What Employees Value in a Modern Workplace

The quintessential “traditional” workplace is being phased out as employers shift the benefits they offer to reflect those that modern employees value most in a company to which they're considering applying. Gone are the days of a 9-to-5 work week spent in a brick-and- mortar location under the watchful eye of a supervisor. In fact, the percentage of remote workers jumped from 31% to 62% in the span of only three weeks during the eye of the Coronavirus storm, a fact that illustrates a larger trend, one that had already been on the rise long before the pandemic—more employees working from home more often. That doesn’t mean, as a business owner, you should sell all your brick-and-mortar locations, buy stock in Zoom, and phone it in. What it does mean is that your present decisions and policies about remote work will affect employee engagement with your company moving forward, as will a few other specific benefits/ideologies that might be worth adopting. Keep reading for 4 modern workplace trends that talented new recruits and long-standing employees alike highly value (and will be searching for) in 2020! 

Dynamic Performance Reviews 

Traditionally, performance reviews occur annually. And, annual traditional performance reviews are in efficient! They can also damage morale, making employees feel ineffectual and defeated if they thought they’d been performing well all year. Today’s highly-qualified employees value responsive feedback through weekly or monthly reviews, instead of annually or even bi- annually, as they're also adaptive and respond well and accurately to constructive criticism. 

Optimized Work-Life Balance 

This one probably isn’t too surprising. Yes, employees, particularly millennial employees, value life outside of work. But, have you stopped to consider why? Increasingly, the trend toward a greater reliance on technology has necessitated employees working outside of the office. When an employee’s entire life feels consumed by work, both productivity and morale can suffer. Employers looking to boost their employees’ work-life balance can offer more work-from-home solutions or allow workers to choose their own hours. 

Freelance Opportunities 

This one is a win-win! The "gig-economy" allows employers to operate with true efficiency, particularly considering the savings on administrative and healthcare costs, by hiring an expert for precisely what they need—no more and no less. But, the benefits aren't entirely one-sided. There's a reason so many millenials want to work remotely. Freelance employees enjoy: the freedom to work from (often) anywhere in the world; the flexibility to choose their projects, employers, and rates of pay; and, the ability to tailor their schedule to suits their life and 

preferences. 

Attractive, Holistic, Integrative Workspace 

Just because employees will be working from home more often doesn’t mean that they’ll never be in the office! Modern employees want more than just a cubicle and a conference room, so the workspace your company does have needs to serve multiple purposes and facilitate the holistic well-being (read: productivity) of the employees working within it. To that aim, modern employees value a designated space for personal enrichment in the office, such as an employee yoga or silent meditation room. If it's impossible to provide a space for exercise at work, many employers are achieving the same boost in company culture and morale by opting to provide employees with passes to local gyms, instead. Modern employees also want an aesthetically appealing communal space--one that's well-outfitted with all the technology required to facilitate collaboration between teams, whether they’re in different rooms or different countries. 

Today’s modern workplace has a blended workforce and is less restricted by physical locations. Forward-thinking employers are making remote work opportunities more available for full-time, part-time, and freelance positions, and they're re-designing existing jobs to allow for greater productivity and work-from-home flexibility. Those companies really invested in recruiting talented employees are also actively ramping up their feedback and responsiveness in the form of regular insight from weekly or monthly performance reviews that 1.) outline measurable objectives and 2.) provide the support necessary to obtain their goals. And, why exactly are employers so willing to overhaul the traditional workplace? Very simply, it’s what the market (in this case, the modern employee) demands! And, if there's one thing any successful business owner understands and values, it's the importance of anticipating and meeting market demand.