Key Points:

• During the pandemic, many companies faced hardships and had to evolve.
• As the world changes, businesses have to take on new skillsets to stay on top of their industry, and we’ve identified three business traits for 2022.

The world has changed significantly over the past few years, bringing new challenges and opportunities. While various character traits are needed to be a successful company, like resilience and adaptability, a business must consider many other characteristics to evolve with the world. We’ve identified three business traits that are increasingly relevant in today’s market; creativity, diversity, and flexibility. While these are not new, we now have a new way of thinking today.

Creativity

Creativity is a word that used to be reserved solely for alternative careers, but now companies realize creativity is a must-have. Many companies needed creative problem-solving skills to advance their businesses during the pandemic. Creativity is crucial to companies as it increases teamwork and productivity and retains employees. Promoting creativity in the workplace focuses more on the opportunities and less on the “what ifs.” It’s a positive mindset that’s accepting and diverse. Empower your employees to take risks by using collaborative approaches and removing micro-management. Creativity is simply a mindset that takes time and practice to exercise. The overall goal is to give opportunities for employees to step away from their day-to-day work to utilize their creative mindset. Before the pandemic, a few companies encouraged innovation time off, including Google, which offered a 20% time policy that allowed their employees to create Gmail eventually, and 3M’s 15% time policy led to the discovery of the Post It notes.

Diversity

Diversity and collaboration allow for unique perspectives and creative problem-solving. Allow space on your team for different backgrounds, including ethnicity, race, gender, age, religious beliefs, sexual orientations, etc. To truly harness the power of diversity in the workplace, respect and value are given to all employees irrelevant of their background but giving them space to grow and lead. Inclusivity brings more company growth and increased productivity. For instance, 87% of gender, age, and ethnically diverse teams make better decisions up to 87% of the time, and those with a mix of ethnic backgrounds are 33% more likely to outperform their competitors. So, consider your team’s diversity and invest in training to embrace differences.

Flexibility

Overcoming adversity is something every business has to do, but since the pandemic, there’s a new way of working that almost every industry had to consider – remote working. For example, many companies had their employees work from home during the pandemic. Now that some employers are bringing their staff back into the office, there’s more consideration towards hybrid schedules and fully remote workers for flexible benefits. Offering flexible roles allows companies to access a broad talent pool and leverage specialties. Overall, this forward-thinking mind shift leans toward a flatter company structure and less hierarchal.

Harnessing and owning these traits will allow your business to thrive in today’s market, and all you’ll need is the right employees. If you need staffing solutions, SPECTRAFORCE can help you. We provide solutions and leading-edge talent on a contingent, full-time, and statement of work (SOW) basis across multiple industries, including insurance, financial services, technology, healthcare, telecom, and more! For more information, click here.

Sources:

• https://globaldiversitypractice.com/what-is-diversity-inclusion/
• https://www.inc.com/nate-klemp/google-encourages-employees-to-take-time-off-to-be-creative-heres-how-you-can-too-without-sacrificing-outcomes.html