In February, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called 2023 the year of efficiency. And while other leaders didn’t make such clear-cut of proclamations, widespread layoffs and diminished office perks have signaled what is perhaps the year’s biggest overarching trend: efficiency over everything.

Several other trends helped define 2023, including a shift away from the employee experience, AI’s proliferation, and the flattening of corporate hierarchies. 

Here are the 2023 trends that are likely to continue into 2024.

1. Employee experience takes a back seat

This year, organizations began to pull back from a pandemic-era focus on empathetic leadership and employee-centered strategies. “The pandemic was a human situation, and now we’re moving away from that,” says Anna Tavis, clinical professor and academic director of the human capital management department at NYU School of Professional Studies. “Companies that have been out there beating the drum about how much they care about their employees are automating their jobs.”

Just as in 2023, companies expect to invest less in the employee experience in 2024 and are scaling back investments in office perks, workplace flexibility, and DEI programs, according to an October Forrester report. Companies investing in DEI fell to 27% in 2023 from 33% the year before, and Forrester expects that number to drop to 20% by the end of 2024.

2. AI-powered efficiencies

AI investments are expected to increase in 2024 as companies more fully understand how it will change the way people work. 

“Every company right now is working on their AI strategy,” Tavis says. “We’re going to get to a certain level of stability and acceptance…There’s going to be a kind of middle-of-the-road approach rather than the extremes of AI is going to solve all of our problems, or AI is going to kill us all.”

As the fervor calms, Tavis expects companies will discover more AI-powered efficiencies within human resources.

“We’re going to see a very different group of HR professionals who are going to be a lot more technologically and analytically savvy,” she says. “The decisions around people vis-à-vis technology are going to be front and center in a lot of businesses.”

3. Renewed focus on middle managers

Middle management and how they lead their charge to drive productivity will become a greater focus next year. In the chaos of the pandemic, middle managers were forced to shoulder the personal needs of their employees while pushing for growth among geographically dispersed teams, leading many to report high levels of burnout over the last two years. Those pressures seem to have gone unnoticed, with many leaders scrapping middle management layers and flattening organizations. Going into 2024, Tavis predicts that companies will place a higher premium on making the role more effective by removing or automating some of their administrative responsibilities so they can support employees to deliver on broader company objectives.

“We went through a generation where the focus was at the top of the house and leadership, and now everyone is starting to understand that companies are often carried forward by middle management.”

Trey Williams
trey.williams@fortune.com
@trey3williams

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