From conversations with a number of CHROs from different industries, we summarise our top 10 trends for HR functions this year…
1. Employee Focus
‘The great realignment’ or as we like to call it the ‘great refresh’ has led to the most fluid and dynamic job market we have seen in years. Purpose is becoming increasingly key to HR professionals, and they are seeking roles where they feel valued and where they can make an impact. EVP, engaging culture and inspirational leadership will become critical to ensure retention. All HR leaders in all functions have a role to play in ensuring the EVP holistically centres employees as people.
2. Get Talent Management Right, Now.
CEOs and CHROs need to double down on talent and engagement initiatives across all levels of the organisation. Succession planning needs to be fast, slick and joined up with the external talent pools. More flexibility and calculated risk-taking will be encouraged when looking at talent pipelines and hipo identification. We expect more collaboration between Talent Acquisition and Talent Management and more hybrid roles as a result.
3. The Hybrid Work Conundrum
A vast majority of HR leaders expect that at least some of their employees will work remotely after the pandemic. However, there are some significant regional variances in this approach. It's hard to generalise across markets and industries, but planning an overarching strategy whilst taking into consideration regional variances will be essential in 2022. This shift to a more hybrid and agile approach will be a massive driver of transformation, and one HR leaders must be prepared to support. In HR, there is still a huge contrast between what employers and employees aspire to when it comes to remote/ flexible working –even within the small and tight global HR community.
4. How Flexible is Flexible Working?
Defining remote working and feasibility will be important for organisations this year. Setting boundaries and not setting precedents, exploring tax implications of certain locations, Brexit challenges in EMEA, and establishing how flexible your organisation can actually be to incorporate the demands of the talent.
5. Authentic and Holistic Approach to Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Along with expectations of greater empathy and a more human work environment, there is increasing pressure to improve equity and inclusion within organisations. Diversifying leadership across all functions and establishing accountability for DEI in leaders will be priorities. Less reactivity and more proactivity.
6. Employee Health & Well-being
CHROs will need to foster long-term workforce resilience by reassessing workforce support offerings to drive workforce health, not just performance. We anticipate more specialist roles in health, mental health and well-being at more senior levels to drive this agenda. HR leaders need to move away from a one-size-fits-all benefit solutions to a personalised approach to well-being benefits where the goal is to create a culture of care that meets the needs of all workers.
7. Compensation and Benefits in High Demand
Alongside talent acquisition, total rewards is one of the more dynamic functions in the market. Whether that’s scale ups looking to build consistencies and more structure as they get to a certain size or larger organisations evolving and innovating their approach to suit the post pandemic world, this will continue to be an area of focus. Benefits and linking reward to performance effectively will be priorities.
8. Fix Talent Acquisition and Plan for Higher Attrition
The most in demand talent pool globally outside of software developers, is in the talent acquisition space and TA professionals will continue to be in demand. We are seeing large scale TA transformations, investment in technology and further overlap to talent management. In 2022, the profile of talent acquisition functions within organisations will continue to rise. High attrition will continue so attraction and acquisition need to be fundamentally improved.
9. Evolution of Organisational Design in HR
More CHROs are looking to reshape their structures, and this is a year for CHROs to further organise the HR function to achieve its goals of agility, customer centricity and operational efficiency. HR operations will increasingly be rebranded as “Employee Experience”, encompassing more areas in tech and analytics. A number of CHROs we spoke to talked about buying in more digital capability, analytical mindsets, empathetic leadership, commercial drive and pragmatism into their teams.
10. HR Technology & Analytics
People analytics and HR technology will be fundamental in helping organisations transition out of the pandemic and optimise output and performance in a hybrid world. We anticipate a number of organisations will strive to augment this area of the function, improving areas such as predictive analytics and AI.
