These are the work trends I predict will be big in 2024
New year, new attitudes to work (I hope)
2024 is here, and thus the last few weeks have been filled with people making their predictions for the year ahead. Ins and outs lists! Trend forecasts! Vision boards!
I had a little bit of imposter syndrome when it came to creating a list of predictions about work for 2024. Who am I to declare what trends will explode? What if I’m wrong about everything and everyone points and laughs? What if everyone sees this email and sends screenshots to their Whatsapp groups with messages along the lines of ‘who does she think she is, some kind of expert?’?
But I then had a realisation: trend predictions are just that… predictions. I am not psychic and I shouldn’t expect myself to be (that’s a classic example of having unreasonable standards for myself. thanks, therapy!). Also, I don’t think anyone’s going to refer back to this newsletter in 2025 and tell me I was wrong and thus a failure (and if they do… okay!). Plus, you know what, I do have a pretty good basis for having opinions about work. I’ve written about work for years, I’m fully embedded in work conversations online and IRL, and I’m a co-host of the Eat Sleep Work Repeat podcast. I repeat these accolades to convince myself more than you, reader.
With all that context in mind, here we go. These are my work trend predictions for 2024.
Hybrid working will continue
Fully remote working seems to be fading away into a relic of the pandemic. Equally, after learning that we can work from home, many of us are asking why on earth we would return to the office full-time. Hybrid working - with, say, three days in the office, two days from home - feels like a decent compromise for employers and employees. I think this will continue to be the norm in 2024, to the point that jobs that expect five days in the office each week will be laughed at. If workplaces want to attract talent, they’ll need to be hybrid.
…as will the backlash
Columnists love to criticise the generation below them. Whereas before Covid they had to riff on millennials’ spending habits, now they have the fertile ground provided by younger people’s attitudes to work. And the area of hybrid and flexible working is especially fertile. Those lazy layabouts wants to work from home three days a week? They’re destroying the very fabric of society!
Expect more squabbling and opinions and kick-offs. CEOs will order people back to the office, people will leave their jobs, Bosses will declare that hybrid working is bad for whatever reasons they can conjure.
The rise of chronoworking
How our work and our health interact has been a big theme this year, with continued focus on tackling stress and providing mental health support. We’ve been looking at the physical and mental health benefits of the four-day week and pursued a new definition of work-life balance. I think (and hope) that this is the year that we’ll start questioning the timing of our work as part of this.
In 2023, there was the beginning of the dismantling of our Monday to Friday working culture. In 2024, I think the 9-5 will be in the firing line. We’ll be looking more deeply into how our body clocks and natural dips and rises in energy should define our working day, a trend that I’m calling chronoworking. Early birds might pick up a 6-3, night owls will ask for later starts, and perhaps we’ll consider siestas or wellness slots in place of the afternoon productivity slump. We’ll be using our time and energy more strategically.
More trials and tests in the interview process
With the widespread use of AI in job applications, it feels increasingly tricky to work out who’s actually going to be good at a job in practice; or what an applicant will actually be like. I’m hearing a lot from managers who say they’ve hired someone based on a decent interview and good samples of their work provided at the application stage, then discovered their performance was well below what they expected. It’s too easy for people to bluff their way through the initial stages, whether through AI or simply having the time to prepare projects to show off what they can do.
There’s likely to be an overcorrection here, with interview stages including more tests and in-person trial shifts to check that applicants can actually do what they say.
And then pushback against uncompensated work in interview stages
Already, the interview process in a high proportion of industries is absolutely ridiculous. I spoke to someone who went through six different stages of interview, only to lose out at the final hurdle because another applicant had a skill listed on their CV and he didn’t. The disappointment of not getting in job paled in comparison to the frustration of wasted time and seemingly endless hoops he had had to jump through.
In 2024, I predict there will be a lot more conversation around whether this rigamarole should be paid for; especially with the addition of more trial exercises. I don’t think we’ll see actual change in this area this year, but the conversation will pick up.
Slack status performativity
A while back, the must-have item for any WFH-er was a mouse-wiggler (for those not in the know, that’s a device that moves your mouse around so you appear ‘active’ on your computer). In 2024, I reckon our performance of being productive will get more explicit and specific. The rise of techniques like timeboxing and the prevelance of terms such as the pomodoro method and ‘deep work’ will mean more of us block out our calendars and Slack statuses with labels of how great we’re doing. So, a half—hour slot will see us declaring to everyone that we’re in ‘deep work mode’ and thus can’t be disturbed. Sometimes we will be in deep work mode. Sometimes we’ll just be flicking through TikTok, enjoying the knowledge that we don’t have to respond to any messages until our next status update.
Optimising pressure
We’ve spent years riddled with productivity pressure and needing to get more, more, and more done. Now the spotlight will be on optimisation rather than productivity. Is this the best possible way to do this meeting? Is updating this Excel doc truly the optimal use of our time? Ticking off your to-do list won’t be enough in 2024; you’ll need to have justified each to-do task and made sure every moment of your work day has been accounted for.
We’ll keep searching for purpose and meaning
It’ll come as no surprise considering the name of this Substack, but I’m big into the idea of feeling like the work you do has a bigger purpose. Following the anti-work movement and money-above-all attitudes like hustle culture and overemployment, in 2024 we’ll readjust what we really want from our jobs; meaning being a key part of that.
A focus on managers
The management level is now firmly the domain of millennials, and we’re seeing the effects of this in the form of increased mental health support and chat about boundaries. But there’s been a common complaint I’ve heard from millennials in managerial positions: ‘I never got any training for this’. Managers are also experiencing their own looming burnout, having spent so much energy on monitoring their team’s wellbeing that they’d forgotten to look after their own. Plus their responsibilities have become diffused - they seem to be doing everything for everyone, straddling tasks that would typically fall above and below their role thanks to the thinning (‘streamlining’, if we want to be polite) of teams.
2024 will see a new emphasis on managers: providing training, appreciating the soft skills good managers possess, preventing overload, and challenging the ideas of what a manager should be.
Any 2024 work trends you think I’ve missed? Anything you think I’m entirely wrong about? Leave me a comment below and let’s chat.
No offence but lavender background doesn't make good readability :)
Or may it's just me.
Regardless, happy new year!