Over the past 12 months your executive has probably involved you in activity and projects to encourage your workforce back to the office. The is happening accross the board and here are few predictions about how this is going to be achieved.
“In the past five years, we’ve seen a monumental shift in how we work and meet,’ says Tim Duggan, author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He predicts three main trends that will sweep through Australian workplaces in 2025.
The first work trend will see management issuing ‘return-to-office’ mandates over the next 12 months, adding to the ongoing workplace tension with employees wanting hybrid-style flexibility. The most recent example is President Trump signing an order to end remote work, mandating that US federal workers return to office.
Duggan’s second prediction is that more businesses will enact their version of “quiet cutting”, a term that refers to the process where an organisation’s leadership rearranges resources subtly and without fuss to enact some of their goals instead of making people redundant. Practically, fewer salary increases and smaller budgets might result in employees leaving a company of their own free will.
A third prediction for this year will be “office peacocking”, a term that describes increasingly redesigned workplaces with extravagant inclusions to lure workers back in. For example, rooftop bars, kitchens or gyms were previously only available at large corporates.
Zooming out, the broader theme behind all of this is the attempted wrestling of control back into a more traditional organisational structure. Is it going to work? We will have to wait and see.
Also read: One-third of Australians support a 5-day office return | Executive PA Media
