HR Toolkit: 9 Future ofWork Trends for 2024
Key insights and actionable strategies for
HR leaders crafting organizational resilience2024 brings another wave of challenges and opportunities for the future of work.
Organizations face unprecedented uncertainty with global talent shortages, controllingrising costs and measuring risky technology’s productivity returns — and will need totackle 2024’s nine trends to set and achieve strategic workforce and technology goals.
This toolkit provides insights and actions for HR leaders as they assess how the futureof work will impact their organization in the face of heightened expectations.

9 Future of Work Trends for 2024

The Cost-of-Work
Crisis Reaches a
Breaking Point

AI Creates, Not
Diminishes, Workforce
Opportunity

Four-Day
Workweeks Go
From Radical
to Routine

Employee Conflict
Resolution Is the
New Must-Have Skill
for Managers

GenAI Experiments
Will Yield Hard Lessons
and Painful Costs

Skills Overtake
Degrees as thePaper Ceiling
CrumblesClimate Change
Protection Becomes
the New In-Demand
Employee Benefit

DEI Doesn’t Disappear,
It Becomes the Way
We Work

Career Stereotypes
Collapse in the Faceof Workforce Change

2© 2024 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. CM_GBS_2508943

The cost-of-work crisis reaches a
breaking point

While working from home during the pandemic, many employees experienced (often
for the first time) what work can be like without bearing all the costs — financial,
time and energy — associated with going into an office daily. Unsurprisingly, many
employees want to continue working in a hybrid and/or remote setting permanently.
Yet 63% of employers increased the number of required days in the office in the last
12 months. In the face of employers mandating remote employees’ return to the office
after long periods of remote work, employees now have a sharper awareness of what
they “spend” to go to work.
What was once largely assumed by employers and employees — employees bear thecost of work when they agree to take a job — can no longer be taken for granted. Going
into the office every day is simply too costly for many employees.1 Combine that witha belief that they can do their job perfectly well away from the office and you have theingredients for sustained pushback. The cost of work, who bears it and why, is now
up for discussion, and return-to-office (RTO) strategies without full resolution of thesequestions will likely remain contentious.
In the coming year, organizations looking to attract and retain talent will not just try
to find the perfect hybrid strategy, but will look to tackle the cost of work head-on.
Organizations can do this in one of two ways: 1) by sharing the tangible and intangible
costs of returning to the office, or 2) by finding ways to reduce the total costs. Thesemay include: caregiving benefits, housing subsidies, financial well-being programs,
on-site kennels or the ability to bring your pet to work. For example, Walmart, Tyson
Foods, and Numis have invested in on-site childcare and early learning centers. IKEA,
Samsung, Cook Medical, Disney, JBS, Deloitte UK and other companies have built
housing specifically for their employees to rent or buy below market rates.

Take Action:
Tactics to Bring Employees Back-to-Office Without Disengaging Them
HR professionals can use these insights to attract talent and ensure the return to theoffice is compelling and aligned to a specific work objective.

Benchmark With Gartner: Well-Being Crisis, Team Cohesion, Return to Office and Work-Life(23 September), n = 70.
13© 2024 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. CM_GBS_2508943

AI creates, not diminishes,
workforce opportunity

A Gartner survey found that 22% of employees expect AI to replace their job in the next
five years. Despite the anxiety and significant discussion around how GenAI will impact
jobs, in the short to medium term, GenAI will replace few jobs. Many jobs heavily
impacted by GenAI will be redesigned. They will have new responsibilities including
crafting prompts for GenAI tools and reviewing and applying the output of these tools.
The net-net is that GenAI will expand opportunities for the workforce, not reducethem. At the same time that implementing GenAI will create the need for new roles,
it will also allow employers to reduce the time to a high proficiency with software andtechnology, easing the necessity of hiring talent already highly skilled in these areas.
Gartner predicts that GenAI will play a role in 70% of text- and data-heavy tasks by
2025, up from less than 10% in 2023. The impact will be seen across organizations invarious business units, including business operations, software development, sales,
marketing, and customer service.
Executives should be prepared to iterate and adapt their plans and expectations
for GenAI as tools evolve, roles and workflows change, and employee proficiency
improves. At the moment, however, only one-third of employees report that theirorganization has communicated how its plans for using technology may impact
their job in the future. Business leaders should work with HR to assess how GenAI
investments should change their teams’ roles and workflows and how best tocommunicate these messages to employees. HR can also assist with the impact
on hiring — specifically, identifying which technical requirements and assessments
are now unnecessary for open and upcoming roles and evaluating potential interview
questions to assess talent against new skills needs.

Take Action:
What Generative AI Means for Your Talent Strategy
HR leaders should shape their talent strategies using a new framework forunderstanding generative AI’s impact on the workforce.

4© 2024 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. CM_GBS_2508943

Four-day workweeks go fromradical to routine

A shift in the cadence of the workweek is underway. Previously considered a radical
departure from the traditional five-day workweek, a four-day workweek (4DWW) has
become a centerpiece of large-scale studies in performance, union negotiations andthe preferences of many workers. In a recent Gartner survey, 63% of candidates rated“four-day workweek for the same pay” as the top new and innovative benefit that would
attract them to a job.2 With a talent shortage putting pressure on attracting and retaining
employees, organizations are shifting toward flexible work models to meet growing
employee demands.
Embracing a 4DWW will require organizations to rethink the cadence of the workweek.
Not just in-office time, but all working time will need to be organized thoughtfully
and with an eye toward getting the most out of the time employees are together.
This means being more explicit about when focus-time is scheduled and when andwhere collaboration, brainstorming and feedback sessions take place. This intentional
approach to time not only facilitates a 4DWW, it also allows organizations to benefit
from shared expectations for when different types of tasks might be done, reducing
the burden on managers and employees to manage up to set these expectations.
Organizations that have implemented a 4DWW are experiencing business benefits.
According to some studies, in addition to improving well-being, a 4DWW also increases
employee performance and engagement.3 By reexamining the ways we work,organizations are identifying inefficiencies that can be improved, such as meeting
management and administrative tasks.

Take Action:
The Roadmap to Implementing a Four-Day Workweek
HR leaders can use this guidance to learn how to implement a crawl-walk-run four-day
workweek plan.

522022 Gartner Candidate Survey, n = 3,621.

32023 Gartner Achieving High Performance Employee Survey, n = 139.

© 2024 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. CM_GBS_2508943

Employee conflict resolution is the
new must-have skill for managers

There is an astonishing amount of potential for employee conflict currently, including
geopolitical crises, labor strikes, climate change, pushback to DEI efforts, and upcoming
elections for half of the globe. As ideological tensions intensify, only 26% of employees
say that members of their team share similar opinions on socio-political issues.4 Conflict
between employees at all levels will significantly damage both individual and teamperformance. This performance impact will have a long tail, as many conflicts directly
tie to how people see themselves and will cast a shadow on interpersonal relationships
between employees that stretches far longer than 2024 itself.
Gartner found that 57% of managers say they are fully responsible for managing conflicts
for their direct reports.5 Managers who can effectively navigate and manage interpersonal
conflict among employees, both overt and covert, will have an outsize positive impact
on their organizations. But how many really feel trained and prepared to do so? Conflict
resolution is not about suppressing dissent or banning conversations about contentious
topics. It requires actively working through challenging moments, pulling employees
back from ostracizing colleagues with opposing viewpoints to focus on areas of mutual
respect, or at least neutrality, and ensuring that as employees navigate global crises
the potential impact of these crises is recognized, not just in internal communication
but also in flexible expectations.
Successfully navigating a polarizing work environment that requires managers
to be increasingly adept at conflict resolution presents a major challenge for manyorganizations. Organizations that have tried to avoid contentious topics may start
this process behind the curve, particularly as conflict resolution is not an intuitive skill.
To help managers approach situations with empathy, organizations should consider
incorporating dedicated conflict management trainings, creating shadowing andcoaching opportunities for new managers to see how experienced leaders resolve
employee conflicts, and finding ways to recognize and reward effective conflict
resolution at all levels of the organization.

Take Action:
Evolve Culture and Leadership for the Hybrid World
Leverage this 12-month roadmap to help reshape culture and leadership fora sustainable hybrid workplace.

642022 Gartner Leadership Success in the New Environment Employee Survey, n = 3,392.

52023 Gartner Building an Organization of Great Managers Manager Survey, n = 3,186.

© 2024 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. CM_GBS_2508943

GenAI experiments will yield hard
lessons and painful costs

According to the 2023 Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, generative
AI has already reached the Peak of Inflated Expectations, and will next enter theTrough of Disillusionment — a two- to five-year period during which it won’t live up to
overinflated expectations. This doesn’t mean that GenAI won’t be successful in solving
business challenges or provide significant benefits; it means that the work gets harderfrom here. Enthusiasm, hype and a strong fear of missing out or being left behind are
driving executives to push for the implementation of GenAI within their teams andorganizations. However, without sufficient risk management, GenAI deployment will
likely yield hard lessons and painful costs at many organizations.
Even organizations not implementing stand-alone GenAI-based tools will likely be
deploying GenAI-enabled assistants or copilots as part of their existing technology
stack. Most of these tools are being deployed with promises of incredible productivity
returns if organizations apply them to their internal data and documents. However,these internal documents and files come with a major risk. Access and file classification
policies have long been minimally observed, if not neglected, at most organizations.
When GenAI-enabled assistants are deployed against an organization’s internal files,
this could mean that an employee can ask the assistant “Who filed harassment
complaints in the last year?” or “What are the salaries and bonuses for everyone VP
and above?” and get an answer.
In addition to the issues of governance, the output of GenAI is not infallible, creatinga strong need for quality control and good employee judgment. Organizations willneed to assign explicit responsibilities for quality control or they will risk significant
reputational, regulatory and legal issues.
These risks don’t outweigh the potential benefits of GenAI in general, or even
GenAI deployed against an organization’s internal documents, but they do requireorganizations to actively manage them. Regardless of whether an organization has
officially permitted the use of GenAI, or where they are in implementation, leaders
should ensure their teams have access to training to develop judgment around notjust information validity, but also how and when to use GenAI.

Take Action:
AI in HR: A Guide to Implementing AI in Your HR Organization
Use this guidance to understand the value of AI solutions and plan for the impact they
will have on the HR function and workforce.

7© 2024 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. CM_GBS_2508943

Skills overtake degrees as the paper
ceiling crumbles

College degrees are the top requirement of yesterday’s job descriptions — nottomorrow’s. Organizations today are increasingly shredding the paper ceiling — theinvisible barrier workers without degrees face — and embracing skills-based hiring,6even for some corporate jobs long considered degree-dependent. Major companies,
including Google, Delta Airlines, Zoho and Accenture, have already removed many of
their degree requirements from job postings to attract qualified talent without arbitrarily
limiting themselves. State and local governments are also embracing this approach
globally. This allows organizations to achieve the same results but hire from a muchbroader talent pool that includes both internally developed talent and workers Skilled
Through Alternative Routes (STARs).7 These STARs — veterans, underrepresented talentand other skilled workers without college degrees — represent a major portion of the
global workforce.
This shift is both a response to the tight labor market and a preemptive adjustment to alonger-term reality — with undergraduate degree completion rates declining, employers
must consider new avenues to find or build the talent they need. Organizations likeTarget, Amazon and EY increasingly tout their in-house universities and business schools
as tailored credential programs that prepare talent with the specific skills they’ll needto advance. Siemens, IBM, HP and other companies have expanded their registeredapprenticeship programs in the U.S., while in the EU there has been a rise in sharedapprenticeship programs where smaller organizations that cannot meet the training
requirements alone share apprentices to create a complete program for training talent
with the target skills.

Take Action:
3 Best Practices for Sourcing Underrepresented Talent
Utilize these insights to build an effective diversity recruitment strategy that removes
hiring process barriers and increases workforce representation.

6,7

8

https://www.tearthepaperceiling.org/© 2024 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. CM_GBS_2508943

Climate change protection becomesthe new in-demand employee benefit

The past year brought new visibility to how climate change impacts workforces
worldwide. Employees struggled with crippling heat waves in Europe, flash floods in
India and wildfire smoke in the U.S. and Canada — all threats to physical safety, material
security and long-term emotional health. More employees worked from offices with
air conditioning during recent summer heat events in London. Over 40% of European
organizations provided discount schemes or adjusted pay to offset energy price spikes
during the winter of 2022.
As severe climate change-related events shift from localized and episodic towidespread and persistent, executives will find new ways to navigate the impact
on employee productivity, retention and recruitment. Organizations will seize theopportunity to make their response plans and support more explicit and transparent
to enhance their employment value proposition.
In 2024 and beyond, organizations will highlight and promote direct climate change
protections as a key part of their benefit offerings. These might include:• Explicit commitments to physical safety. Organizations may develop proactive plans
to offer shelter, energy and provisions when natural disasters arrive. Though manyorganizations built some of this infrastructure during the pandemic or in responseto recent weather events, the most aggressive will actively and transparently
communicate their response capabilities to their workforces.
• Compensation to impacted employees. Organizations may offer designated PTO ormonetary benefits to those who experience hardship due to climate-related events.
Subsidies for short-term housing, relocation assistance, disaster-related leave, or
stipends for specialized safety equipment could become more explicit componentsof organizations’ benefits packages.
• Mental health support. While many organizations have already expanded emotional
well-being offerings, some may begin to offer access to grief counselors to help theirworkforces worldwide cope with the uncertainty of a changing climate.
These benefits will be particularly impactful for organizations with localized operations
or a limited number of locations, where most, if not all, of their operations will stall inthe event of disaster.

Take Action:
How Major Shocks Affect Employees — and How You Can Support ThemHR leaders can leverage this guidance to develop a plan to support employees,
communicate key information and plan for the future.

9© 2024 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. CM_GBS_2508943

DEI doesn’t disappear, it becomes
the way we work

After a flood of corporate attention in 2020, the past couple of years have seen agrowing sense of disillusionment with DEI. In some places — the U.S. in particular —there’s even a sense of direct pushback. Two in five employees report feeling alienatedby their organization’s DEI strategy.8 But the critical need for diverse, equitable andinclusive workforces remains, leaving organizations uncertain about what to do next.
Given the leadership commitment to DEI programs and initiatives, companies will begin
to pivot from DEI existing in a silo to having it embedded throughout the organization.
This new approach will change how business leaders interact with DEI, positioning it
not as “what” they do, but “how” they achieve high performance in their key objectives.
This “embedded DEI” model will unlock this potential, with the long-term goal of fully
integrating DEI values into business objectives, daily operations and culture acrossan organization.
DEI leaders will directly consult with functional leaders, employing a DEI lens toco-create solutions to their most pressing challenges. With this paradigm shift,procurement leaders, for example, will see DEI as a critical part of their strategy tomaximize impact in sourcing suppliers, while product managers will emphasize which
demographic populations comprised market research and whether their technology
is accessible for people with disabilities. In this new model, DEI shifts from a dedicatedfunction to a shared way of working as leaders leverage DEI principles to pursue their
top strategic goals as a matter of course, because of the clear and personally relevantbusiness value more diverse, equitable and inclusive organizations produce.

Take Action:
2023 ReimagineHR Conference Presentation: Think Like a CFO: How DEI Leaders
Can Lead With Authority and Manage Diversity
Use this ReimagineHR Conference deep-dive presentation to develop a plan to leadand manage DEI more effectively amid uncertainty.

8102021 Gartner Human Deal Benchmarking Survey, n = 5,000.

© 2024 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. CM_GBS_2508943

Career stereotypes collapse in theface of workforce change

Careers used to be defined by promotion-based progression and increasing
specialization until retirement. But not anymore. Many employees prefer not to retire
at all or do so after a career shift that may involve less lucrative work. Many midcareer
employees are stepping out of the permanent workforce, taking a break or embracing
contingent work. Notably, in 2023, more than a quarter of surveyed employees said
they would like to make a significant change to their current work circumstances suchas working in a new industry or changing careers.9
Employees also face involuntary career disruptions due to economic cycles, natural disasters
and emerging technologies. As atypical career paths go mainstream, the stereotypes that
underpin most organizations’ talent management strategies will be detrimental to talentacquisition and retention. Organizations must adapt to these changes by:• Breaking the stereotype of career continuity by offering nontraditional employment
models and opportunities. This includes bringing back retired employees as gig workers
or mentors and facilitating temporary workforce departures with midcareer leave
programs and returnships. Goldman Sachs and Johnson & Johnson provide returnships
for people reentering the workforce.
• Letting go of the progressive career trajectory by decoupling expertise and tenure.
Think of young employees taking on leadership roles because of their expertise inniche terrains, or tenured professionals taking up internships in their areas of interest.
T-Mobile targets high school students with an aptitude for cybersecurity with its Explorer
Prep Program.
• Preparing for the imminent retirement of experienced workers by cross-training young
and midcareer employees. Organizations should increasingly offer internal rotation
so that anyone can train in a new subject, and create shadowing opportunities so thatexperienced workers can help develop expertise in less tenured colleagues. Tetra Pak
uses a rotation program, where nearly half of each product team is reshuffled every
18 months based on new skills they wish to learn.

Take Action:
Career Pathing Should Be Like Satellite Navigation, Not a Map
Use this actionable guidance to help develop compelling career paths to attract andretain talent while supporting internal employee development.

9112023 Gartner Modern Employee Experience and Manager Development Survey, n = 3,493.

© 2024 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. CM_GBS_2508943

Despite the historic uncertainty in 2024, CHROs have an
exciting opportunity to boldly lead talent into the future anddifferentiate their organizations as employers of choice. HR
leaders should proactively consider and integrate these trends
into their strategic planning if they wish to close talent gaps,
minimize potential risk, control conflict and achieve strong
workforce performance.

12© 2024 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. CM_GBS_2508943

Actionable, objective insight
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