Today’s modern economy is changes fast. Millennials are now becoming the biggest proportion of the labour market, and their way of thinking is different to previous generations. Therefore, there will be significant shifts in how businesses and the economy will take shape in the coming years.
So, what are the business trends you need to watch out for and consider embracing over the next 12 months?
1. Tools To Help Non-Techs Become Technical
Software packages are being developed that allow those without any technical skills to deliver complex products to the market. One early example of this is WordPress, that allows anyone to create a website within minutes.
This year, there will be a rise in software that enables non-techs to develop apps, games, movies, and other products without considerable expense.
2. Remote Employees
As work-life balance becomes a major focus of the labour market, more staff will want to work from home instead of enduring long commutes to an office. This will mean that office spaces will become smaller as fewer employees will be present at any one time, hot desking will become popular, and more staff will be working from home.
Businesses will need to address their corporate culture and training, for example, using better new employee selection processes and more online training. They will also need to improve how they arrange and conduct meetings to make the most of the little time employees will spend in the office together.
3. More ‘We’, Less ‘Me’
An aligned and coherent team performance drives the success of any business. Leaders are beginning to see the value of connecting their expert departments together. It helps with the sharing of information to improve internal processes, improves customer service, and can act as a better predictor for future resource needs.
Employees, therefore, should be encouraged not just to devote time to what is happening in their own department, but also focus on what is happening within the whole organization. They should also be more concerned at how their actions impact the performance of the company and other departments.
4. Curiosity Is Essential
Throughout 2016, curiosity became an essential part of business leadership. This trend will continue throughout 2017 and beyond. Curiosity is a great way for your organization to foster creativity and innovation and enables opportunity and growth potential within your organization.
Yet it can be challenging to develop curiosity within a business. It requires you to move away from complacency and to challenge the status quo of your business, its operations, and assumptions you’ve made, every day.
When you’ve done that you can make changes that will improve your business’ output making it a better organization.
5. Improving Candidate And Employee Experiences
Customers and prospects might have got the most attention in the past, but regular employees are now getting more attention by senior staff because employees are becoming a marketing force of their own. In the past few years, how employees and job seekers have been treated have become part of the marketing spectrum.
A survey by Future Workplace found that 60% of job seekers have experienced a poor candidate process and then 72% of candidates have shared their experience online. This has directly affected the availability of talent to the organization and revenues.
Likewise, current employee experiences are important. Those who feel badly treated are less productive, incur higher costs and are more likely to leave their employer – resulting in a significant cost to replace the employee.
6. Fewer Annual Performance Reviews
Leaders often provide annual reviews, so their employees are informed about their goals for the coming twelve months and how they met previous milestones. However, the use of annual performance reviews is now being questioned because it doesn’t allow for employees to make changes to their behaviors when they aren’t keeping in line with expected performance.
Therefore, more leaders will be giving more regular or even continuous performance reviews to help employees achieve their goals and objectives. After all, employees want to do well, but they need guidance and support in knowing whether they are performing as expected or not.
Your Sole Proprietorship Could Put Your Family At Risk!
Clients of Halon Tax Grow Their Revenue by 18%/yr on Average
Want to hear more about how we help small business owners?
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form
7. Crowdfunding Will Help Marketing Efforts
The rise of crowdfunding has taken the market by storm, but it isn’t just about raising capital for the start of an organization or a new product. It can also be used as a marketing tool to entice prospective clients to check out a brand and then enter their details into the CRM system.
Therefore, when the product is made, businesses can spend less time attracting and marketing to prospects and make sales before the first batch of the product is made.
8. Video Is An Important Marketing Stream
As broadband services across the world become better and more products require use of the internet, video marketing will be a major focus for brands. Any marketing department knows that video is a preferred communications channel with prospects – they have higher engagement rates and are more memorable than any other piece of content.
That doesn’t mean that your blog posts, eBooks or email marketing messages aren’t going to be important. They can help you, especially with search rankings. However, you will need to integrate highly valuable videos into those marketing channels to benefit.
Don’t forget that infographics and slideshows can still be a useful force for marketing teams too and with online software like Canva at your disposal, they can be produced quickly and for little money.
9. Search Engine Rankings Are Going To Change
There is a lot of upheaval in how search engines will rank websites over the coming year. While there’s always a lot of speculation, Google never reveals exactly what is in its ranking algorithm, yet there are some changes that you should be aware of and plan for.
Firstly, pop-ups are going to impact your website's ranking score negatively. Google will only ignore pop-ups informing visitors of legal requirements. Search engines are also going to put less emphasis on inbound links. This has always been a major activity of search engine marketers, but has also been open to abuse.
Conclusion
Trends in business are changing and you need to be prepared for them. By thinking about how you can adapt your company to the future, you can advance and grow your organization and not be left behind.
