Outlook for 2022: factors that will shape business in the year ahead

Getting smarter with recruitment

Katarina Berg, chief HR officer, Spotify

I think 2022 will be the year of either the great res­ig­na­tion or the big attrac­tion. Which one it will be for your organ­i­sa­tion depends on the strate­gies it has in place.

Com­pa­nies will need to focus on find­ing smarter ways to attract job can­di­dates. This is a big­ger chal­lenge for the many firms that have adopt­ed hybrid work­ing. That said, I think Spo­ti­fy is well set up to bring recruits on board effi­cient­ly and in a way that’s still warm and car­ries the company’s cul­ture and sense of iden­ti­ty. 

Busi­ness­es will also need to look beyond their recruit­ment prac­tices and con­sid­er how their devel­op­ment activ­i­ties could be enhanced to ensure bet­ter rates of employ­ee reten­tion.

Meeting new expectations

Ash Schofield, CEO, giffgaff

Giv­en the speed of change in con­sumer behav­iour, the need to be crys­tal clear when iden­ti­fy­ing why cus­tomers need your brand has nev­er been greater. The oppor­tu­ni­ty is there to make yours more rel­e­vant if you’re brave enough to act on your insights.

Also, employ­ees’ expec­ta­tions about the rela­tion­ship with their com­pa­ny and how they see this val­ue exchange have shift­ed because of the Covid cri­sis. Work­ing with your peo­ple to ensure that your val­ue propo­si­tion is still rel­e­vant and appeal­ing will there­fore be key to attract­ing and retain­ing the best tal­ent in 2022.

Improving cyber defences

Belinda Finch, chief information officer, Three UK

Devel­op­ing clos­er work­ing rela­tion­ships between IT and the rest of the organ­i­sa­tion will become increas­ing­ly impor­tant for busi­ness­es. This task is actu­al­ly slight­ly eas­i­er in firms using remote work­ing mod­els, because every­one is oper­at­ing in the same vir­tu­al space. 

This fac­tor will be par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant when it comes to max­imis­ing the val­ue of the data a busi­ness holds. Com­pa­nies will need to know exact­ly what infor­ma­tion is avail­able to them and which ele­ments of it can be mon­e­tised.

Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty will also be a key con­cern. The num­ber of attacks is like­ly to increase across the pri­vate sec­tor, so busi­ness­es will need to improve their aware­ness. Cyber­crim­i­nals will come up with new tac­tics, so we’ll all need to be on our toes a lit­tle more. Rather than sim­ply react­ing to attacks, we’re doing a lot more pre­ven­tive work and improv­ing people’s under­stand­ing of the threats.

Addressing uneven wage inflation

Nick Kirk, Managing Director, UK & North America, Michael Page

Because the sup­ply of labour has failed to match the demand for it in recent months, the wages of many peo­ple who’ve recent­ly moved jobs have been inflat­ed.

Employ­ers may have got them­selves into a sit­u­a­tion where­by recent starters are earn­ing far more than longer-serv­ing col­leagues at the same lev­el, many of whom may have stayed put and per­formed well for their organ­i­sa­tion through­out the Covid cri­sis with­out see­ing much extra reward for their loy­al­ty. 

By the time the Christ­mas par­ties are over, such dis­par­i­ties will be com­mon knowl­edge in the teams affect­ed. These will have to be addressed from the start of next year, which means that the cost of doing busi­ness will begin catch­ing up with any pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains that organ­i­sa­tions may have achieved over the past 12 months.

Creating a greater sense of purpose

Sam Fisher, head of dynamic work, Okta

As busi­ness­es grap­ple for tal­ent by appeal­ing to employ­ees’ chang­ing pref­er­ences, we can expect var­i­ous work­place trends to emerge.

Com­pa­nies might slash their real-estate bud­gets in favour of employ­ee ben­e­fits, for instance, and we could see a growth in the num­ber of firms turn­ing tra­di­tion­al offices into mul­ti-use spaces. Many organ­i­sa­tions will move towards small­er work­spaces in more loca­tions that serve sev­er­al pur­pos­es.

As part of this, sus­tain­abil­i­ty will become a cen­tral fac­tor. Busi­ness­es will increas­ing­ly need to con­sid­er the envi­ron­men­tal impact of var­i­ous employ­ee expe­ri­ences and ben­e­fits, and to iden­ti­fy ways of help­ing their remote work­ers to oper­ate more sus­tain­ably. We’ll see some oth­er sig­nif­i­cant changes as organ­i­sa­tions aim to reduce their car­bon foot­prints by rethink­ing their ESG pri­or­i­ties. 

In the same vein, employ­ees will want to feel that they have a deep­er pur­pose in 2022. Organ­i­sa­tions will pri­ori­tise cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty next year. They will pro­vide more oppor­tu­ni­ties for staff to not only vol­un­teer for wor­thy caus­es, but also donate their exper­tise on a deep­er lev­el.