By Lisa Taylor

At any point in time, navigating the world of work, leading effectively, and living happy lives can feel like a rocky road. It’s easy to focus only on the difficult parts, or what’s gone wrong, or how many Future of Work challenges we’re facing. We all know the clock is ticking.

As we start a new year, here’s your reminder that there is also good all around us. When the good parts of our work, leadership, and changemaking go unnoticed or unremarked, this oversight affects how we feel. I want to start 2024 feeling great about our work—with a side of curiosity and optimism.

Let’s make 2024 a catalyst year for change. I see critical workplace shifts being made, even if progress is slow. Future of Work opportunities that have been bubbling just under the surface are now becoming part of everyday dialogue. With a focus on intergenerational workplaces, work culture, and trust, here are three major themes that will start to become part of everyday conversation.

2024 theme 1: Employers will adapt to the expectations and needs of all generations in the workplace

Challenge: Workplace structures, policies, mindsets, and cultures are outdated, and “the way things work around here” doesn’t work for every generational and life stage.

Prediction: Topics like housing, 4-day work weeks, benefits and pensions, paid time off (PTO), wellness, and child/elder care impact different generations in different ways. But the workforce is a system. When one cohort is less productive because basic needs aren’t being met, the effect is felt across an entire organization. Top organizations will begin using an intergenerational lens to develop approaches to managing workforces, from recruitment to succession planning. This will lead to productive and engaged workforces across the entire lifespan.

Questions for leaders: How can intergenerational approaches move us from zero sum games to a more productive Future of Work for all? How do we reconsider the employment social contract, so we create workplaces and communities that work for us now and are also good for our children?

2024 theme 2: Sustainable pace and productivity will become critical to work culture

Challenge: Workplaces and teams are in crisis mode and working at an unsustainable pace. Between the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, geopolitics, and industry or company-specific internal challenges, teams have been addressing serious acute problems that require enormous commitments of resources and energy for a long time.

Prediction: Strong leaders will prioritize re-establishing sustainable workplace cultures by slowing teams down without sacrificing productivity. To do otherwise invites continued yo-yo layoffs, turnover, and shortages as enduring crisis after crisis becomes further embedded in work culture.

Questions for leaders: How do teams and workforces rebalance to return to more stable and sustainable approaches to work? Can teams used to crisis adapt to more sustainable and productive long-game approaches to work—while at the same time not losing, and perhaps even improving, productivity across the Canadian economy?

2024 theme 3: Employees, business partners, and consumers will place greater emphasis on trust

Challenge: Trust has eroded across communities and workplaces, making discussions and decision-making difficult.

Prediction: Media and politicians will continue to lose ground with the public. To counter the trend of increasing mistrust, business and workplace leaders—who have enjoyed high trust levels with the public in the past—will need to prove they are trustworthy. In this environment, courageous leaders will focus on transparency and demonstrate how to escape echo chambers. Objective measures of intention and impact will become critical to fostering trust and finding common ground, with more organizations and employees evaluating the metrics and tools used by Certified B Corporations.

Questions for leaders: Is one way to rebuild trust to start by being more trusting? How might including broader interest holders in impact discussions decrease real and perceived risk? How might shifting focus from fear to trust make leadership and workforces more productive?

These three themes are already important for 2024. If you listen, you will hear hints of them in boardrooms, media reporting and commentary, and at family dinner tables as dynamics related to intergenerational workplaces, pace, and trust become core Future of Work issues. We’re ready for these daring, challenging, and changing conversations. We’re ready to put intention into action. Are you?

Choose one of the questions above and consider how you can use it as a catalyst to ensure 2024 is a year full of impact for yourself, your team, your community, and all those you care about.

Welcome to 2024. It’s going to be a transformative year.