On the one hand side, businesses must deal with the vast skills gap that exists in areas such as data science, AI, and other technology areas, ensuring they are creating the data and tech-savvy workforce needed to succeed in the future. This will mean reskilling and up-skilling huge sways of people in our businesses as well as recruiting new people that have the skills needed for the future. Humans will increasingly share their work with intelligent machines and smart robots, and that has huge implications for the skills and talent companies require in the future. On top of that, the accelerated digital transformation (trend one above) leads to more workplace automation that will augment pretty much every single job in the world. Offering people fulfilling work, ongoing opportunities to grow and learn, flexibility and diverse, value-oriented workplaces will all be essential in 2023. This has put pressure on employers to ensure they are providing attractive careers, the flexibility of hybrid work, and an enticing work environment and company culture. Over the past year, we have seen huge movements of talented people, referred to as the great resignation and quiet quitting, as workers reassessed the impact of work and what they want to get out of their lives. As well as customer experience, businesses increasingly need to think about employee experience as competition for the most talented and skilled workers grows more intense. The trend towards experience is so strong that brands like Adobe and Adweek are appointing chief experience officers (CXO) to ensure that it is made a foundational element of business strategy.
BIG BUSINESSES OFFLINE
These trends will impact both online and offline retail. We might use virtual dressing rooms to dress up avatars of ourselves – as pioneered already by the likes of Hugo Boss – or it could involve AR, as used by Walmart, to see how clothes will fit on our actual bodies. Think of online shops where we can browse and "try on" virtual representations of clothes, jewelry, and accessories. The metaverse – something of a catch-all term used by futurists to describe the “next level” of the internet, where we interact with brands and fellow consumers through immersive technology, including 3D environments and VR – is the stage where this will play out. These will still play a key role in 2023, but the game has evolved, with this year’s keywords being immersion and interactivity. Think recommendation engines that help us choose what to buy or online customer service portals that deal with problems and after-sales support. The role that technology plays here, traditionally, has been to streamline processes and remove hassle from the life of the consumer. Both play a part, to some extent, in the way we experience the process of choosing, purchasing, and enjoying the goods and services we spend our money on. That doesn't necessarily mean that price point and quality take a back seat, though. In 2023, customers crave experience above all else. For example, it is easy to forget the environmental impact of cloud service providers and the impact of data centers on the environment. The assessment and plans should also go beyond the company walls and cover the entire supply chain and the ESG credentials of suppliers.
BIG BUSINESSES HOW TO
Every business needs a plan with clear goals and timeframes of how to reduce any negative impacts, and then the plan needs to be underpinned by solid action plans. This should start with measuring the impact any business is having on society and the environment and then move to increasing transparency, reporting, and accountability. In 2023, companies need to make sure that their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) processes are moved to the center of their strategy. I have recently worked with a number of companies that decided to in-source parts of their manufacturing after they identified a risk of relying on Chinese manufacturing that is still plagued by a zero-Covid policy and subsequent shutdowns. That way, they can explore ways to mitigate that risk, such as alternative suppliers and becoming more self-reliant. It is important that companies map out their entire supply chains and identify any exposure to supply and inflation risks.
This means reducing exposure to volatile market pricing of commodities, as well as building protective measures into supply chains to deal with shortages and rising logistical costs. To combat this and stay afloat, companies need to improve their resilience in any way that they can. Many industries are still plagued by supply chain issues that emerged during the global shutdowns caused by Covid-19 and have only got worse due to the war in Ukraine.
We are told by experts to expect ongoing inflation and subdued economic growth. The economic outlook for most of the world doesn’t look great in 2023.
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