Happy Friday! ‘This week in CX’ brings you the latest roundup of industry news. And welcome to the first news coverage report of 2023! 

This week, we’re looking at new data that is supporting hybrid working. This includes evidence of a Tuesday-to-Thursday work week and current commuting issues driving workers to the trending model. New Qualtrics research has also seen that young workers are seemingly more ambitious than their older colleagues.

Key news

  • The UK’s Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, announced this week that he will be enforcing children to study maths until the age of 18. This is following new data that less than 50% of UK teens continue mathematical studies past secondary school level at age 16. The rising importance of studying mathematics comes from a shift towards a data-focused world, and the increasing amount of jobs seeking data analytics and financial and numeracy competency. Around eight million adults in England have the numeracy skills of primary school children, according to government figures. In a data-driven economy, will maths help equip students for the modern workplace?
  • Conversational AI platform Boost.ai has shared that leading Nordic bank DNB has been able to automate over 50% of chat traffic with Boost.ai’s virtual agents. As a result, DNB has seen an increase in customer satisfaction scores. Its employee-facing agent exhibited improved accuracy rates of 80%. This reflects a shift in the Nordic banking market, where over 90 per cent of customers regularly bank online making it essential for banks like DNB to to take action and seek assistance in transforming customer experience.
  • According to Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO, in a blog post shared only yesterday, the online retail giant will be letting go of more employees than initially expected. In November, they estimated 10,000 cuts. However, this has almost doubled previous expectations – 18,000 employees have been let go.
  • Despite the backlash and upset caused by the introduction of charging customers to return their orders, more organisations are set to implement the fees too. Return fees go up to £2.99 and are said to “reflect the increasing cost of collecting and processing returns”. Many experts say that retailers are justified in the move and shouldn’t fear making the change as the modern shopper is accustomed to paying for convenience. Some of these organisations involved in making the change include MyProtein, LookFantastic, Glossybox and Mountain Warehouse.

Tuesday to Thursday is the new working week

Placemake.io and Visitor Insights examined anonymised phone data from more than 500 UK high streets from 2019 to 2022. The study found increased activity in small towns during the week. This supports the idea of more people working from home, rather than inner-city office buildings. The data has found a new shift – the working office week is now only running from Tuesday to Thursday.

Real estate firm CBRE Investment Management said empty office space in London has more than doubled in the last three years. The company’s head of European research, David Inskip, warned many office districts would struggle if there was nothing but a desk and a computer on offer. “It has to be a high quality built environment that draws you in,” he said.

Mark Allan, chief executive of property firm LandSec, said Tuesday to Thursday was incredibly busy in the City of London. Activity on Mondays was only 50-60% of that level. 

Since the adaptions we made during the early Covid days, 8-hour days in the office 5 -days a week has become a thing of the past, largely. Are you still adapting to hybrid working? Check out some of our top resources on the topic to boost your knowledge and perspective:

Young workers are more ambitious in order to retire sooner

Qualtrics’ recent study of 3,000 working Americans found that more than one-third (35%) of workers overall say their career ambitions decreased over the past three years. However, younger workers – Generation Z and young millennials (18-34 years old) – are growing more ambitious. 35% are reporting higher career goals than they had pre-pandemic.

Younger workers are more likely to aspire to higher job titles than older workers. These workers want to found their own business, be part of the C-suite, and lead a full department or multiple teams. This is a higher percentage than those older employees who want to hold those same positions. Just 8% of young workers want to be individual contributors and not manage others.

This career ambition may be driven by a separate goal to enjoy their life outside of work obligations. The largest motivating factor for young workers to do their best at work is earning money. Whereas older workers are more motivated by personal pride in their work.

You can find a breakdown of Qualtrics’ data regarding career ambition by age below:

What 5 days of UK rail strikes looks like

In an act of protest for better pay for rail industry workers, the UK is currently looking at 5 days of strikes. This began on Tuesday 3rd January. This has massively impacted those relaying on train services to commute to their workplace, and created uncertainty amongst organisational approaches to this first week back at work. It’s understandable that many workers are changing their plans – opting to work from home rather than risk a difficult commute into the office.

LinkedIn News UK hosted a poll on their page to see how commuters are being affected.

Will current political and social issues cause a mass shift in the adoption of hybrid working models? Many online have shared distrust of public transport following these issues. Strikes, delays and cancellations have become a regular occurrence over the last few months. 

This also follows the forecast at train fares increase by up to 5.9% by the end of this first quarter. Even if the strikes and travel delays subdue, will workers even be able to afford the commute costs?

Thanks for tuning into CXM’s weekly roundup of industry news. Check back next Friday for the latest updates of the week!

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