Times are changing. And by this, we are not referring to the evolution of some harmful social norm or culture. Instead, we mean to point out the fact that a huge sweep is on its way, from the way people will attend to work or carry out their businesses to the way people will be employed. In this article, we will talk about how you can prepare for the coming change and more specifically, what you should know about hiring for the future. 

Brief on Hiring for the Future of Work

Most of the world has already begun to move away from the traditional, set-in-stone office work environment. And what is now in play is a combination of the physical and the remote work environment, the latter being promoted by the 2020 pandemic. This new practice gives rise to a hybrid work environment. In the hybrid setting, employees share their work time between the office and their homes. They would usually come to the office for a few days or months at a time and also spend a few days or months working remotely.

Of course, many businesses and employees are only getting used to such an environment. However, the rate at which new and existing businesses are adopting this work practice is really exciting. The huge adoption of the hybrid work environment also projects the need to look into hiring processes and strategies for the near future since it is necessary to source and onboard employees who are familiar with the dynamics of their work culture and environment. 

Things to Consider When Hiring for The Future

Hybrid work is the settling ground between physical work which we were all used to and remote work which is still relatively new but widespread. It is moderately complex. In addition, it requires proper management of staff and the existing workplaces (that is, the physical office building and the online employee groups or platforms) if there is to be a productive output. With this in mind, we will list and explain everything you should consider when hiring in the future. Here, read on to see what they are: 

For the employees:

In this section, we highlight and explain the things you need to consider about individual employees when hiring for the future. 

Technology Acceptance: 

Is your prospective hire a techie or not? If they have a thing against technology or are on the wrong side of the digital divide, then they may not be the right choice for the future of work. When making this consideration, however, it is okay to factor in the possibility of encouraging the to-be employee on accepting and using technology and also giving them access to gadgets and information and communication technology (ICT) resources, thereby closing the digital divide. 

Upskilling and Training: 

Some of the requirements of adopting the hybrid work structure are upskilling and training employees on several different aspects including maintaining attention, multitasking, and time management. Businesses may realize a drop in employee performance when they first switch to a hybrid work environment. And why does this happen? Because employees who are highly effective at the office might encounter trouble committing to work outside the office space. Many reasons exist for this and the most common ones are distracting activities in their home, the presence of relatives or friends, or the sheer lack of motivation to work when employees are not in the company of their office colleagues. 

The reasonable way of handling this issue is to train employees on discipline - to get them to sit with their work for a good amount of time daily, and on proper management and scheduling of their out-of-office activities. Also important here is training employees to keep a healthy work-life balance. You want to do this because working remotely has a way of making new employees feel like they are underperforming, and occurrences like this easily burden them, leading to fatigue and burnout. Finally, there’s usually a need to upskill employees by using remote work software or technologies. 

Level of Perceived Stress:

Moving from the office back home and then back to the office - as with the hybrid environment - might create significant levels of stress for an individual. Let’s explain with an illustration. Imagine that Mr. A works in Business Town and has a rented apartment in the same town where he passes the night, but he also has a privately-owned apartment in the Next Door town which is a short journey into the neighboring …

In a regular office setting, Mr. A will only be shuttling between his apartment and his office at Business Town. However, when the company introduces hybrid practice, Mr. A might see the need to travel to his home at Next Door town for the time when he is working remotely and then come back to his apartment in Business Town for the time when he is working physically. Making these trips back and forth might result in fatigue, stress, or anxiety, and create a significant challenge to Mr. A’s performance. 

For your business or company:

In this section, we highlight and explain the things you need to consider about individual employees when hiring for the future. 

Changing Industry Needs:

Entrepreneur accurately spells out that the business world is changing and some of the more recent needs are: 

• Having purposeful products and services over numerous features or any of that:

The future we are in right now breeds purpose-driven buyers. These sets of people are not fooled by products having several different features. Instead, they want to know how many of these features are helpful to them and to what degree can it solve their problems. This is interesting because it keeps businesses on their toes, forcing them to either improve their offering or fall off the market. 

• Relearning and understanding customers from a whole new and insightful perspective:

The list of “what is relevant about customers” is rapidly expanding. In a few cases, businesses will have to unlearn what they already know and pick up all the new insights being gathered. For the majority of businesses, however, the task will be to learn, relearn, and go over everything severally. 

Businesses also have the responsibility of educating all employees (no matter their department) about the wider customer insights and engagement standards since they could someday be in a position to attend to a lead or serve an existing customer. Besides, members of the public (whether potential customers or news agencies) sometimes approach employees directly to make inquiries and this will be a defining moment for the business. 

• Implementing digitization across the board:

Embracing technology is one of the surest steps to take in reaching the peak of your business performance since everything from process automation to monitoring/tracking and outcome/output analysis can be quickly and accurately deployed. More about technology is the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) - which many companies have already taken advantage of with some of them making unimaginable profits. 

• Understanding the potential and opportunities available through social commerce:

As a business, social media is your top marketing and commerce sales option. The global value of social commerce sales is expected to hit $1.298 billion in 2023. Since social media users are believed to spend over 2 hours browsing their feeds, businesses are gaining visibility and achieving sales by simply placing targeted sales adverts on these platforms. 

• Optimizing for mobile view: 

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word social media? For most people, it is likely the thought of scrolling through their Facebook or Instagram feeds using their phones. The fact that a lot of people access social media using mobile devices is a big pointer to the future of work. Precisely, statistics tell us that 85% of 5.27 billion people actively use their mobile phones and 56.8% of the world’s 7.87 billion people use social networks.

This means that 4.48 billion use mobile phones and 4.42 billion people use social networks. We can summarize this by saying that out of the 4.48 billion people who actively use mobile phones, a whopping 98% (4.42 billion people) are on social networks. This is a clear indication that a business’s social media marketing and sales efforts will be highly effective in reaching users and customers once they optimize for a mobile view. 

Competitive Labor Market:

The future of work points us to a diverse and competitive labor market. One of the biggest features of this is a young, intelligent, and committed workforce, who are likely to impact the trend and introduce exciting and truly innovative products, services, and management ideas. Moreover, many businesses are actively searching for employees who have a strong passion to grow, develop and deploy technology and AI in their business.

The most recently successful businesses are those that employ AI to cut down on their processes, achieve accurate and concrete results, and slash down on production or operation costs. It is also very interesting to know that many new hires will not necessarily be people who have a solid work history or technical background as businesses are increasingly giving preference to hiring and upskilling employees. 

Choosing to hire and upskill raw talents allows businesses to mold hires into efficient players. It appears to be an expensive hiring approach but in the long run, it presents more advantages over regular hiring. Some of these advantages are that employees are encouraged to build a learning habit and to remain flexible about taking on new roles and responsibilities, they are introduced to clear-cut techniques or skills for doing their job and achieving goals, and in addition, they are introduced to existing ethics and work culture within the business early enough.  

Closing Thoughts 

The future of work is simply exciting. But first, you need to consider an employee’s readiness to accept technologies, their flexibility towards training and upskilling, and the way they feel exhausted about the hybrid and remote work environment or not. Secondly, you need to consider the competitive labor market and changing industry needs such as implementing digitization, focusing on product usefulness, utilizing social commerce, and optimizing for mobile view.