The world of work has changed dramatically in the past decade, shaped by factors that include a brutal recession, technological advances and a new generation of workers with very different ideas of what employment should look like.

Ten years ago, companies surveyed by the SHRM Foundation said their top future challenges were succession planning and providing leaders with the skills needed to be successful. Today, employers say the increasing competition for skilled workers is a top concern. As a result, the workplace is much more employee-focused and individualized. That’s pushing employers to, among other things, provide flexible schedules to people with family obligations or give tuition help to entry-level workers so that they can get a new job — somewhere else.

“I would say [HR is] moving from processing paper to making sure individuals feel valued in the organization,” says Kate Bischoff, SHRM-SCP, an employment attorney at tHRive Law & Consulting LLC, which is based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The work is “much more personalized than it has ever been before.”

​The trend toward an employee-tailored workplace is likely to continue, and you may need to adjust quickly if you haven’t already started. “We’re going to now see this shift to employee value, and this is critical. It’s the deficit we see today in HR,” says Rusty Lindquist, vice president of human capital management strategy and intellectual property at HR software company BambooHR, which is based near Salt Lake City. HR’s traditional emphasis on payroll, benefits and procedures will need to broaden. “The HR of the next decade has to be more focused on performance and productivity. And that’s going to require a seismic shift in thinking.”
So what has changed over the past decade, and how will those trends evolve in the years to come?

THEN: Ten years ago, social media was fairly new and a little unsettling for business leaders and HR. Twitter was just 1 year old, and Facebook was thought of mainly as a distraction that threatened to decrease productivity. Two-thirds of employers used technology to block connections to banned websites in 2006, 3 out of 4 monitored which websites workers visited and more than half monitored employees’ e-mails, according to a BambooHR study of HR trends. NOW: A more relaxed attitude prevails. Last year, just 30 percent of organizations blocked access to certain sites and even fewer kept an eye on what workers were viewing and e-mailing, according to BambooHR. Of course, company leaders fully understand that social media can be distracting—and will continue to be for as long as there are cute cat videos to share—but they also realize that trying to control employees’ online lives at work is likely futile and perhaps even counterproductive. Social media is “how people are used to finding information and communicating. If you limit it too much, it’s going to stifle them,” says Donatella Verrico, chief human resources officer at law firm Lowenstein Sandler in Roseland, N.J.  WHAT’S NEXT: In the next decade, companies may well abandon e-mail and use social media or other instant messaging tools as their primary internal communication vehicle, predicts Shawn Casemore, president of Ontario, Canada-based management consulting firm Casemore and Co. Inc.

Percentage of companies that track which websites employees visit

 2. Benefits Go a la Carte
 

THEN: Health and retirement programs were among the most common benefits employers provided, and benefit offerings were relatively limited. NOW: Employees still value the basics, but they also want more flexible and individualized ben efits. Companies have responded by recalibrating their perks to remain competitive in the war for talent. Retail giant Amazon, for example, offers its hourly employees a generous tuition benefit and onsite schooling. The startling detail? The company trains workers for jobs outside of Amazon.The Career Choice program offers up to 95 percent reimbursement of tuition and fees (up to $12,000 over four years) to train employees in high-demand fields in regions where they work. They can learn about aircraft mechanics, machine tool technologies and nursing, for example. “Being able to advertise such a program helps with recruiting,” says Juan Garcia, Amazon’s global leader for associate career development. And internal studies show that participants have one-fourth the attrition rate of nonparticipants. Nearly 10,000 people have taken advantage of the benefit.Student loan help is another popular perk with modern workers. “Years ago, the employee entered the workforce wanting to know right from the beginning, ‘What is my retirement plan?’ The entry-level employee is now burdened with educational debt that didn’t exist previously, and they’re asking, ‘What kind of benefits can you provide for student debt?’ ” says Skip Spriggs, senior executive vice president and chief human resources officer at TIAA, a New York City-based financial services company. ​

WHAT’S NEXT: More companies may embrace a benefits model similar to the approach behind consumer-driven health plans: Employees are allocated a set amount that they can spend on the perks that best meet their needs. That’s the direction LinkedIn went in after it offered a generous paid-parental-leave policy—and heard from employees without children. “We got quick feedback: ‘This isn’t fair. If I don’t have kids, what will you do for me?’ ” says Pat Wadors, the company’s senior vice president of global talent organization. So in 2015, the business piloted Perk Up, a benefit that provides up to $500 a quarter for workers to spend on lifestyle perks such as massages, a personal trainer or a professional dog-walker.