The changing demographic of the workplace

Nina Wyers

Nina Wyers, Marketing Director, The Floorbrite Group

As a diverse workforce of more than 1,500 people across the UK, we are constantly striving to adapt ourselves to the modern workplace requirements.

Over the past 20 years there’s been a huge cultural shift in terms of when, where, and how we all work – there’s now a need for increased flexibility, better employee engagement and fostering positive workplace cultures when it comes to things like mental health and wellbeing.

Here at The Floorbrite Group, we employ people aged from 18 up to 75 years of age across our head office and cleaning operative workforce, and over the past decade we’ve noticed an increase in the number of people who are applying for jobs at aged 18 – perhaps indicating that the number of young people going straight into the world of work instead of to university, is increasing. In fact, around 7 per cent of our total work force is under the age of 25.

As the next tech-savvy generation comes into the world of work and through the ranks, we as employers have more responsibility than ever to harness technology and its influence on how we work. We use technology such as Ezitracker (a workforce management tool) and Waste Logic (a cloud based waste management system) to improve our efficiency, for example but there are things like wearable technology, smart phones, and platforms that can greatly boost productivity.

Flexible working has also continued to develop as a new working arrangement that many employees now not only require, but also expect. We’ve evolved from a more fixed and traditional approach to a more fluid and flexible organization that encourages a work life balance – by doing this, we retain our staff for longer whilst keeping them motivated.

In the same vein, the actual workplace lay out has changed significantly over the past two decades, last year The Future Laboratory created a report to understand the psychology of the workplace layout and the significance of workplace design – it showed that innovative open work spaces will supersede open-plan offices to support tomorrow’s agile, diverse and multigenerational workforce.

We’re currently undergoing a huge office renovation which will move us from the traditional office layout to a much more open-work environment – we want to encourage and empower our staff to work in a way that suits them; be that alone in a quiet corner on a comfortable sofa or sat at a desk in the hub of the busy office.

Another aspect of how the workforce demographic is changing is that there are now important and open conversations being had around mental wellbeing and trying to achieve a healthy work/life balance. Employers now understand that too much stress and a demanding work life is counter-productive. Instead, we should all be encouraging our workforce to be aware of their mental wellbeing and supporting them to look after it, the result being a much richer working environment and a happier, healthier workforce.

Workplace culture and environment has changed massively over the past two decades and will likely continue to change again in the future, the best thing that employers can do to harness the evolving demographic of their workforce is to be agile, open, and proactive in making these positive changes.

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