The past decade has seen a huge amount of change for a large number of different industries as business as a whole has undergone transformation during the digital era – those that had primarily been physical brick and mortar-based business have shifted online like these online gaming options for example, and the success of e-commerce has changed the way many businesses operate as a whole – but the changes haven’t only come from the digital era adjustments, particularly recently either.
Two of the major changes have come in the past two years with remote and location independent work perhaps being the biggest leap – whilst these options did exist before, they certainly weren’t as widespread and not something that too many got to take advantage of but after the global health crisis, a shift to flexible and remote working options has seemingly changed business for the better – whilst this hasn’t been a blanket change for every industry, it does seem to have impacted the world of business as a whole and those currently working office jobs in particular may be able to see the change remain on a permanent basis too.
The second major adjustment, whilst not yet as widespread as remote working options, does seem to be gaining traction – a number of different countries have already trialed a four-day working week in the largest change since the ‘20’s of Henry Ford, with reports that employee satisfaction and productivity have both increased as a result of the change. As more countries get on board with the trialing process, it isn’t unreasonable to believe that within the next few years there may be a similar adjustment here which provides not only more flexibility, but a better work life balance as a whole.
Given the current spirit is very much on the side of change currently, that may mean there are further opportunities for change to be seen in business but perhaps more on a case-by-case basis – the current adjustments are focused on very specific business sectors and have done little to impact other niches, which is where the next set of changes may be seen but may be slower to come around. This will also likely start to slow now too as the world heads back to a period of normality, without difficult circumstances to spur the change it does mean that there will be reluctance to make big adjustments.
It is an exciting period of time for business change though and those that have already been implemented have led to some very refreshing adjustments, and as the work life balance improves, so do expectations of this balance remaining on the side of the employee, rather than the employer.