New year, new opportunities, new employment trends. 2023 will be the perfect opportunity to bring up the word “disruptive” in the employment sector and entrench the changes that have landed in previous years, especially in 2022. Employment expert Allen Woo takes a look at what to expect when it comes to trends in the world of work for this coming year, which is just two months away.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), it is estimated that, as of 2023, approximately 264 million people will experience depressive and anxiety-related disorders, ranking as one of the most frequent causes of disability within the work environment. It is not surprising that terms such as “Mobbing,” “Burnout” and sub-terms such as “Millennial Burnout” have been trending worldwide in recent years.

However, it seems that 2023 will be the year when companies will really have to take a look at their health and safety policies. The aim is to avoid risks due to harassment in the workplace, inflexible work, poor communication, poorly organized tasks that are incompatible with the person’s skills or overloaded demands.

However, beyond a restructuring of work policy, 2023 brings the urgency to engage in a taboo-free conversation. Leaders and senior management need to educate by example and take a more individual approach to the root causes of the problem.

“The concept of “emotional pay” is not new,” says Woo. “However, it is among the trends to see new benefit and compensation ideas emerging every day that are focused on retaining top talent: flexibility, training, recreational spaces, social benefits, telecommuting, training plans, parent-child plans, travel. The employment landscape trends for 2023 show that, in reality it is not always necessary to go too far.”

It’s proven that of all the trade-offs Woo mentions, talent values a job that puts flexibility above all others. And jobs tied to fulfilling eight or more hours don’t align with their current employment needs.

The debate between soft skills VS. technical skills in the recruiting and employment environment already has a verdict: technical skills are never enough, but among so many “soft skills” possibilities, a question arises. Which ones are receiving the most appreciation from companies in the 2023 job trends landscape? According to Woo, there are two winners.

The first is The ability to focus. The expert explains, “In a world of constant distractions, the ability to be present and fully focused, especially during work hours, is starting to come at a big price in 2023. A price that employers are not hesitating to pay in order to have employees who are more productive and connected to their responsibilities at work.”

The second is empathy. Organizational departments require a broad collaboration whose harmony does not emerge by itself. The reality is that day by day, it is composed of small pieces that help make better decisions. One of these pieces is empathy.

“It is no secret that we are facing more critical candidates and collaborators, those who constantly ask themselves whether they are living to work or working to live,” Woo asserts. “The achievement-centric culture at work is on the decline not only in Europe, but in countries known for their “devotion” to the world of work, such as China and the United States, for example.”

Alternative paths to a long working life are positioned among the trends in the form of movements such as FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early), a growing lifestyle among millennials, which seeks to generate aggressive savings with the goal of achieving early financial independence for an early retirement. This scenario that parks in 2023, together with the need for flexibility and the need to generate open dialogues on mental health, makes an invitation to senior leaders to reflect and face these transformations from a new paradigm.

Accept that the emergence of this superhuman scale called artificial intelligence no longer has a return button. In fact, it is the first step to better coexist with the current changes.

The task is on the to-do list for 2023, both for those in a first-level professional role and for collaborators in operational positions. As one of the trends that will transform employment in 2023, this urgent need could be the cause that motivates high-value companies to increase teaching and skills development spaces for learning the implications of artificial intelligence in the world of work.