  However, in order to bend the curve on health costs, programs that go beyond the typical employee wellness models toward a more integrated and comprehensive approach are required.

Humanising the Workplace: Using Design Principles to Inspire Workplace Thinking

In these times of transition and change, it is increasingly difficult to make the right decisions in creating the right work environments. Design principles, acting as a set of guardrails, can help shape the promise and trajectory of approaching the design and maintenance of workspaces, by inspiring new thinking, fine-tuning directions and guiding decision-making processes. This piece highlights seven design principles that can guide managers and leaders who are charged with humanising the workplace.

Reaching Every Employee in an Organisation: Engagement through Recognition

The vast majority of today’s employees are disengaged, and study after study indicates that engagement is one of the key drivers of business success. Corporate managers understand this imperative. Despite laser-like efforts, however, employee engagement scores in the United States remain lacklustre.  Many organisations are embracing a corporate-wide approach to employee engagement today. There are generally two key areas that these organisations focus on in order to boost engagement and business performance: improving quality of life for employees and reaching every employee in an organisation.

Smart Energy Management: A Win for the Environment, People, and Business

There is growing recognition that human activities are major contributors to climate change. The new normal is likely to require consumers to become more active participants in the creation and use of energy. Smart energy management can enhance the quality of life of employees by creating a more comfortable work environment. By implementing an action plan and working toward increasing energy awareness among employees, businesses can reap a multitude of benefits.

Stories of Urban Transformation: The Rise of 18-Hour Work/Live Communities

Cities all over the world are hotbeds of ideas, blending new and old concepts to create exciting urban experiences for residents, workers, enterprises and visitors.  This piece focuses on a few of the most interesting stories that demonstrate early signs of urban transformations, which will spread into more and more cities around the globe in 2016 and beyond. Each story is about how the various city players are using innovation and technology to transform the work they are doing and shape the world’s future cities.

Sodexo Study: Gender Balanced Teams Linked to Increased Business Performance

Achieving gender balance is important for workplaces not only because it is “the right thing to do” but also because it makes good business sense. To better understand and leverage this trend, Sodexo initiated an internal study which analysed key performance indicators (KPIs) from 100 global entities and 50,000 managers in 80 countries. The preliminary results were powerful, indicating that entities with gender-balanced management performed better on all of the performance indicators.

Creating The Lab of the Future: A Shift Toward Greater Agility, Flexibility, and Efficiency

Aging populations, chronic diseases, market expansion, and treatment and technology advances are expected to spur life sciences sector growth in 2015. However, efforts to reduce costs, improve outcomes, and demonstrate value are dramatically altering the demand and delivery landscape.  Accordingly, service providers must adapt to the new demands placed on them by more effectively anticipating trends in the industry.

Workplace Violence: Best Practices for a New Reality

Each year, nearly 2 million American employees are victims of workplace violence. This violence has far-reaching negative consequences for employers, employees, and the larger society, primarily because of the central role the workplace has in our lives.  This paper discusses the emergence of a fifth type of workplace violence – terrorism. Alongside implications for costs and risk factors, this new understanding also impacts future prevention efforts.