At the start of 2021, another Blogger (and all round fantastic Project Manager) Bruce Gay, published his insights into what he thought would be the trends for the coming year (image below).

Most recently, he posted on LinkedIn his assessment of the year and how it’s gone. I wanted to spend time on this blog to review the biggest trends that I’ve seen this year and what I think have been the unusual outcomes.

1) Remote working

There has definitely been a massive uptake in the number of remote roles available but also how firms have reacted to remote working models. There’s definitely some give/take but it’s quite interesting to see how different industries are adapting to the remote working model

2) Flexible working

I’ve definitely seen a massive campaign take off with regards to the demand for flexible working for everyone (and especially women). I honestly wasn’t expecting as much success as it’s had, but what has surprised me is the resistance that I’ve seen been publicly put on the flexible working movement for being “lazy” and “abusing the system”.

3) Soft Skills become a lot more prominent

I really discovered this during my research for my Pluralsight course! There’s a lot of demand for soft skill courses but also for people to understand and grow in their roles and leaders. I’m often asked what is the most important skills for leaders and it’s definitely having an awareness and knowledge of your soft skills.

4) Strategic thinking

Throughout 2021, I thought there would be more strategic outlook towards projects and programs and I’ve not seen a massive rise in this as I expected. Many organisations try to promote their strategic savviness but it’s definitely a weakness in many of the organisations that I see and work with.

5) The Great Resignation

This was something I was not expecting but I’m definitely glad that more people are looking at their work/life balance and seeing what can be possible and achieved if they work inna different manner.

Summary

For 2022, I think we can expect further changes and developments around people’s work/life balance. I really hope that organisations will use this as an emphasis for good, positive change rather than micro managing and demanding control over their employees.