From Quiet Quitting to Wagamama Workspaces: 5 Workplace Trends for 2023

In 2023, ‘hybrid work’ will just become ‘work’. It will no longer be a trend, but normal everyday work life. As a result of this shift and relaxation in attitudes around work, we could see a rise in the number of people wanting to work a four-day week.  

In 2022, more than 3,300 workers at 70 UK companies, ranging from a local chippy to large financial firms, started working a four-day week with no loss of pay in the world’s biggest trial of the new working pattern. This number will boom in the new year, as more and more employees and employers see the benefits of taking up this option.  

To prepare for this shift, UK businesses must adopt effective hybrid working strategies supported by the right processes. This requires organisations to focus on their company culture, and ensure employees are empowered to be productive, but without getting close to burning out. Employers should also endeavour to provide their staff with the right tools for them, allowing them to work to the best of their ability, regardless of location.  

In the last few years, organisations have got used to managing employees working from home. However, in 2023, they will need to adapt to manage people working from far flung locations. This is because more and more employees are working from locations such as the pub or coffee shops. We will also see an increasing number of employees taking ‘workcations’ working abroad to maximise their annual leave.

In addition, we’ll see a rise in the number of digital nomad employees – those that work remotely full-time from various locations. To capitalise on this trend, countries such as Portugal and Spain are offering special digital nomad visas to allow remote workers to work legally in the country.  

Clearly, the traditional 9-5 will become a thing of the past in 2023. Organisations need to ensure they are ready to offer employees total flexibility, especially if they want to retain and attract the best talent, many of whom will want to work abroad. Ultimately, 2023 will be all about creating a more flexible, attractive workplace for those employees that want to unshackle from the 9-5 culture.  

We heard a lot about quiet quitting in 2022, but we’ll hear a lot less about it in 2023 once employers realise that simply doing your job isn’t actually a bad thing. Quiet quitting defined employees that worked their hours and didn’t go above and beyond their job description. It suggested employees should work more hours and do more tasks than they are paid to do.  

But in an era of hybrid work, the notion of only working your hours shouldn’t be a controversial one. According to research, organisations have seen a 72% rise in productivity as a result of hybrid work. Employees have become more productive in the hybrid era, and so in 2023 employers will see that staff are not quiet quitting, but simply getting on with their jobs and being more productive than ever. 

This kind of trend highlights the different attitudes towards work between employer and employee, a disparity that could impact retention and growth. Expectations differ, particularly on issues like how often employees come to the office.

Research shows 54% of employees want to split their time evenly between the office and home. This contrasts to 52% of employers believing hybrid work is a blip and are looking forward to getting everyone back in the office. To make hybrid work a success, employers need to meet the needs of employees and provide the level of flexibility that they expect. 

In 2023, we will see employers start to take inspiration from some unexpected places when they redesign the office to cater for the future of work. One such inspiration will be from restaurants, both in the form of booking spaces to work and how they organise their spaces. One workplace trend we will see much more of in 2023 is hotelling.

This is where employees make use of a corporate booking system to reserve desks in their own workplace, for a day at a time.  

This shift will also see organisations take inspiration from restaurant chains – like Wagamama – when redesigning their offices spaces. We’ll likely see the introduction of bench style desks and hot desks to ensure everyone has somewhere they can work when visiting the office. 

Businesses will develop an effective, employee-centered hybrid work strategy to retain and attract talent in 2023. In 2022, over half (58%) of organisations reported higher staff turnover as a result of the pandemic, with 37% reporting that they are only prepared for the future of hybrid work in the short term.

Next year, more businesses will take action to retain and attract talent by investing in technologies that fit with people's work habits and preferences, their office space, and collaboration software like Zoom or Teams. If they don’t, employees will not have access to the appropriate tools, resulting in an unequal experience that will have a negative impact on retention, recruitment, business growth, and productivity.