Deloitte research indicates that the U.S. workforce is now more diverse than ever before. And with this diversity comes more progressive employment practices.
Below are four progressive employment and learning and development practices that are starting to permeate the U.S. workforce that you’ll want to know about right now.
1. More Diverse and Fair Hiring Practices
More organizations are starting to look for more diverse job candidates—especially in the current growing globalized labor economy. And employers are beginning to take notice of job candidates with different educational backgrounds and different ethnic backgrounds, as well as candidates from various age ranges and candidates who have different genders.
While not all workplaces are completely diverse and equal yet, more and more employers are starting to promote women and minorities into leadership roles, and more workplaces are hiring individuals with diverse backgrounds who are in different age groups, too.
2. Work/Life Balance
Employers are beginning to understand that stressed-out and overworked employees negatively impact their bottom lines. So, they are beginning to offer more paid time off, more flexible and remote work options, more adequate healthcare and childcare benefits, and more.
Overall, employers are now beginning to promote better work/life balance practices across their organizations so that their employees stay with their organizations longer and so those employees can perform at more optimal levels at work.
3. Long-Term Employee Development
Because most skills don’t last longer than 5 years in the modern workplace, employers are beginning to invest more heavily in long-term employee development and upskilling.
They’re also doing this because they’re starting to understand that it costs much less to develop an employee long term than it does to continually hire new employees and then terminate them when their skills are no longer relevant or useful. Additionally, organizations that develop their employees long term are beginning to see that they have more loyal and productive employees overall.
4. Cross-Training and More Inclusive Succession Planning
Succession planning used to only be for executive-level positions. But employers are now starting to see the value of long-term succession planning for employees at all levels. So, now an entry-level employee can even be offered a succession plan for a management role in the future.
Additionally, employers are starting to see the value of cross-training employees for upskilling and succession planning and how efficient and cost-effective it is.
Read “Benefits of Cross-Training Employees for Succession Planning” for additional details.
If you want to outpace your competition while keeping your employees engaged and retained long term, consider implementing the four progressive employment practices mentioned above this year.