Welcome and Happy New Year!
Let’s jump into some hiring and workforce predictions. Are they the boldest? No, but if true, they’ll be meaningful in shaping how we work with one another.
-Ben
🔮Six Predictions for 2022🔮
1. Lying to Ourselves will change (for the better!)
Two significant changes are coming to Lying to Ourselves this year.
The first is that I’m moving off Substack and onto my site. The new site will make it much easier for you to navigate older posts, search categories, and bring more people into the community.
Quick logistics: I’ll be sending this same post again next week from my new provider - so if you don’t hear from me next week, please let me know!
The second change is that I’m bringing in more outside experts. I can read and synthesize all I want, but it’s still just my perspective. That needs to change.
So I’m changing it. Over the past month, I’ve reached out to people with deep experience hiring or building healthy work cultures to learn from their best practices. I’ll be publishing what I learn here, and I’m excited to share it with you all!
2. The Great Reshuffle will continue.
This is the safest prediction I can make.
It’s not “The Great Resignation,” people aren’t quitting their jobs to sit around doing nothing; it’s The Great Reshuffle. People are leaving to find something that better suits their needs, including entrepreneurship.
In 2022 this trend won’t go away. It will accelerate.
3. Wage inflation will run rampant, particularly in retail/foodservice, healthcare, and education
Companies are offering their most significant raises in a decade, and minimum wage increases hit numerous states on January 1st. Still, the most considerable wage inflation will happen this year in the retail/foodservice, healthcare, and education sectors.
Healthcare staffing is in crisis. Nurses, techs, and doctors are all in short supply, and the wave of retirements over the next decade or so won’t help.
If you think healthcare costs are high now, wait until a stressed-out workforce in one of Baumol’s cost disease industries realizes that they can’t take it anymore, and employers start dramatically raising pay to keep the doors open.
Oh, and teachers, particularly for elementary and middle school, won’t be far behind.
4. The trades will bounce back (maybe not next year, but within the decade)
This is my boldest prediction. Industries that can’t offer flexible work will experience far greater wage inflation than those that do. Especially the trades.
The trades have been declining for years. But rapidly rising wages, reduced supply (the decline in unskilled immigration and retirement of boomers), increasing demand for skilled tradespeople, The Great Reshuffle, and the growing popularity of blue-collar creators will make trade work more appealing.1
5. The debate over Remote/Hybrid Work will stay meaningless.
Can we stop it already with the debate over remote/hybrid/in-person work and which one is “better”? It’s as useless as arguing with the weather.
1 in 4 workers would quit if they could no longer work remotely, “surveys suggest that [workers] would like to work from home nearly 50% of the time, up from 5% before the pandemic,” and “94% of employees…reported that remote work was either business as usual or better than working in the office.”
We’re in the hottest labor market in well over half a century. If you want workers, you will have to adapt to the new normal. How you feel about it is entirely immaterial.
6. A cottage industry focused on trust-based (often remote) leadership skills will take off.
See above. Leaders who embrace remote work are the same leaders who will realize that remote management is a skill to be sharpened.2 These organizations will make the necessary investments to develop their people’s management skills to make the transition from in-person to remote seamless.
Relatedly, Organizations will start rewarding employees who hit performance goals AND build the trust of their teams. In the past, many employers rewarded only performance - but as employee engagement, inclusion, and retention become more critical to the bottom line, we’ll see promotions and bonuses track to trust as well as traditional performance metrics.
There are some fascinating TikTok accounts run by people in, and advocating for, the trades. Check out Jessica Tran (mobile detailer), Roger Wakefield (plumber), and James Butler (septic and well-digger).
The irony is that there isn’t any meaningful difference between good “remote” management and plain ole good management. The only difference is that remote work makes bad management much more apparent.