Whether you are a business owner or an employee, you must be aware of what is going on in your workplace, as well as workplaces in general. This can help you both to make decisions about the way that your business will be run and to gain insight into the perspective of your colleagues and your employees. To find out what might drive changes to the workplace in 2022, here are some of the most important facts that you should know about the workplace this year.
The number of workplace accidents has increased
Although you might think that the pandemic would have reduced the number of people that sustained workplace injuries in 2020-21, this is not the case, and the number of fatal workplace accidents has increased. For instance, in the UK, fatalities at work are up by almost a third. It is increasingly vital that business owners take measures to protect their team members. For instance, they should consider sending their supervisors and managers on an IOSH Managing Safely Course, provided by Skills Training Group in the UK, as this will allow employees to find out about the risks to their health that are evident within the workplace and the measures that they can take to reduce the impact of these and the likelihood of them sustaining an injury.
Most people want to continue working from home
Many businesses have now started to encourage employees to return to the office. However, even though you might have seen people complaining about working from home throughout the pandemic, most people want to continue working from home, with 30% saying they would quit their job if they were told to come back into the office. Although this may partially be due to continued worries about the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of this on the working week, others may decide they want to stay working from home due to the flexibility that it affords. Employers should consider making working from home an option for their employees by using remote working software and technology.
Meetings should only be half an hour-long
If you are used to hosting meetings that go on for longer than an hour, you should think again about the structure of these meetings. Meetings are much more productive when they are 30 minutes or less, as this is the time in which employees can stay focused and concentrate on the information that is being imparted. If this meeting needs to be longer, you should consider splitting it into a couple of meetings or putting a couple of breaks within it. However, before you decide to call a meeting at all, you should think about whether you can impart the information through email instead.
The pandemic has changed attitudes to sick days
The COVID-19 pandemic has also changed attitudes toward sick days. Whereas once employers were concerned about the disruption that a sick day could cause to their business, and employees were reluctant to take them for fear of falling out of favor, now, more and more people are beginning to take up sick days for fear of passing their illness around the rest of their colleagues, which could potentially leave businesses without the employee capacity that they need to run.
