2023 Look Ahead

I thought I’d end the year with a look ahead to 2023. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty much done now with 2022. It’s increasingly difficult to focus on anything immediate as my attention and energy shifts towards thinking about the coming year.

What do I find myself thinking about?

2023 will see a big shift in the redesign of work.

Economic and Workforce Context

If constraint is the mother of creativity, then it’s going to be an incredibly creative year. As we ride the economic roller coaster, we know we’re heading into a global recession. Here in Aotearoa we are no different, with the dual challenge of low growth and inflationary pressure. This puts work in a bind. Most businesses can’t afford to fund big pay rises, yet people need a lot more cash than last year just to stand still. 

Add that constrained economic context to the massive acceleration and insatiable appetite for more flexibility around our hours, days and place of work and I can see that more organisations will reach for some fresh ideas.

Four Day Week Acceleration

One idea ready and waiting is the Four Day Week. With mounting evidence that businesses can expect stronger financial performance and productivity coupled with a workforce that’s less stressed and much more likely to stay for longer, with no additional pay rises required, it seems like it’s time truly is now. 

Over the next few years, it’s likely to reach a tipping point, beginning with accelerated uptake in 2023. Businesses will scramble to gain a comparative advantage by adopting the Four Day Week ahead of their competition. Once that tipping point is reached, it will ultimately become a new default and businesses will do it because they have no choice, as employees come to expect fewer hours on a standard employment agreement.

It mirrors a pattern I’m observing now with flexible work that similarly has emerged over the last few years. Businesses are adopting more flexible work practice, even if it’s just because they have to. A kind of corporate peer pressure. The appetite across the workforce has reached that tipping point and employees demand more autonomy over their workplace and schedule than ever before. Employers recognise that they no longer have a choice to say no to many types of flex, not like they could in the past.

My prediction is that this corporate peer pressure will play out in other ways too and push us to redesign work in other ways, alongside the Four Day Week.

Flex-by-Design

Throughout 2023, there will be more flexibility deliberately built into work, for the longer-term. I call this flex-by-design. 

As teams reach the edge of what’s immediately possible for them, they will inevitably want to remove some persistent barriers and create new opportunities. Business leaders will be open to it, as they warm to ideas that offer the promise of non-monetary, yet highly valued, rewards for their workforce. 

These ideas will include adopting more flexibility around shift work at short notice, job design being offered to people within their teams and tackling some deeply rooted bias (unconscious or not) about what types of flex is open to which people.

Get Redesigning Now

If you’re thinking about how to turn the harsh reality we’re facing next year into an opportunity, now is the time. 

Start this conversation with your colleagues at work and see what redesign ideas bubble to the surface. Whether it’s time for the Four Day Week or creating flex-by-design, doing nothing isn’t an option if you want 2023 to be a successful year you can be proud of navigating.