Mental Health, Working Mothers, 4-Day Workweeks, Omicron-Induced Remote Work, Job

Making a ‘prediction’ is a sophisticated way of  saying you’re making a guess as to what will happen in the future. It’s not too far removed from using a wigi board or magic eight ball. The reality is that if we could all gaze into a crystal ball and see into the future, we’d be rich from investing early in Bitcoin, the right pumped-up meme stocks and NFTs.

Very little in life is black and white. Instead of making ironclad predictions, it makes more sense to give the odds of something happening. Here are some of the changes that we are 30% to 65% likely to see happen in 2022.

2022 Will Be The Year For Five-Hour Days, A Four-Day Workweek And Flexible  Staggered Schedules

The job market has been scorchingly hot, and looks like it will continue into 2022. The rationale is based upon the fact that the employment rate is almost back to where it was before the outbreak, and there are now over ten million jobs currently available. Businesses can’t find enough workers to satiate demand. It’s so difficult that  they are offering sign-on bonuses, higher pay, free tuition and other benefits to attract, recruit and retain workers. 

Additionally, business leaders acknowledged that people want to be treated as adults and offered freedom and autonomy. This includes offering an array of different workstyles customized to fit their specific needs. This includes providing employees with choices such as three day weekends, bespoke working hours and flexibility—which means a worker can decide for herself where and when they work.

The Downside  

There is a 50% chance that there will be a correction in the stock and real estate markets. The prices of securities and home values rose so swiftly, history shows that it may be time for a correction as nothing goes up in a straight line forever.

If the stock market gets hit hard, falling over 20%, bringing down real estate too, we can likely see hiring freezes put in place by companies and some downsizings as business leaders will get highly concerned over a potential crash. 

Remote Work Rules

The pandemic showed that it wasn’t necessary to schlep into the office, wasting almost three hours a day, and losing quality time with family that you can never get back. 

In addition to Covid-19, we had the Delta variant and now Omicron. Businesses have scraped their return to work plans. It’s reasonable that workers will refuse to go into crowded cities such as  New York or San Franscio. Studies showed that people said they’d quit their jobs if forced to stop working from home. With Omicron, it is almost certain that the first half of 2022 will be mostly, if not all remote. 

Working Mothers Won’t Be Ignored

During the pandemic public schools closed and kids sent home in states including New York and New Jersey. Working parents bore the brunt of this decision. Their lives were instantly turned upside down. Parents faced a frustratingly brutal dilemma—do I keep my job or take care of the children? 

It was reported by the National Women’s Law Center that between August and September 2020, over 800,000 women left the workforce to look after their children.

With the Omicron variant starting to surge, and a number of colleges shutting down and sending students home or told to work remotely, it’s only a matter of time until this happens to public schools again.

Instead of  risking the loss of working mothers who may pull out of the workforce, progressive, forward-thinking companies will be proactive. The businesses will offer flexibility and possibly child care assistance via extra compensation. If the company is large enough and has sufficient resources, they might consider starting their own internal childcare facility to help out working parents, particularly, working moms.

Mental Health And Emotional Wellbeing Benefits

2022 will be the year in which mental health, emotional wellbeing and empathy will be brought to the forefront. After two years of watching people fall sick and die, isolated at home, pulling back from socializing and dealing with fear and anxiety— business leaders will address these issues.

They will recognize mental health issues and offer open and honest conversations. Empathetic leaders will inquire about what their workers need, and provide those services. This could include counseling sessions with a therapist for the worker and her family, passses to fitness and wellness centers, mental health apps and platforms, extra days off,  no Zoom days, and company wide weeks off to allow everyone to decompress. 

 The Rich Get Richer

The pandemic has swiftly increased wealth and income inequality. Online companies, such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Microsoft, Apple and Zoom, have performed amazingly well and the executives were richly rewarded.  

We’ve seen a K-shaped recovery, in which the wealthy are getting even wealthier. Everyone else is on a downward slope, financially. Billionaires have reaped unfathomable amounts of more money. For instance, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are now members of the $100 billion club, as their respective share prices rose 677% and 39% during this time period. This happened as millions of average Americans lost their jobs and many families struggled to make ends meet.

This trend will continue. With the Federal Reserve Bank printing money and massive amounts of funds available to Wall Street we’ll continue to see IPOs and SPACs, minting new millionaires and billionaires. If the stock market continues to push higher, we’ll see a tremendous increase in wealth inequality, even greater than we have now, with the vast amount of wealth in America in the hands of a small number of people.

The New ‘Precariat’—People Who Go From One Gig To Another— And Digital Nomads  

One of the most exciting things to come out of the pandemic is that both companies and workers have opened up to new ideas. There is no longer the need to do things just because ‘we’ve always done it this way.’ We’re entering a time period of rapid change. 

The Great Resignation has led to millions of workers quitting their jobs to find better opportunities. People are taking greater risks with their careers. There will be a decline in workers opting in for the stability and predictability of their 9-5 jobs, and a rise of a new precariat—people who live from one short-term job to the next.

Many folks have decided to get out of their homes and work from different locations. People have taken to doing their jobs at the beach or near ski slopes. Some decided to relocate to lower-cost locations within the United States to save money—while still receiving the same pay. Adventurous types traveled to other countries as digital nomads living in different countries all over the world.

Digital nomads, predominantly young professionals without kids, are moving to cool, interesting places in the U.S. and around the world. We’ve already seen housing prices rise in certain locations that attracted mobile white-collar workers with large disposable incomes. Suburbs, beach towns, ski areas and other interesting areas will see an influx of these professionals, driving up housing prices and rental costs. We could foresee competition from cities, states and countries to attract this talent to boost tax revenue. This already happened during the pandemic when a number of places rolled out the red carpet to entice people to relocate there and work remotely.

Normalization Of Job Switching

When I first started recruiting, if I shared a resume of a person who was at a company for only a year or so, I’d be chastised. They’d derogatively say the candidate is a ‘job hopper,’ and attribute negative connotations to their desire to pursue a new job so soon. The hiring managers and human resource professionals…