Employees feel optimistic — but anxious — for 2023

WORKPLACE CULTURE: In a recent survey by Workhuman , nearly one-third of respondents anticipate employees being more vocal with leadership in the new year. Of the 1,000 full-time U.S. employees surveyed, many expressed optimism for the year ahead, with 41% of respondents anticipating work-life balance to improve in 2023.?That's all putting pressure on organizations to strike a?cultural balance and build a workplace that can drive both productivity and employee loyalty, says Dr. Meisha-ann Martin, an industrial and organizational psychologist and the senior director of people analytics and research at Workhuman.?

"I hear a lot of conversations about what the business needs, but the real conversation should be around what employees need," Martin says. "Because when employees get what they need, businesses get what they need. Every single way of working has advantages and disadvantages — the trick is to choose the way that works best for your employees."

Read: To build employee trust, lead with vulnerability and transparency in 2023

TUITION BENEFITS: The University of Michigan Health-West hospital and Grand Rapids Community College recently announced they will pay full tuition for students enrolled in the community college's nursing program, in exchange for the guarantee that they will work two years at the hospital post-grad.?

"We have been 100 nurses short throughout the pandemic and it was chaos," says Peter Hahn, CEO of University of Michigan Health-West. "We really wanted to find this solution that would give us a stable pipeline of nurses coming into the system, [while also] diversifying our nursing staff."?

Read: Tuition assistance benefits are helping one hospital recruit and retain nurses

BEST PLACES TO WORK: Comparably , a platform that provides compensation and culture data for public and private companies, has announced its sixth annual "Best Company Culture" winners, rating the top 100 companies with 500 or more employees. Using anonymous employee feedback that was submitted to Comparably's website over the past year, the platform examined which companies saw the most positive responses. The questions centered on 16 core culture metrics, such as compensation, career growth and leadership. With over 15 million anonymous ratings on 70,000 companies, the ranking pulls directly from employees' experiences with their workplace.

Read: 10 companies with the best work cultures in 2022