Top Ten I-O Workplace Trends for 2015

As is becoming a yearly tradition, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) has released its list of anticipated top workplace trends for 2015 based upon a vote of the current SIOP membership.  Here they are, with a little commentary:

10. Changes in Laws May Affect Employment-Related Decisions.  This has been a year of sweeping legal changes, most notably Obamacare and recreational marijuana.  I guess drug tests don’t mean quite what they did last year.
9. Growth of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Programs.  There is a growing expectation that organizations must “give back” to the community.  This isn’t a new phenomenon, but is becoming more obvious as more Millennials enter the workforce.  I know I wouldn’t work for an organization I thought was evil, no matter the salary.
8. Changing Face of Diversity Initiatives.  Appearing diverse just isn’t enough anymore – people know what a token hire looks like, and they don’t approve.  Instead, diversity must be leveraged for an organizational good.
7. Emphasis on Recruiting, Selecting for, and Retaining Potential (down from #3 in 2014).  In good economies, people like to jump ship, and things are looking pretty good these days.  As the effects of the Great Recession continues to dissipate, personnel (industrial) psychologists will be in increasingly high demand; we identify where to look for new talent, how to hire them, and how to keep them.
6. Increased Need to Manage a Multi-Generational Workforce.  GenX, GenY, Boomers and Silents are all at work now, and GenY just keeps getting bigger.  The traditional approach to generational differences (i.e., the older folks lament how useless the new folks are, while the new folks grin and bear it until they’re in control) doesn’t work so well anymore.  If your GenY employees don’t like your management, they’re happy to just leave and find a new place to work, finding startups especially attractive.  Things are getting complicated.
5. Organizations Will Continue to “Do More with Less” (down from #2 in 2014).  No surprise here.  Bad economies force belt-tightening, and then upper management realizes that belt can stay tight to squeeze even more profit out of the company.
4. Increasing Implications of Technology for How Work is Performed (up from #6, #8 and #9 in 2014).  Once again, my lab’s specialty gets a prominent place on the list.  The Internet of Things, social media, and wearable tech continue to creep into our work lives.
3. Integration of Work and Non-Work Life (up from #7 in 2014).  Closely related to the item above, technology has made us so connected at all times that it’s difficult to disengage.  Is this me writing a blog post at 10PM?  Why yes, it is.
2. Continued Use of HR Analytics and Big Data (down from #1 in 2014).  Big Data is a tricky topic for I/Os, because a lot of I/Os I’ve chatted with like to think that they’ve been doing Big Data for a long time.  They haven’t.  Big Data is the art and science of identifying, sorting, and analyzing massive sources of data.  And I mean massive – a few hundred thousand cases is a bare minimum in my mind.  Imagine sticking an RFID chip on every one of your employee’s badges and tracking their movements every day for a year.  What might you do with that dataset?  That’s Big Data – a little exploratory, a little computer programming, and a lot of potential.
1. Mobile Assessments (up from #4 in 2014).  The biggest trend this year will be mobile assessments (another of our research areas!).  As people increasingly identify and apply for jobs on their phones, their experience is markedly different from that of a desktop or laptop computer.  In some cases, they seem to end up with lower scores.  The implications of this are only beginning to be understood.

So what else changed from 2014?  First, gamification, previously #5 on the list, has dropped off completely.  This is probably because gamification has proven to be quite faddish – lots of organizations adopted it without any clue why they were adopting it, and it didn’t do much.  In Gartner’s terms, it’s now in the Trough of Disillusionment.  But that just means we’re right at the point where reasonable applications of gamification will begin to be discovered.  I know I’m doing my part.

Second, several tech-related items all got smushed into #4, which made way for new items on the list – multi-generational issues, law changes, CSR, and diversity.

Looks like an exciting year!