Modern trends in workforce development are largely revolving around the COVID-19 epidemic. The reason why this topic was selected is because worldwide workforce situation has seen a major shift towards from-home work and a severe alteration in life-to-work balance (Volini et al., 2020). Effectively, it became a singular whole, and the overall wellbeing of workers has become a primary concern for employers. If before companies merely realized that employee care was important, now it has become a matter of survival in business (Volini et al., 2020). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the trends in how companies address employee wellness and how would workers respond to these actions.
Companies are looking to make employee wellness improve by creating a sustainable digital workplace. As many companies have expanded their operations domestically and internationally, they have found that virtual teams can help them focus on meeting customer requirements (Leonard, 2013). Some of the most popular measures for sustainability include investment in digital communication environments, flexible schedules, and team leader training (Volini et al., 2020). These measures, combined together, are sought to mitigate some of the issues associated with the from-home workplace. The most frequent challenges include atomization, detachment from the working collective, and the fact that traditional leadership does not transfer well to environment where there is no face-to-face contact.
Employees will likely have a mixed response to the initiatives provided by their companies. However, technology is not the only challenge in geographically dispersed teams (Leonard, 2013). Trying to enforce social interactions would be seen by many as an attempt by companies to invade their home life. At the same time, some of the more social workers who missed the working environment are likely to appreciate the uniform ways of breaching the barriers between work and home (Brandl, 2020). It will fall upon individual companies to develop their own recipes for success.
References
Brandl, B. (2020). Variations and (a) symmetries in trust between employees and employers in Europe: Some (not so) well-known stylized facts. European Journal of Industrial Relations, 26(3), 313-329.
Leonard, E. C. (2013). Supervision: concepts and practices of management. Fort Wayne.
Volini, E., Eaton, K., & Schwartz, J. (2020). Diving deeper: Five workforce trends to watch in 2021. Web.