TempWorks

The blurred boundaries between home and work have spurred much needed changes in employers’ approach to overseeing their remote teams, in some ways upending the traditional 9-to-5 workdays that have defined American work life in the past several decades. Here are some of the core changes to the workforce we’ve seen in the past year: Aside from the necessity of social distancing and mask-wearing, there is little about our daily lives that has remained static in the past year. Whether it’s shifting an organization’s annual priorities or granting employees greater freedom to form their own schedules, being flexible is becoming a requirement in operating day-to-day tasks and managing teams. The constantly evolving pandemic has made the media and news cycle some of the worst attention-hogging culprits (how often have you checked the news in the past year?).

Without a commute to separate our work life from home life, the two have become increasingly mixed, a fact of life that has brought both new challenges and joys. Opinions on remote-only communication vary, but with video calls giving everyone a glimpse into coworkers’ homes (and a chance to meet pets), some teams find themselves getting to know fellow employees in completely news ways, occasionally leading to enhanced collaboration. Instead of expecting employees to sit eight hours a day before their computers, many companies are shifting focus to the quality of work employees give, instead of number of hours those employees’ work. Although the typical forty-hour week is unlikely to change in the U.S., the pandemic has at least introduced the question of how many hours do employees need to be “on” to produce work that leads to their organization’s success.

Deep breathing slows your heart rate, increases oxygen to your brain, and stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, all of which work to promote a sense of calm in our brains. Taking five minutes out of every hour to make sure your body is in movement can help destress you in the moment and keep your stress levels in control throughout the day. In short, nature is incredibly healing, and taking just a few minutes out of our workday to go outside and breathe fresh air can help us destress in the moment and focus on our present wellbeing. For those of you who live or work in places where access to nature is difficult to obtain, simply opening the window and breathing in fresh air—and looking someplace other than your device’s screen—can help bring calm at any moment.

Despite historically high levels of unemployment, some staffing agencies have found it difficult to find and retain candidates for some high-demand customers. Competition for workers is intense and candidates will often leave jobs for other companies offering wage increases as small as $0.25 per hour (this is particularly true of the light industrial and manufacturing sectors). Due to sudden changes in demand across industries, staffing agencies who have been able to pivot their resources and break into new sectors have achieved the most success during the pandemic. The staffing trends 2020 has brought us are a sharp contrast to trends from previous years, when record low levels of unemployment were causing difficulties for the staffing industry.