In many ways, this is management’s reaction to the employee trend of “quiet quitting”, a phrase that’s now entered the vocabulary of workers around the world to mean committing to do the bare minimum requirements of your job.
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Although it first appeared a few years ago, Google Trends data shows the number of searches for quiet quitting more than tripled in the last 12 months, highlighting ongoing strain at work.
My third prediction is that 2025 will be the year of “office peacocking”, a term that describes workplaces that are increasingly redesigned with thoughtful, sometimes even flashy, inclusions to lure workers back in. Think collaborative spaces, rooftop bars, kitchens, gyms and other things that were previously only the domains of large corporations with big budgets.
Just as peacocks have bright-coloured feathers to attract attention, workplaces are going to have to compete with other locations to grab yours. This is an acknowledgment that many offices are not set up in the right way to lure workers back in.
Zooming out from these three trends, the wider theme behind them is the attempted wrestling of control back into a more traditional organisational structure. Management will use every tool they have, from carrots like office peacocking to sticks like return-to-office mandates, to try to claw back their power.
Is it going to work? Only time will tell, but if companies can tackle the cause of workers’ discontentment right at the source and design workplaces that encourage engagement, productivity and connection, then 2025 might be the year that some semblance of stability returns to our workplaces after half a decade of intense upheaval.
Tim Duggan is the author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com
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