< Previous50 Vol. 24/01, January 2023 WORKPLACE TRENDS TO LOOK OUT FOR Professor and future of work expert Lynda Gratton believes a four-day week is one of the work trends we could see developing in the near future, as part of a wider trend around greater flexibility with time The four-day week or greater flexibility The balance of power shifts again in the war for talent People want more autonomy Going back to the of ce for friendships More people join the workforce The hours of work have gone down, primarily because of technology. Technology does a lot of the jobs that humans did – humans need to do less work as it’s distributed across a population, so working hours go down. The four-day week might stick is not actually because of technology, it’s because of social trends. The question of time is also going to come onto the agenda. The balance is going to shift again as things tighten up more, and people are worried about losing their jobs, they’re going to be less likely to move. You’re already hearing some executives say, ‘We want to go back to how we were before, we don’t want any flexibility’. When a company gives flexibility, what the individual gets is autonomy. The interesting thing about time is it has different values to it, the value of being able to see your child’s school play is a lot more valuable than two hours where you hadn’t planned anything. Quite a lot of the things are going to be really important for work, come back to this question that people need autonomy, they need a choice about how they work, when they work, and where they work. It turns out the reason that many of us are going back to the of ce is because we have a friend at work and friendship is something that we really love. The challenge for a CEO is to design work around that. So to say, ‘When you’re in the of ce, it’s going to be an opportunity for you to socialise with each other and maybe talk about important things, to have a giggle or to have lunch together. And when you’re at home, we’re expecting you to do more focused work. That sort of narrative is really important. There are many things happening with regard to inflation, with regard to cost of living, and so on. It’s quite dif cult to predict the labour market and predict what people do, but certainly what we know is that during times when people are worried about their income, they’re worried about their savings, people are much more likely to work. So we can anticipate the number of people working to increase. The truth is in most countries, we already have very high levels of labour participation.Thursday 26th January 2023 Museum of the Future, Dubai, UAE Recognising the pioneers and thought leaders across the region’s business, COMMERCIAL ENQUIRIES Mansi Khatwani Group Commercial Director Tel: +971 4 444 3242 GSM: +971 52 574 0236 E-mail: mansi.khatwani@itp.com EVENT ENQUIRIES Daniel Fewtrell Director of Awards & Marketing Tel: +971 4 444 3684 GSM: +971 50 276 5706 E-mail: daniel.fewtrell@itp.com Scan to visit website Achievement Awards 2023 www.connect.arabianbusiness.comNext >