Business Trends
This just in! Last month’s business trends survey yielded substantial and thoughtful feedback on trend topics that we’ve been hearing about in recent futuring panels.
You ranked the trends that we provided in terms of their significance in your work:
- 84% agreed that the Need for Privacy Safeguards/Bigger Consequences for Data Misuse is “significant/very significant.”
- 72% said that the Demand for Workplace Flexibility is “significant/very significant.”
- 68% reported Emphasis on Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion to be “significant/very significant.”
Then you provided additional trends that you are experiencing. That feedback centered around workforce issues, new technology, and the uncertain economy and banking crisis.
Workforce trends:
- Remote work/demand for workplace flexibility
- Employee/er trust affecting productivity
- How to manage remote teams effectively
- Increased pace of professional and personal lives needs flexibility to prevent burnout
- Under-employment impacting productivity
- Significant job openings; operating below historical norms
- “Over-hiring” to offset short-term employees – the expense/time invested in the hiring process is impacting other business tasks
- Adopting “academy” style training to deal with regular onboarding
- Workforce demographic trends are requiring internal changes to policy, hiring, and culture, and are leaning more toward the:
- Emerging workforce (ages 17-22)Mature (over 50)
- Second chance citizens
Technology trends:
- Overwhelming amount of new technology – companies being selective in what they’re investing in
- The rise of AI and ChatGPT
- Marketing reach is becoming more splintered, and AI tools are creating some interesting disruption.
Finance, banking and economic trends:
- High interest debt & uncertain economy causing organizations to pull back
- Navigating the recent banking crisis with clients
- Regulatory expansion over risk
- Increased anxiety about finances causing people to die with too much money