Keeping track of industry and career trends is not only of value to employees but also helps employers to stay relevant and attractive for skilled workers. As the preferences and priorities of job-seekers shift, businesses need to modernize their internal structures and processes – and vice versa.
Here are a few trends that you should know about.
Ability to learn
What seems like an obvious characteristic, any employee should possess, is becoming slowly but surely one of the most important abilities companies seek in applicants. With job scopes rapidly changing, employees have to be more flexible and willing to adapt as their industry, company and job changes.
It doesn’t mean that years of experience in a certain position or field will become irrelevant. Instead, top employers in Hong Kong are looking out for employees with the ability to learn and evolve with the demands of the job.
AI-enabled working
The fear that AI is going to replace a large extent of the current workforce has been discussed for long time. But now that AI is here to stay, transformation is imminent. However, instead of replacing workers, AI is only changing the dynamic of the workplace, making our work more efficient.
The technology behind AI is already integrated into numerous devices that we use daily including social media chatbots, retargeting software and predictive algorithms. As AI is taking on repetitive and time-consuming tasks, employees are freed up to start looking at the bigger picture.
Flexitime and remote working
With multinationals leading the way, companies are starting to understand that offering an improved work-life balance does not only positively impact productivity but also helps in retaining skilled and valuable workers.
As digitization sweeps across industries, flexitime and remote working no longer pose the same problems as they did years ago. Some companies even find these methods more cost-effective, as they can often reduce their expense on maintaining office spaces.
Diversity matters
The discussion surrounding diversity in the workplace has been going on for many years. However, since giants such as Google and Facebook actively promote and make diversity a priority of the company, the subject has also picked up speed beyond Silicon Valley.
Companies are starting to take the matter more seriously, as they begin to see benefits such as employee retention. Businesses that want to remain attractive for job-seekers in 2018 need to pay more attention to diversity.
Growing employee experience
You might have heard of employee engagement – an initiative to provide the ideal conditions for employees and organizations to collectively drive towards the company’s goals and success. Now, employee engagement is shifting towards employee experience.
With the growing number of digitally-enabled millennial in the workforce, companies are starting to create a company-wide ecosystem that combines culture, engagement and performance management. The aim is not only to make the workplace more pleasant, but also to create leaders and roadmaps for top talent to grow.
