Arbeitswelt im Wandel nach Corona: 5 Trends

Die Covid-19-Pandemie hat enorme Veränderungen der Arbeitswelt mit sich gebracht. Zahlreiche Firmen mussten komplett umdenken. Das ist nicht ohne Auswirkungen auf die Mitarbeiter geblieben. Viele Beschäftigte bewerten ihre Karriere derzeit neu. Das Virus hat mitunter für einen anderen Blick auf den eigenen Job gesorgt. Prioritäten verschieben sich, wie eine aktuelle Studie von Robert Half zeigt. Welche Trends bestimmen unsere Arbeitswelt in Zukunft? Eine Prognose:

In diesem Artikel lesen Sie:

Trend 1: Home-Office als Standard statt als Benefit
Trend 2: Work-Life-Balance neu bewerten
Trend 3: Fokus auf Gesundheit
Trend 4: Sinnvolles tun statt nur arbeiten
Trend 5: Neue Skills werden wichtig

Trend 1: Home-Office als Standard statt als Benefit

Die Covid-19-Pandemie hat im Rekordtempo für massive Veränderungen in der Arbeitswelt gesorgt. Aber was bleibt davon, wenn wir uns Schritt für Schritt unserem alten Alltag wieder annähern? In der Arbeitswelt zeichnet sich zumindest ein Trend bereits seit Monaten ab: Home-Office wird wichtiger werden. Unternehmen, die sich in der Vergangenheit gesträubt hatten, Mitarbeitern die Arbeit von zu Hause zu ermöglichen, dürften allmählich die Argumente ausgehen. Die Monate im Lockdown haben schliesslich gezeigt, dass es sowohl technisch als auch organisatorisch möglich ist – selbst für Führungskräfte.

Und auf diese neue Flexibilität möchte ein Grossteil der Arbeitnehmer auch nach Corona nicht verzichten. Eine von Robert Half in der Schweiz durchgeführte Umfrage ergab, dass 73 % in Zukunft häufiger im Home-Office arbeiten möchten.

Trend 2: Work-Life-Balance neu bewerten

Ob es am Arbeitsplatz mit Familienanschluss lag? Oder an der massenhaft angeordneten Kurzarbeit?

In jedem Fall hat die Covid-19-Pandemie viele Arbeitnehmer bezüglich ihrer Work-Life-Balance nachdenklich gestimmt. Die hat sich für mehr als die Hälfte der Befragten (57 %) während der Arbeit am heimischen Schreibtisch nämlich verbessert.

Home-Office kann einen Beitrag leisten, ist aber sicherlich nicht der einzige Faktor. Vielen reicht diese Massnahme offenbar nicht aus: 22 % der Befragten erwägen einen Jobwechsel zugunsten einer besseren Work-Life-Balance, rund jeder Sechste ist sogar schon aktiv auf der Suche nach einer neuen Stelle.

Trend 3: Fokus auf Gesundheit

Das Thema Gesundheit stand in der Vergangenheit oft weder bei Arbeitnehmern noch bei Arbeitgebern im Fokus. Im Gegenteil: Sich krank zur Arbeit zu schleppen, gehörte in vielen Unternehmen schon beinahe zum guten Ton und wurde teilweise von Unternehmen durch Prämien für Mitarbeiter ohne Krankheitstage befeuert.

Die rasante Ausbreitung des Coronavirus hat uns vor Augen geführt, dass dies ein gefährlicher Weg ist. Gut möglich, dass Firmen künftig deshalb ein stärkeres Augenmerk auf die Gesundheit ihrer Angestellten legen. Denkbar sind beispielsweise regelmässige Check-ups, aber auch die Verankerung des Themas in der Unternehmenskultur.

Innerhalb von Belegschaften zeichnet sich schon jetzt ein neues Verständnis von Solidarität ab. Nicht mehr: Krank zur Arbeit, um die Kollegen nicht mit zusätzlichen Aufgaben zu belasten. Sondern: Zu Hause bleiben, um andere nicht zu gefährden.

Corona hat offenbar den Weg für ein kollegiales Arbeitsumfeld geebnet, in dem das ohne schlechtes Gewissen möglich ist. Knapp 31 % der von Robert Half befragten Arbeitnehmer sagten, dass sie sich künftig besser darauf vorbereiten wollen, Kollegen zu vertreten, die nicht arbeiten können.

Wie Covid-19 die Arbeitswelt verändern wird, sehen Sie auch in unserem Video:

Paul: Hello, I'm Paul McDonald, Senior Executive Director with the staffing firm, Robert Half. The world is experiencing unprecedented social, economic and business disruption as the result of the COVID pandemic and the workplace is no exception. Almost every way companies operate and the individuals work has dramatically changed and will continue to evolve over the coming weeks, months and even years. Together with my special guest, internationally renowned statistician and well-being expert Nick marks we're going to explore some positive, practical suggestions for making the transition back to office based work and take an early look at what the future of work might look like post COVID-19. Our goal is to uncover strategies to help both individuals and companies determine what can be learned from this experience and what they need to do now to be successful. Nick as the lockdown and social distancing guidelines start to be lifted and people returning to office based work, let's explore what the new reality of work is going to look like. Do you have some suggestions you know I'm people dealing with fear and respecting worker choice as they head into the office or be invited into the office? Nic: Yeah, it's going to be difficult and for some people quite challenging as there anxiety levels are very high and you know when people are frightened they sort of, part of their reaction is to freeze, so they're not gonna be good at collaborating. They're going to be perhaps nervous of other people, people that have have been trusted colleagues will suddenly feel like, "Oh my, might they have the virus?" And so I think there's going to be a very difficult negotiation. Some people who were more anxious are going to really struggle. Some who are more confident perhaps won't or people who have had it will feel will feel sort of invincible, so there's going to be a big variety of experience as people come back and try to keep a distance and try and collaborate. So it will be, you'll need to judge on an individual basis on individual office location basis and also individual people basis about how it's going to work. Paul: And the communication factor, you know between management or supervisor and employee is just increasing as we look at this remote workforce and what we've been thrown into in this COVID-19 crisis. What is some advice that you would have for managers on communication with their teams? Nic: So I think that we obviously need to do more and we also need to be checking in whether it's working for people. Some people want more, a little chat, and some people want to be left alone sometimes because they've got very pressured windows they can work in because of childcare or elder care whatever else is going on for them. So it's finding tailored solutions for individuals, it's talking to the whole team you know perhaps daily at the moment, but you do have to watch out for too many people on a Zoom or Teams call you know. You can't really open up if there's too many people. So my rule of thumb is only have four people on a call if you want to be creative or collaborative, no more than that. If you want to have more than that then you're basically what I call time sharing, where you're going around and asking individual people to share one at a time. And then that needs facilitating by the manager you can't expect the quiet people to speak unless you call on them, so you really need to be drawing them into it. Again it's just good management but like amplified. Paul: Looking at some of the new skills that are needed by the employee or the worker in addition to the management team we talk about soft skills regularly and the need for soft skills to be effective in today's workforce. When you look at it soft skills as it relates to you know this new world order of technology, video conferencing, what are some thoughts that you would have on the importance of soft skills in this new world of remote work? Nic: I think even more and it's sort of ironic isn't it really that data and tech becomes more and more front and foremost. I think people skills become more, you know we need both of those things: people skills and tech skills. And the remote working accentuates it even more...With remote you've got to be much more intentional, much more deliberate. Those accidental collisions that happened where you could sort of manage by walking around and just checking on people, you can't do that anymore. So you've really got to intentionally reach out, you've got to diarise. Talk to people, one-to-one talks because you're just going to, you're not going to pick them up in the cracks between work at the water cooler or just when you see someone's chill. You're going to have to do that more deliberately. So there is a lot, there's going to be more pressure on that, more more structure to that. Paul: Let's take a look at further out on the horizon, Nic, and you know what's COVID's legacy going to be? You know what's the new reality? What's the new normal going to look like in the workplace and what can managers and workers be doing now to prepare for that? Nic: Well I think that the very fact that employee well-being, employee mental health is front and foreground I think is good because it's always been a loss of productivity, there's always been a loss of creativity, a loss of collaboration. In fact from our estimates you know if you invest in an employee well-being program you'll get five times return on investment in any year in terms of increased creativity, innovation, productivity, collaboration. So I think what it's going to do is it's going to make that more front-and-center and people are going to take more notes and in my opinion that's a good thing. It's going to be a bumpy ride. And I think we're going to be here for quite a while. And everything's changing. Markets are changing, you know customers are changing, supply chains are changing, so what do we need to do? I think the main thing is we need to really have an ear on the ground, we really need to listen. Listen well to our customers, listen well to our employees, listen well to our suppliers. I'd even suggest you know you get a chief listening officer. You know someone that's going to really help coordinate that and do that in a great way in your organization's to take that forward. And if you listen and you react then you can be what we call agile and you can respond to that and this might be opportunities for smaller companies because they typically are more agile and more able to respond than larger ones. And large ones are more difficult to still though they probably have more access to capital so they might ride it out better. But the world is not going to be the same. That's for sure. This is a huge global shock. We need to be more tech savvy. I think it even more increases the need for people skills and that actually that, you know the two sets of skills of people and tech are going to be the growing managerial skills that we need and the growing skills are all employees need to be able to do is to use both of those things. So you know the more that we do remote working, the more empathy we have to have, the more we have to understand differences between people and the different circumstances. So it's an interesting world. Paul: You have companies that are willing to have employees work remotely. It brings down some geographic barriers that historically have been in place when recruiting individuals. So it's going to be interesting obtaining talent, hiring talent remotely, but it opens up new frontiers for employers to go after workers. Nic: Yeah, I think you're entirely right. We've also seen, you know, in some ways that the future comes sooner than we expected. You know, we had the gig economy going on and quite a lot of people self-selecting into being freelance or doing piecemeal work. And obviously there's some times that they're forced into but sometimes people are choosing and I think that a lot of people will quite like working at home and they may choose to go freelance and they may choose to do work in different ways, different rhythms. Maybe three, four day weeks will become more popular. It's going to be a huge, huge shake-up and that's before we even think about other things which we know are coming as long-term trends like AI and other things. So there's a multitude of things coming. And what I do think is that there's a possibility that people will be freer, possibility that there'd be able to work in ways they more want to. And if employers can go with that they will actually get more out of people because when people choose how they want to work they work better. So there are possibilities of sunshine after the rain. Paul: We hope today's insights proved interesting and help provide an early look at what COVID-19's legacy could be when it comes to where and how we work, both now and in the future. Kudos and special thanks to Nic Marks for joining me from London today for this discussion which we hoped has provided some positive practical suggestions on how we can all continue to adapt and manage our way through this turbulent time. Please don't hesitate to contact us here at Robert Half if you have questions or would like additional advice or support. In the interim, please stay safe and well. Bye for now

Trend 4: Sinnvolles tun statt nur arbeiten

Ein typisches Phänomen in Zeiten der Krise ist die Frage nach dem Sinn. Corona macht dabei keine Ausnahme und bezieht auch die Arbeitswelt mit ein – befeuert durch die Diskussion um systemrelevante Berufe.

Büroangestellte fragen sich zunehmend, welche Bedeutung die eigene Arbeit hat. Viele möchten nach Feierabend mit dem Gefühl nach Hause gehen, etwas Sinnvolles getan zu haben – auch wenn sie nicht in der Pflege arbeiten oder die Grundversorgung sicherstellen.

Trend 5: Neue Skills werden wichtig

Corona-bedingte Umstellung auf flexibles Arbeiten hat manchen altgedienten Führungskräften einiges abverlangt: Statt kontrollieren zu können, mussten sie ihren Mitarbeitern plötzlich vertrauen. Dieses Beispiel macht deutlich, wie sehr sich festgefahrene Strukturen derzeit ändern.

Dadurch werden plötzlich Fähigkeiten wichtig, die früher unter “nice-to-have” liefen, aber nicht entscheidend für die Karriere waren. Wer etwa Mut, Pioniergeist und Empathie mitbringt, ist in der Post-Corona-Ära womöglich gefragter Kandidat bei der Besetzung von Führungspositionen.

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