The top 5 HR trends today – and HR's guide to what's nextSAP SuccessFactors 每年都会深入研究全球 HR 趋势,以帮助企业制定更有效的人才战略。2025 年,他们分析了来自 40 家全球权威媒体的 254 项预测,归纳出 5 大核心“元趋势”,展现 HR 在企业中的双重角色:既是变革的“指挥者”,也是政策落地的“引航者”。
1️⃣ 重新连接员工: 由于经济压力、决策争议和信任危机,员工体验恶化,57% 的员工认为如果公司不采取措施,他们的倦怠问题不会改善。HR 需关注心理契约,增强员工信任。
2️⃣ AI 从炒作走向实际价值: AI 进入大规模落地阶段,企业需明确 ROI 并平衡员工和领导者对 AI 价值的不同预期。46% 的员工认为 AI 省下的时间属于自己,而非公司。
3️⃣ 技能转型的平衡策略: 由于 AI 发展迅猛,企业技能鸿沟加剧。除了关注技能,薪酬激励成为推动学习的重要因素,54% 的员工表示,如果公司实施基于技能的薪酬体系,他们会更愿意学习新技能。
4️⃣ DEI&B 的分歧: 企业对多元化、公平性和包容性(DEI&B)态度不一,26% 的员工认为公司对 DEI&B 关注过多,而 33% 认为关注太少。HR 需明确 DEI&B 战略,以促进长期文化变革。
5️⃣ 混合办公的未来: 组织已基本确定办公模式,2025 年将验证其成效。54% 的员工愿意牺牲部分薪酬,以换取更大的工作灵活性。
这些趋势展现了 HR 在塑造未来工作模式中的关键作用,企业需借助创新技术和数据驱动的洞察来优化人力资源管理。
Each year, the HR Research Scientists at SAP SuccessFactors conduct research to understand the top HR and workforce trends facing organizations and share our perspective on what HR teams should consider as they look to help their companies address these trends. This year we aggregated and synthesized data from 40 global and regional reputable business press sources that put forward 254 individual trends and predictions grounded in their own research and data. We then conducted a content analysis of the trends sample to derive the five key themes, or “meta-trends.” While our annual report always includes some pointed commentary and critique about each trend based on our expertise in psychology, new this year is calling upon our own body of original applied research to incorporate datapoints and insights, resulting in a more evidence-based point of view.
This year’s trends are in different stages of maturity and on different trajectories; therefore, the role that HR needs to play to help businesses tackle and capitalize on these trends is different. We’ve organized the trends into two sections aligned to the dual role HR will play in addressing them.
First, HR will need to act as a Conductor, leading the orchestration of a strategy and associated change management across the business to realize the opportunities these trends offer:
Trend #1: Reconnecting the disconnected employee: Contentious decisions, macroeconomic and sociopolitical stressors, and breached trust with leadership has led to employee stress and burnout – and consequently, a crisis of disconnect and counterproductivity. In the year ahead:
Leaders must ruthlessly prioritize fulfilling their end of the “psychological contract” by meeting employees’ basic needs.
People managers will be seen as a lifeline for employees drowning in disconnect.
STAT: 57% of employees feel unless their companies make some serious changes, their burnout will not get better.
Trend #2: Moving from AI hype to AI impact:Organizations are shifting from AI pilot projects to enterprise-wide rollouts, demanding proof of clear value and ROI. In the year ahead:
Organizations will home in on their key value drivers for AI, revealing their true priorities.
The body of research on the ROI of AI will be built this year.
Organizations will find friction between leaders’ and employees’ goals for using AI.
STAT: 46% of employees feel that the time that they save by using AI tools at work belongs to them, not their organization.
Trend #3: Striking a balance to steer skills forward: Organizations continue to face pervasive skills gaps, in part due to rapid AI advancements. A more balanced approach is needed to see tangible progress in skills-based transformations this year. In the year ahead:
“Skills-based” will no longer be the only goal.
Pay will prove itself the missing piece of the upskilling puzzle.
The human vs. technical skill debate will move from or to and.
STAT: 54% of employees would be more motivated to learn new skills if their company instituted skills-based pay.
Second, HR will need to act as a Navigator, leading the organization through precarious waters and circumventing obstacles to put policies into practice for the betterment of all stakeholders:
Trend #4: Divesting or doubling down on diversity, equity, inclusions, and belonging (DEI&B): Some organizations remain committed to DEI&B goals, continuing to ask “How are we going to do this?” Others plan to divest, instead now asking “Are we going to do this?” In the year ahead:
Some will shy away from DEI&B goals, but these approaches will vary.
Taking a stand on DEI&B will change company cultures in the long term, but it’s not clear exactly how.
STAT: 26% of employees say companies focus too much on DEI&B, 41% of employees say companies focus an appropriate amount on DEI&B, and 33% of employees say companies focus too little on DEI&B.
Trend #5: Plugging into or pulling the plug on hybrid work: Now that organizations have determined their position on where their employees will work, it’s time to see if they achieve the outcomes they intended. In the year ahead:
Those businesses choosing the return-to-office path will see whether their bets paid off this year.
Those choosing the hybrid or remote path will take it a step further, integrating autonomy as a core value in other aspects of work design.
STAT: 54% of employees would consider being paid less if they could have more flexibility in where and when they work.
Read the report to see what’s now and what’s next for each trend, along with some fast facts that uplevel the nerdiness of this year’s trends report. We also include a section on how SAP SuccessFactors solutions can help organizations address the 2025 HR trends.
The Key to a Thriving Workforce? A Smart Approach to AI微软的最新数据强调了人工智能对员工赋权、活力和生产力的积极影响。领导者可以通过关注其员工队伍是否在“繁荣”中来促进良好表现,微软将“繁荣”定义为被赋予权力和充满活力地进行有意义的工作。员工信号调查显示,人工智能的使用能通过减少乏味工作并促进有意义的工作来提高生产力、努力和影响。人工智能工具还与更高的赋权和活力得分相关,表明员工队伍的“繁荣”。成功的关键在于将人工智能与支持性文化相结合,提供必要的培训,并使人工智能项目与公司目标保持一致。
New data reveals how access to AI can help employees feel more empowered and energized, and find more meaning in their work.
what’s the best way for leaders to foster good performance? How can they tell if their efforts are successful or not? Often, companies try to answer these questions by measuring metrics like engagement or financial results. And while those are critical to business success, at Microsoft, we also want to explore whether the workforce is thriving.
“Thriving has become the North Star for how we understand employees,” says Microsoft VP of People Analytics Dawn Klinghoffer, who leverages data to help leaders understand and improve employee’s experience. “We define thriving as being empowered and energized to do meaningful work. Are people excited to come to work every day, excited about the opportunities ahead?”
One of the ways we gauge this at Microsoft is with our Employee Signals survey, a biannual company-wide poll. The recent results not only offered insights into the tangible benefits of thriving, they also uncovered a key catalyst for fostering it: access to AI.
The Benefits of Thriving
We are focused on fostering a culture of thriving because our research suggests that doing so can boost how effective our workforce perceives itself to be. We also found that employees who are thriving are likely to have the highest scores on our indicators of high performance, like productivity, effort, and impact
Additionally, survey results suggest that employees who are thriving are more likely to go above and beyond what is expected of them. They take more pride in their work and they are less apt to look for employment elsewhere.
Recent Employee Signals survey results give us some new insights about what it means to thrive in this new era of work. We discovered that higher scores on what we’ve identified as the most important factors that support thriving—finding meaning in work, feeling empowered, and feeling energized—also translate to a measurable boost in productivity. Furthermore, access to AI seems to correlate with higher scores on each of these pillars.
Meaningfulness: According to our data, employees who find their work meaningful are 59% more likely to say they are productive at work—and 28% more likely to say they put in extra effort. Key to that is minimizing time spent on tasks that don’t feel meaningful. This is where AI comes in: AI assistants can lighten the load by generating rough drafts, sifting through piles of data, or simply acting as a sounding board and brainstorming partner to help people nail down a plan of action. Crucially, incorporating AI into the day correlated to a 20% jump in scores relating to meaningful work.
“What we find is that AI is really there to help you take friction and toil out of the system, and to remove the drudgery of work,” Klinghoffer says. “And when people are able to remove some of that drudgery, we see that they’re more productive, and they thrive more.”
Empowerment: Survey results also point to a future in which AI empowers people in their jobs. People who are empowered do not feel they have resource constraints, and they aren’t overburdened with people telling them how to do their work, Klinghoffer says, “so they have more freedom to do things the way they want and need to get the job done.” Access to AI tools and resources, we found, correlated to 34% higher scores for questions related to empowerment.
Energy: Our employees who say they feel energized are 44% more likely to say they feel proud of their work, and 22% more likely to say they take the initiative to be productive and put discretionary effort into their work. All levels of AI use— learning about it, grasping its value, incorporating it into processes and products, or simply having AI resources—correlated to higher reported energy levels. In fact, scores on energy-related questions for those using AI jumped almost 27%.
These results offer solid evidence that AI can be a catalyst for thriving and high performance. But how a company goes about making AI available will determine whether the company can reap these benefits. If employees are equipped with the right knowledge, tools, training, and resources to leverage AI in their work, they can begin to tap the full potential of an AI companion.
The key to success, Klinghoffer says, is integrating AI in a way that spans culture, learning, and people management. That way, everyone will understand how AI can help them focus on the most meaningful work.
The ABCs of Thriving with AI
Klinghoffer recommends keeping the following blueprint top of mind.
Accelerate alignment: Strengthen connections between employees, the company’s mission, and the transformative potential of AI. Clarify how AI initiatives align with the company’s goals and employees’ roles. Celebrate contributions to AI projects to highlight their impact on the company and customers.
“Employees who felt more connected to the mission and really understood how their work fits into the larger system were also the ones who were really thriving,” says Ketaki Sodhi, Senior HR Data Analyst at Microsoft. “When we looked at Copilot and employee sentiment around AI, these were also the folks who were willing to experiment and find ways to use AI to take some of the drudgery out of the day-to-day.” Smart leaders should seek out those internal champions and offer them support and encouragement.
Be inclusive: Create an environment where all employees feel equipped to engage with AI. This includes providing AI education, training, and resources, as well as fostering a culture of innovation and supporting a safe space for experimentation. Regular check-ins and feedback sessions can help employees express concerns and share ideas related to AI. Once users are encouraged and equipped to explore the possibilities of AI, our research suggests that a time savings of just 11 minutes a day is all it takes for them to start to appreciate its value.
Cultivate collective growth: Create a culture that empowers employees to decide how to do their best work, while investing in moments that matter together. Provide employees with the flexibility to plan their days and create time to meaningfully engage with AI. Encourage them to explore how AI can help them free up time for creative and strategic work. Then highlight use cases and foster collaboration among teams to encourage knowledge sharing.
Collective growth encompasses in-role experiences (how do we create time and space for employees to learn within their role?) and beyond (what comes next for me? Is there a viable career that excites me at this company?). AI can help with both—by eliminating the drudgery that keeps employees from doing more creative work, and by facilitating positive employee movement. “You see a huge boost. People get excited doing something new, growing their skills and experiences, and furthering their career,” Klinghoffer says. “A couple of months ago on my team we had people who were interested in a different role raise their hands, and we facilitated changes for about 20% of my org.”
Employee Engagement
2024年06月24日
Employee Engagement
世界幸福报告能教给我们关于工作的什么? What The World Happiness Report Teaches Us About Work最新《世界幸福报告》揭示,尽管经济增长,美国幸福感下降。研究强调,高薪并非幸福的关键,而公平薪酬、良好的企业文化才是。特别是年轻人,受到气候变化、政治纷争等影响,幸福感低落。企业需关注文化建设、弹性工作,关照员工心理健康。工作场所的信任、社区感和公平至关重要。我们要反思:真正的幸福是什么?
我每年都认真研读《世界幸福报告》,今年的报告特别引人深思。以下是我对一些关键发现的解读。
首先,美国的幸福指数(10分满分)降至第23位,比全球最幸福的国家芬兰低了13%。实际上,在过去15年中,美国的幸福度几乎下降了8%,呈现出持续的年降趋势。对于我们这些生活在美国的人来说,这可能并不陌生:坏消息、政治争斗以及人们在价值观上的分歧似乎无处不在。
这一切发生的同时,美国的GDP增长却持续领先世界上大多数主要经济体。这意味着我们作为一个国家正在变得更加富裕,却显著地变得不那么幸福(下文将详细解释)。
从企业角度来看,这个观点很简单:仅仅提高薪资并不能使人们感到更加幸福。尽管每个人都希望得到公平的报酬,但高薪酬并不直接转化为高参与度。我们2023年的《薪酬公平终极指南》发现,与薪酬水平相比,薪酬公平与员工参与度的关联性高出7倍。
其次,报告指出,在美国,年轻人的幸福感明显低于老年人(这一点并非在所有国家都适用,但在大多数发达国家中是这样的)。在美国,30岁以下人群的幸福评分为6.4,而60岁以上人群的评分为7.3,幸福度低了12%。我们对年轻人的这一低幸福评分使美国在全球青年幸福排行榜上仅位列第62位,远低于我们的总体排名。
这反映出我在上周播客中讨论的现象。如今的年轻工作者担忧全球变暖,他们在年轻时就经历了疫情的冲击,他们对于战争、通货膨胀、社会问题以及政治不和感到沮丧。埃德曼信任度量尺表明,年轻人认为相比政府,企业在为社会带来创新方面更值得信赖,高出近20%。但令人担忧的是,这种信任程度也在下滑。
从企业的视角来看,这进一步强化了播客中提到的观点:我们(美国)的劳动力中位年龄现已达到33岁。这表明许多关键员工对生活的热情有所下降,这迫使雇主需要采取更多措施。我们对企业文化、员工福祉、工作灵活性和个人成长的关注,现在比以往任何时候都显得更为重要。这就是像四天工作周、灵活工作时间以及其他诸多福利(如生育支持、儿童看护、心理健康、健身、财务福利)变得越来越普遍的原因。
(最新的劳动统计局数据显示,我们在福利上的支出占工资总额的31.1%,比三年前的29%有所增加。在信息行业,这个比例高达35.5%,是有史以来的最高值。)
此外,重点强调:对企业来说,重振早期职业发展计划至关重要。许多企业在20世纪60、70年代建立了这些计划,但随后这些计划逐渐被忽视。如果你正在从大学招聘顶尖人才,并投资于校园招聘(这一趋势正在上升),那么确保你有一个坚实的1-2年发展计划、工作轮岗以及面向年轻人的群体参与计划是非常重要的。我最近与康卡斯特讨论了他们的计划,他们的早期职业发展计划正在直接为他们的领导力管道做出贡献。
第三,也是最引人注目的一点是,报告强调了社会关系和信任在幸福感中的巨大作用。进行这项研究的学者团队发现,幸福感的“坎特里尔阶梯”(一个简单的“你觉得自己多幸福”的1-10评分问题)可以分解为六个贡献因素:
人均GDP(财富)、社会支持(密切关系的数量和质量)、预期寿命(健康)、生活选择的自由(按个人意愿生活的能力)、慷慨(向他人给予金钱和时间的倾向)以及腐败感知(相信“系统”是公平的)。
这些因素对幸福的贡献度大开眼界。
令人惊讶的是,社会关系是幸福感的最大贡献者,而健康只占大约1.4%。请注意,第二重要的因素是对腐败的感知或者说是公平感,这解释了为什么薪酬公平非常重要。我们再次发现,财富对幸福感的影响相对较小。
这对我们的工作有何启示?
这里有一些简单的启示:
关系很重要。如果管理层和主管不能建立起团队合作感,员工便会感到不适。尽管我们面临财务和运营压力,但我们仍需抽时间了解员工、倾听他们的声音,并与他们共度愉快时光。通过聚集人员并创建跨功能团队,我们即使在远程工作情况下也能建立社交关系。
信任至关重要。我曾在高层领导贪婪、不忠、不诚实的环境中工作过,公司内的每个人都能感觉到这一点。信任是经年累月建立起来的资产,我们必须不断地进行投资。通过道德、诚实和倾听来培养信任,你的领导模式中包含了这些元素吗?
薪酬的影响可能比你想象的要小。虽然每个人都希望赚更多钱,但人们更希望感觉到奖励是公平且慷慨的。因此,不应仅仅过度奖励表现突出的员工,而忽视其他人的努力。
生活选择的自由极为重要。众多研究显示,与薪资相比,员工更加重视工作的灵活性,因此,考虑将四天工作周和灵活工作选项作为你的雇佣政策的核心部分是非常重要的。
多年前,我在一个人力资源领导者的大型会议上发表了关于企业公民责任的演讲。我指出,公司就像小型社会一样,如果我们的企业“社会”不公平、不透明、不自由,那么我们的员工就会感受到痛苦。演讲结束时,我不确定听众的反应如何,但来自宜家的一大群人向我走来,给了我一个热情的拥抱。宜家这家公司,深深植根于瑞典的社会主义文化,是地球上最长久的公司之一。他们真心相信集体思维、公平和对每个个体的尊重。
原文来自:https://joshbersin.com/2024/03/what-the-world-happiness-report-can-teach-us-about-work/
How to Build Your HR Technology Stack for 2024In the AI age, you should use HR technology to ensure seamless integration and compatibility with your overall HR strategy for 2024. These are what Beqom is aiming for.
Jan.17,2024 As organizations navigate the complexities of the evolving workforce in 2024, the strategic use of technology in Human Resources (HR) has become critical. This blog explores the crucial role of HR systems to deliver on corporate objectives, automate and streamline processes, improve the employee user experience, and reduce the administrative burden on HR.
We also take a look at essential criteria for HR when evaluating technology solutions and delve into the nuanced landscape of trying to rely on HR suites versus a best-of-breed approach.
What is an HR tech stack?
The term "HR tech stack" refers to the comprehensive suite of tools and software applications that HR professionals use to manage various aspects of human resources. Just as a chef carefully selects and organizes different ingredients and methods to create a masterpiece, HR leaders curate and integrate diverse solutions to optimize HR processes, enhance employee engagement, and contribute strategically to business success.
An HR tech stack typically includes a combination of software for recruitment, onboarding, performance management, learning and development, employee engagement, compensation management, and more. These tools work synergistically to streamline HR workflows, drive efficiency, and enable data-driven decision-making. The selection of tools depends on the unique needs and objectives of the organization, reflecting its high-level philosophy for HR technology adoption.
The evolution of HR tech stack in modern businesses
The journey of HR tech stacks has undergone a significant evolution in tandem with the changing of the modern workplace. In the early stages, HR systems primarily focused on automating administrative tasks and maintaining employee records. However, as organizations recognized the strategic importance of HR in achieving business objectives, the HR tech stack evolved into a dynamic ecosystem designed to address complex challenges and leverage opportunities.
Key phases in the evolution have included:
Automation of administrative tasks
Early 2000s: The initial phase saw the adoption of HR information systems (HRIS) to automate routine administrative tasks, such as payroll processing and time tracking. Basic Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) emerged to simplify recruitment processes.
Introduction of integrated suites
Mid-2000s to early 2010s: Integrated HR suites gained prominence, offering a unified platform for various HR functions. These suites aimed to streamline processes and enhance data consistency by providing a centralized platform for HR activities.
Focus on employee experience and engagement
Late 2010s: With the increasing emphasis on the employee experience, HR tech stacks expanded to include tools for talent management (recruiting, onboarding, learning, etc.), compensation and benefits, performance management, and employee engagement. Mobile applications and self-service portals became integral to fostering a positive workplace culture.
Rise of specialized best-of-breed solutions
Present day: The current phase witnesses a shift towards specialized best-of-breed software. Businesses are recognizing the value of choosing tools that excel in specific HR functions, providing depth and flexibility in their HR tech stacks, while delivering an improved employee experience.
Significance of the evolution
The evolution of HR tech stacks mirrors the broader transformation in HR's role—from a predominantly administrative function to a strategic partner driving company success. Modern HR tech stacks are not just about automation; they represent a strategic investment in technologies that empower HR professionals to make informed decisions, enhance employee engagement, and contribute meaningfully to achieving business objectives.
Crafting a high-level philosophy for HR technology
As organizations embark on the journey of leveraging technology in their Human Resources (HR) functions in 2024, it's helpful first to establish a high-level philosophy to guide your choices. As with most business decisions, it’s best to start with the "why" and articulate the overarching goals HR seeks to achieve for the company.
Aim for strategic alignment
Why do it? Your high-level systems philosophy must align seamlessly with the organization's overall strategic objectives. HR digital solutions should not be implemented in isolation but as a strategic enabler, contributing to the achievement of broader business goals like diversity, profit margin, market share, and so on.
How to do it. HR leaders should collaboratively engage with organizational leadership to understand key business objectives and challenges. The technology philosophy should then be crafted to align with and support these goals.
Enhance the employee experience
Why do it? A key focus of HR technology should be on enhancing the overall employee experience. By delivering value to employees, providing user-friendly interfaces, fostering collaboration, and enabling self-service capabilities, HR can create an environment where employees thrive.
How to do it. Conducting regular employee feedback surveys, analyzing pain points in HR processes, and understanding employee needs will inform the technology approach. The goal is to implement solutions that make work more meaningful and enjoyable for employees.
Drive efficiency and agility
Why do it? HR technology should be a catalyst for operational efficiency and agility. By automating repetitive tasks, streamlining workflows, and providing real-time insights, HR contributes to the organization's ability to adapt swiftly to changing market dynamics.
How to do it. Assessing current HR processes, identifying bottlenecks, and evaluating the capability and adaptability of existing systems will guide the decision-making process. The aim is to implement an HR platform that not only addresses current needs but also scales as the organization evolves.
Enable data-driven decision-making
Why do it? A high-level philosophy should emphasize the importance of leveraging data for informed decision-making. HR technology should provide the tools and analytics necessary to transform raw data into actionable insights, empowering HR professionals to make strategic decisions.
How to do it. Assessing the company's data maturity, identifying critical HR metrics, and understanding the capabilities of offerings in the market to support strategic decision-making at all levels will guide the choice of technology that aligns with this philosophy.
Cultivate a culture of continuous improvement
Why do it? The philosophy behind HR technology should embrace a culture of continuous improvement. Solutions should not be static but evolve to meet changing organizational needs, staying abreast of industry trends and workplace regulations, and driving innovation.
How to do it. Regularly evaluating the effectiveness of existing technology, staying informed about emerging HR tech trends, and fostering a culture of innovation within the HR team contribute to a philosophy that embraces ongoing improvement.
In essence, the high-level philosophy behind the HR tech stack should be a strategic roadmap, guiding the business towards success. It is the articulation of what HR aims to achieve and why technology is a critical enabler in achieving those objectives. Crafting this philosophy involves aligning with corporate goals, prioritizing employees, driving efficiency and agility, leveraging data, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. As companies embark on the transformative journey of HR technology adoption, a well-defined and thoughtfully considered high-level philosophy will serve as the North Star, ensuring that technology becomes a powerful ally in achieving organizational excellence.
The growing importance of technology in HR
As Josh Bersin has framed it, we are now entering a post industrial economy. The industrial revolution over the last 150 years has created massive amounts of automation and productivity-enhancing advancements. The result is that employees no longer are just replaceable commodities, needed for menial tasks. They are more skilled and specialized than ever before, and that trend is only going to continue with the blossoming of artificial intelligence. Now, says Bersin, “every company is in the people business.” HR is more important than ever, and the HR tech stack plays a key role in shaping today’s high performing organization in many ways, including:
Efficiency and productivity
In the fast-paced business environment of 2024, efficiency is key. Technology enables HR professionals to automate repetitive tasks and streamline complex processes. Whether in recruiting (resume screening, scheduling interviews, managing employee records), compensation (salary planning, merit increases, pay equity) or performance management (goal-setting, collecting feedback, performance reviews)—to name a few examples—the use of technology not only saves time but also allows HR teams to focus on strategic initiatives that contribute to the overall productivity of the organization.
Data-driven decision-making
Technology provides HR with tools to collect, analyze, and interpret data, and to make predictions. This data-driven approach enables HR professionals to make informed decisions regarding talent acquisition, employee engagement, compensation strategy, and workforce planning. Harnessing the power of workforce analytics can lead to more effective strategies and better outcomes for the business.
Remote work and collaboration
With the rise of remote work, HR technology facilitates seamless collaboration between dispersed teams. Virtual onboarding processes, digital communication tools, feedback platforms, self-service tools, and remotely administered systems are among the essential components that enable HR to adapt to the changing dynamics of the modern workplace.
Impact of technology on different areas of HR
Virtually every aspect of HR can be improved and accelerated through the use of digital solutions. It is up to HR leaders to determine what areas can have the most impact on the organization’s success and prioritize accordingly.
Recruitment and talent acquisition
Technology streamlines the recruitment process by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) for resume screening and predictive analytics for identifying top talent. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) automate the hiring pipeline, reducing time-to-fill and ensuring a more efficient recruitment process.
Learning and development
HR software facilitates personalized learning experiences through e-learning platforms and Learning Management Systems (LMS). This not only enhances employee skills but also ensures that training programs align with organizational goals and industry trends.
Compensation management and pay equity
Technology can play a pivotal role in transforming compensation management, which is a critical core function. These solutions empower HR professionals to create transparent pay structures, conduct market analysis, design flexible compensation strategies, support data-driven pay decisions at all levels, and administer rewards efficiently. Advanced pay equity tools can ensure ongoing fair pay and legal compliance.
Collaboration and coaching
Integrated collaboration platforms facilitate seamless communication among dispersed teams, enhancing the employee experience and contributing to increased productivity. Support for manager coaching takes collaboration one step further and aids in employee-manager alignment.
Goal-setting and tracking
Software provides automation for setting and tracking individual and team goals, speeding up the cascading of high level goals throughout the organization, fostering real-time evaluation and progress tracking, and promoting a more dynamic performance management process.
Continuous feedback and recognition
Automated feedback and recognition tools contribute to a positive workplace culture by ensuring timely acknowledgment of employee achievements, fostering a sense of appreciation and motivation, as well as supporting continuous improvement.
360-degree feedback
Performance management tools enable the automation of 360-degree feedback processes, providing a holistic view of employee performance from various perspectives within the enterprise.
Performance appraisal and calibration
Automation in performance appraisal processes, including calibration features, ensures consistency and fairness in evaluating employee performance across the organization, and saves enormous amounts of time.
Impact on the business, employees, and HR staff
HR technology has something to benefit everyone in the organization.
Business impact
Implementing HR technology positively affects the bottom line. Improved efficiency, better talent management, and data-driven decision-making contribute to overall business success. The adaptability of HR tech to changing market demands ensures that businesses stay competitive and agile, and attract and retain needed talent.
Employee experience
From recruitment to retirement, HR technology enhances the employee experience. Self-service portals, mobile applications, and digital communication tools empower employees, providing them with the tools they need to thrive in the workplace. This, in turn, contributes to a positive workplace culture, motivation, productivity, and loyalty.
HR department and staff
HR professionals benefit from technology by automating administrative tasks, allowing them to focus on strategic HR functions. Access to real-time data also equips HR staff with the insights needed to make informed decisions. This shift from transactional to strategic roles enhances the value HR brings to the organization.
Risks of not embracing technology in HR
Conversely, failure to keep up with the advances in HR technology can put your company at a competitive disadvantage. Organizations that fail to embrace HR digital solutions risk falling behind competitors who leverage these tools for strategic advantage. The ability to attract and retain top talent often hinges on the adoption of modern HR practices and technology. Employees want to work for a company with efficient processes, and increasingly, for companies that practice transparency and workplace equity.
Manual processes are prone to errors and inefficiencies, both of which are costly. Without the aid of technology, HR departments may struggle with accuracy in record-keeping, compliance issues, and inefficient workflows, hindering the overall effectiveness of HR operations.
Building a tech stack for HR
So how to best approach technology adoption for HR?
Assess organizational needs. Before implementing an HR solution, HR executives should conduct a thorough assessment of the organization's needs. Understanding specific pain points, goals, and desired outcomes is essential for choosing the right solutions. What are the company’s objectives and what would be needed to accomplish them?
Identify critical areas. These are areas where you can gain the most strategic benefit, and where you therefore do not want to compromise on functionality. What is mission critical, what is core to realizing your strategy and achieving your goals? In other words, what is most worthy of investment?
Consider integration and scalability. A well-rounded tech stack should be easily integrable with existing systems and scalable to accommodate future growth. Seamless integration ensures data consistency and avoids silos, while scalability future-proofs the technology against evolving organizational needs.
Criteria for evaluating HR technology solutions
Here are some key areas to consider when evaluating technology solutions.
Functional coverage
First and foremost, technology solutions should be able to do what you need done. You should not have to compromise on your strategy to conform to system limitations. If a solution cannot really handle your needs, scan the market to see if there is an alternative that is a better fit for your needs.
Integration capabilities
Seamless integration with existing systems is crucial for data consistency and efficient workflows. HR professionals should prioritize technology solutions that support interoperability.
Scalability and global compatibility
Large organizations must choose solutions that are scalable to accommodate their size and adaptable to meet global complexities and diverse compliance requirements. Global compatibility supports consistency in HR practices across different regions.
User experience and accessibility
A user-friendly interface and accessibility across devices are critical considerations. HR technology should be intuitive for users globally, promoting widespread adoption and engagement. And remember that part of the user experience is delivering real value to the end users.
Data security and compliance
Given the sensitivity of HR data, security features and compliance with data protection regulations should be paramount. Robust security measures safeguard against data breaches and ensure confidentiality.
Vendor expertise and support
Every solution has people behind it who create, implement, update, and support it. Even the most intuitive systems need support to keep the technology improving and advancing, look for expertise and a commitment to innovation.
Comparing HR suites and best-of-breed solutions
It is often tempting to try to rely on your core HR suite to handle most or all of your HR software needs. However, the benefit of a single source supplier is limited compared to the possible benefits of a best-of-breed approach.
Limitations of HR suites
Some of the common problems encountered when trying to stretch an HR suite to cover every need include:
Lack of specialization. Comprehensive HR suites often provide a generalist approach, attempting to cover a broad spectrum of HR functions. While this may be suitable for some organizations, it can result in a lack of depth for specialized functions like compensation management and performance management.
Slower innovation. The sheer size and complexity of comprehensive suites can sometimes lead to slower adaptation to emerging technologies and industry trends. The bureaucratic processes involved may hinder the swift integration of innovative solutions that could benefit the organization.
Complex implementation. Implementing extensive HR suites can be intricate and resource-intensive, requiring substantial time and effort. The complexity of these systems may lead to challenges in user adoption and ongoing maintenance.
Advantages of a best-of-breed HR tech approach
What is driving companies to seek best-of-breed solutions within their HR tech stack? Some reasons include:
Specialization. Best-of-breed solutions excel in specific HR functions, providing advanced features and customization options tailored to the organization's unique needs. This specialization ensures that each component of the HR tech stack is functionally rich and optimized for maximum efficiency.
Faster innovation. Specialized providers often innovate more rapidly, adapting to industry trends and technological advancements with agility. This proactive approach allows organizations to stay at the forefront of HR technology, driving continuous improvement.
Flexibility and integration. Best-of-breed solutions offer flexibility and can be seamlessly integrated with other systems. This allows organizations to build a tailored tech stack that aligns precisely with their requirements, avoiding the constraints of a one-size-fits-all solution.
A best-of-breed HR technology success story
One large multinational bank was facing an increasingly complex and competitive landscape including new non-traditional players, increasing regulation, artificial intelligence, and automation. These challenges made it crucial for them to attract, retain, and leverage their human capital to its fullest potential.
They wanted to give employees and line managers a uniform and engaging experience, and establish a culture of continuous improvement, and so were seeking best of breed solutions for key HR processes to complement their core SAP HCM solution.
beqom enabled crowdsourced real-time continuous feedback, regular check-ins, and agile goal setting, supporting managers in providing timely and helpful coaching. With pulse surveys, structured 360 feedback and insightful analytics, the solution measures the entire employee experience at every touchpoint.
With beqom they can align personalized rewards with real-time performance data, as well as with feedback, skills, behavior, and goals, to provide meaningful and effective rewards. The bank was able to consolidate all compensation processes, including salary and promotion increases, short and long-term incentives, and cash awards, across more than 30 countries.
And, their compensation budget can be continuously monitored as performance ratings are submitted and their cost impact calculated. All in all, it’s a real success story that shows the power of HR technology to transform an organization.
Moving forward with your HR technology stack
In today’s dynamic workplace, technology solutions will play a pivotal role in empowering HR professionals to deliver value for the organization. To find out how best-of-breed solutions can transform your HR processes and help you build a high-performing organization, take a positive first step and contact us at beqom.
SOURCE Beqom
Employee Engagement
2024年01月17日
Employee Engagement
Josh Bersin:2024: The Year That Changes Business Forever (Podcast)The podcast "2024: The Year That Changes Business Forever" by Josh Bersin explores anticipated transformations in business by 2024. It highlights the impact of AI, labor shortages, and evolving organizational structures. The podcast delves into the 2023 economic performance, changes in employee engagement, and the necessity for businesses to adapt strategically. It emphasizes a shift towards dynamic, flatter organizations and the critical role of systemic HR practices in shaping future business landscapes.
Josh Bersin探讨了2024年企业预期的转型。这些转型由AI的应用、劳动力短缺和组织结构的变化驱动。播客讨论了2023年的经济表现、员工参与度的变化以及企业为应对未来挑战所需的适应策略。它强调了向动态、扁平化组织的转变和系统性人力资源实践在塑造未来商业环境中的重要作用。
In this podcast I recap 2023 and discuss the big stories for 2024, and to me this year is a tipping point that changes business forever. Why do I say this? Because we’re entering a world of labor shortages, redesign of our companies, and business transformation driven by AI. We’ll look back on 2024 and realize it was a very pivotal year.
(Note: In mid-January we’re going to be publishing our detailed predictions report. This article is an edited transcript of this week’s podcast, so it reads like a conversation.)
Podcast Begins:
Interestingly, the entire year 2023 people were worried about a recession and it didn’t happen. In fact, economically and financially, we had a very strong year. Inflation in the United States and around the world went down. We did have to suffer rising interest rates, and that was a shock, but it was long overdue.
I really think the problem we experienced is we had low interest rates for far too long, encouraging speculative investment. Now that the economy is more rational, consumer demand is high, the business environment is solid, and the stock market is performing well. The Nasdaq is almost at an all time high, the seven super stocks did extremely well: the big tech companies, the big retailers, the oil companies, many of the consumer luxury goods companies did extremely well. And the only companies that didn’t do well were the companies that couldn’t make it through the transformation that’s going on.
On the cultural front we had the Supreme Court overturning affirmative action in education, which led to a political backlash on diversity and inclusion. The woke mind virus by Elon Musk and similar discussions further pushed back DEI programs, which has made chief diversity officers life difficult. We’re living through two wars, which have been very significant for many companies. I know a lot of you have closed down operations in Russia, and anybody doing business in Israel is having a tough time. And we’ve had this continuous period where every piece of data about employee engagement shows that employees are burned out, tired, stressed. They feel that they’re overworked.
Despite this employee sentiment, wages went up by over 5% and people who changed jobs saw raise wages of 8% or more. The unemployment rate is very low so there are a lot of jobs. You could ask yourself, why are people stressed?
I think it’s a continued overhang of the pandemic: the remote work challenges, the complexities and inconsistencies in hybrid work. And something else: the younger part of the workforce, those who are going to be living a lot longer than people who are baby boomers, are basically saying I don’t really want to kill myself just to get ahead. I want to have a life. I want to quietly quit. If my company don’t take care of me, I’m going to work my wage, meaning I’m going to work as hard as I’m paid, no more than that. And that mentality has created an environment for the four-day work week, which I think is coming quicker than you realize. And unions, which are politically in favor, are rising at an all time increase in about 25, 30 years.
Inflation and the need to raise wages to attract talent leads to pay equity problems. This domain is more complex than you think. You can read about it in our research and in 2024 it belongs on your list. 2024 will also see enormous demand for career reinvention, career development, growth programs, coaching, mentorship, allyship and support amongst the younger part of the workforce. And that means that if you’re in retail, healthcare, hospitality, or one of the other industries that hires younger people you have to accommodate this tremendous demand for benefits. These are things that became very clear in 2023.
But let’s talk about the elephant in the room: the biggest thing that happened in 2023 was AI.
AI has transformed the conversations we have about everything from media to publishing to HR technology to recruiting to employee development to employee experience. As you probably know, I’m very high on AI. I think it’s going to have a huge transformational effect on our companies, our jobs, our careers, and our personal lives. AI will improve our health, our ability to learn, the way we consume news (note that the NYT just sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement). Almost every part of our life will be transformed by AI.
I know from our conversations that most of you are trying to understand it and see where it fits. And many of you have been told by your CEO, “we need an AI strategy for the company as well as in HR.” And the AI strategy in HR is one thing, but the bigger topic is the rest of the company. So HR is going to have to be a part of this transformation: the new roles, jobs, rewards, and skills we need.
This year I’m very excited that we introduced Galileo™, which about 500 or so of you have been using. We’re going to launch the corporate version for everybody in the corporate membership in February, so corporate members stay tuned (or join). Galileo brings AI to HR in an easy-to-use, safe, and high-value way, so it will help you get your strategy together. It’s basically ready to go. Then later in the year we’ll launch a version to the JBA community and more. AI, despite all the fear-mongering, is already a very positive technology.
Where are we going next? Well as the title of this article states, I think this is the year that changes business forever. And I’m not trying to be hyperbolic, I really see a tipping point. Let me give you the story.
For about a decade I’ve been writing about the flattening of organizations, breaking down of hierarchies, creating what I used to call the networked organization. And this is now mainstream and we’ve decided to call it the Dynamic Organization.
And what we mean by this, as you read about in the Dynamic Organization research or in the Post-Industrial Age study, is that the functional hierarchies of jobs, careers, organizations and companies are being broken down for really good reasons.
The reason we have functional hierarchies, job levels and siloed business functions is because they’re patterned after the industrial age when companies made money by selling products and services at scale. The automobile industry, the oil and gas industry, the manufacturing industries, the CPG industries, even the pharmaceutical companies are essentially building things, bringing them to market, launching them, selling them, and distributing them in a linear chain. And that “scalable industrial business model” is how we designed our organizations.
So we built large organizations for R&D, large organizations for product management and product design and packaging, large organizations for marketing, large organizations for sales, large organizations for business development and distribution, supply chain, and so on (including Finance and HR). And all these ten or fifteen business functions had their own hierarchies. So you, as an employee, worked your way up those hierarchies. When I graduated from college in 1978 as an engineer, I went into one of those hierarchies.
For each employee you were an engineer, a salesperson, a marketing manager, or whatever and you worked your way up the pyramid. And at some point in your career you crossed over and did other things, but that was fairly unusual. That wasn’t really the career path. You worked about 35-40 years in that profession and then you retired.
And a lot of companies had another construct: management and labor. Management decided “what to do” and labor “did it.”
And all of these designs helped us build most of the HR practices we use today, including hiring, pay, performance management, succession, career management, goal setting, leadership development, and on and on. Today, if you look at how the most valued companies in the world, they don’t operate this way any more. Why? Because it slows them down like molasses. If you have to traverse a functional hierarchy to come up with a new idea it takes months or years to create something new.
Today value is created through innovation, time to market, closeness to customers, and unique and high-value offerings. The “hierarchy” wasn’t designed for this at all.
Here are a few dogmas to consider. We used to think that all new ideas come out of R&D. That’s crazy. Of course R&D is important, but some of the most innovative companies in the world don’t even have R&D departments, they have product teams. The Research Department at Microsoft didn’t even invent AI, the company had to partner with OpenAI, a company that has less than a thousand employees.
Here’s another one to consider. Deloitte consultants used to talk about “innovation at the edge,” otherwise known as “skunk works.” We used to advise clients to “separate the new ideas from the scale business” so they new ideas don’t get crushed or ignored. Well today all the new ideas come from the operating businesses, and we iterate in a real-time way. So there’s another industrial organization structure that just no longer applies.
So what we’ve been going through in the dynamic organization, and we’ve studied this in detail, is that we’ve got to design our companies to be flatter. We’ve got to simplify the job titles and descriptions so people can move around. We have to organize people into cross functional teams, we have to motivate and train people to work across the functional silos. We have to build agile working groups, we have to redo performance management around teams and projects, not around individual goals and cascading goals. We need to build pay equity into the system so you’re paid fairly regardless of where you started.
Let’s talk about pay. One of the problems with the hierarchy is you get a raise every year based on your performance appraisal. And after a few years your pay may have been quite a bit different than somebody sitting next to you simply because of your appraisals. But you may not be delivering any more than them. That wasn’t fair.
If you came into the company with a background in marketing, you made less money than somebody who came into the company with a background in engineering. But five years later you might be doing the same stuff but making different amounts of money. And then there’s gender bias, age bias, and other non-performance factors. In a “skills meritocracy,” as we call it, pay equity has to get fixed.
We’ve got to have developmental careers and talent marketplaces and open job opportunities and mentoring for people. And these people practices are the facilitation of becoming more dynamic. And the problem of not being dynamic is what happened at Salesforce, Meta, and other tech companies last year. Salesforce hired thousands of salespeople during the last upcycle after the pandemic, and then a year later laid most of them off. Meta did the same thing. Google’s probably next.
These companies, operating in the industrial mindset, thought that the only way to grow is to hire more salespeople, more engineers, or more marketing folks. But the quantity of people in one of these business functions doesn’t necessarily drive growth and profitability. What matters is how they work together and what they do, not how many of them there are.
This old idea that we’re going to grow the company by hiring, hiring, hiring is gone. It doesn’t work anymore. It’s still a part of the growth part of the company, you’re always hiring to replace people, to bring new skills, et cetera, and to bring new perspectives. But in a dynamic organization, a lot of the growth comes from within. People grow too.
Even the word growth mindset has become overused. We need to have an organizational growth mindset so that we can grow as an organization. A great example of this is Intel. Intel lost their way in the manufacturing of semiconductors and also in the R&D. Now they’re reinventing themselves internally and their stock is skyrocketing. They didn’t hire some guru to tell them what to do, they know what to do. They just need to get around to doing it.
Google has more AI engineers than OpenAI, Anthropic, and all the other little guys put together, but they didn’t execute well. Now they’re executing better. They brought their AI teams together into cross-functional groups and they’re sharing IP from YouTube with other business areas. I bet they stomp many of the others in AI once they get it going. That’s part of being a dynamic organization.
You as HR people know better than anybody how dysfunctional it is when there are multiple groups in the company doing competing things and they’re not working together because they don’t know about each other, or they don’t talk to each other. There’s no cross fertilization or they’re protecting their turf. All of these are the things that get in the way of being a dynamic organization.
And the reason it’s relevant in the next year is this has taken hold. Things like talent marketplaces and career pathways and skills-based organizations, skills based hiring, skills based pay, skills based careers, skills based development, et cetera… these are not just HR fads, they’re solutions to this big shift: making companies more dynamic. Despite their value in the past, hierarchical stove-piped companies don’t operate very well anymore.
Now this isn’t an A-B switch type of thing. This is an evolution, but it’s taking place very quickly. And the reason we came up with this concept of Systemic HR is we in HR have to do the same thing. The HR function itself operates in silos. We’ve got the recruiting group, the DEI group, the Comp group, the L&D group, the business partners, the group that does compliance, the group that worries about wellbeing. We’ve got somebody over here is doing an EX project, somebody over there is doing a data management project, a people analytics group.
Okay. Those are all great functional areas that belong in HR. But if they’re not working together on the problems that the company has, and I mean the big problems, growth, profitability, productivity, M&A, etc., then who cares? Then you’re at level one or level two in systemic HR. We built the Systemic HR initiative around business problems. And that’s how we came up with the new HR operating model (read more details here or view the video overview).
I think Systemic HR will be a very big deal for 2024, and there are many reasons. Not only are we living in a labor shortage but there’s another accelerant, and that is AI. For those of you that have used Galileo, and I hope you all get a chance to use it this year, it’s absolutely unbelievable how AI can pull together information, data, text from many sources in the company and make sense of what your company is doing.
You know as well as I do, if you’ve worked in sales, if you’ve worked in marketing, if you worked in finance, these are siloed groups. Few companies have a truly integrated data management system for all of their customer data match to their sales, data match to their revenue, data match to their marketing. Customer data platforms are a idea, but it doesn’t really happen very often, and it takes tens to hundreds of millions of dollars and many, many systems to do that. Well, AI does this almost automatically.
So when you pull together a tool like Galileo, and you use our research as part of the corpus, and you add data about employee turnover, for example, in your company, or pay variations, you’ll see the relationship between pay and turnover just by asking a question. You don’t have to go spend months doing an analysis and trying to figure out if the analysis is any good. And that’s happening all over the company in sales and customer service and R&D and marketing – everywhere.
So this more integrated, dynamic organization is happening before your eyes. In 2024, this is the context for almost everything we’re going to be working on now.
The other context is the labor market, which is going to be very tough. You’ve read about from us and others about how tight the labor market is now. Unemployment in the United States is 3.8%, and it’s not going to get much better. Even if we do have a recession, which is questionable, there aren’t enough people to hire. The fertility rate is low, and even if every company gives employees fertility benefits and they all have babies, it will take twenty years for these people to go to work. So all of the developed countries: US, UK, Canada, Germany, Japan, the Nordics, China, Russia, the fertility rate has been low for a long time. The World Bank sees working population shrinking within ten years in almost every developed economy.
Since hiring is going to get harder and we’ll see fewer and fewer working people, companies have to be much more integrated in hiring. And we all have to look the Four R’s: Recruit, Retain, Reskill, Redesign. This puts HR in the middle of a lot of job redesign, career reinvention, and a serious look at developing skills, not hiring skills, and using the tools we have as hr professionals to help the organization improve productivity without just hiring and hiring and hiring.
I measure the success of companies by two things. One is their endurance: how well have they fared over ups and downs? The second is their revenue per employee. Companies with low revenues per employee tend to be poorly managed companies relative to their peers. Of course there’s a lot of industry differences.
When we went through our GWI industry work: healthcare, consumer goods, pharma, banking, we could see the high performing companies were very efficient on a headcount basis. And we found out these companies are actually implementing Systemic HR practices.
The other driver that we’re living in a service economy. Interestingly enough, in the United States, more than 70% of our GDP is now services. So the people you have, the humans in your company, are the product. And if you’re not getting good output per dollar of revenue per human, you’re not running the company very well.
And this leads to many management topics.
How are we going to build early and mid-level leaders?
How can we rethink what employees really need? The topics of employee engagement and employee experience are really 25 to 30 years old. They need a massive update.
How are we going to implement AI in L&D and replace a lot of these old systems that everybody kind of hates, but we’re stuck with?
What’s going on with the ERP vendors and what role will they play as we replace our HR tech with AI powered systems?
How will we implement scalable talent intelligence? In a world of labor shortages talent intelligence becomes even more important, whether you think of it for sourcing and recruiting or an internal mobility or just a strategic planning initiative.
How do we all get comfortable with AI?
And then there’s this issue of Systemic HR and developing your team, your function, your operating model to be more adaptive and more dynamic.
So I look back on 2023 I feel it was one of the most fascinating and fun and enriching years that I’ve had. I am always amazed and impressed and energized by you, by you guys who were out there on the firing lines, dealing with these complex issues and companies with old technologies and all sorts of changes going on and how you’re adapting. I continue to be more impressed and more excited about the HR profession every year. I think a lot of people who aren’t in HR think we do a lot of compliance and administration stuff and we fire people. That is the tiniest part of what we do.
2024 is going to be an important year. You as an HR professional are going to have to learn a lot of things. You’re going to learn about Systemic HR issues, you’re going to learn about AI, and you’re going to learn to be a consultant.
There’s no question in my mind that over the next decade or two dynamic organization management is going to become a bigger and bigger issue – how we manage people and companies. And I don’t mean manage like supervise, I mean develop, move, retain, pay, et cetera, culture, all of those things.
I leave 2023 very energized about what’s to come with AI. And if you’re afraid of AI, just take a deep breath and relax. It’s not going to bite you. There’s nothing evil here. It’s a data driven system. If you don’t have your data act together, you’re not going to get a lot of good value out of AI.
I talked to Donna Morris at Walmart last week; I talked to Nickle LaMoreaux at IBM; and I talked with the senior HR leaders at Microsoft. They’re all seeing huge returns on investment from the early implementations, and seeing hundreds of use cases. We’re going to have a lot of new tools and lots of vendor shakeout. (Check out what SAP is up to and where Workday is going.)
Stay tuned for our big Predictions report coming out in mid January. That report is my chance to give you some deep perspectives on where I think things are going, recap things that have happened over the last couple of years, and give you some perspectives for the year ahead.
As always we would be more than happy to walk through these things with your team.
I hope you have a really nice holiday season and you take a deep breath.
The world is never perfect. It’s never been perfect. It wasn’t perfect in the past. It won’t be perfect in the future.
But the environment you live in and the environment that you create can be enriching, enjoyable, productive, and healthy, and fun if you decide. And I think we all have the opportunity to make those decisions.
It has been a pleasure and an honor for me to serve and work with you this last year, and I’m really looking forward to an amazing 2024 together.
–END OF PODCAST–
Irresistible: The Seven Secrets of the World’s Most Enduring, Employee-Focused Organizations
Employee Engagement
2023年12月30日
Employee Engagement
12 Opportunities for HR in 2024: From Support Function to Strategic Partner
This decade has been uniquely challenging to business with economic uncertainty, geopolitical tension, and the aftermath of the largest global pandemic for a century. But in the coming years, disruptions are likely to increase in frequency and severity (1). The business environment is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and often ambiguous (2). Coupled with rapid advances in technology, organisations are transforming at an unprecedented pace and frequency – from ‘episodic transformation’ toward ‘continuous transformation’ (3).
At the same time, companies are confronted with a series of organisational shifts that have significant implications for structures, processes, and people. These include complex questions around finding the optimal balance between in-person and remote work, building new organisational capabilities in the face of challenging workforce demographics and talent gaps, and focusing on developing a healthy, inclusive, and thriving company culture (4).
HR is the CEO's right-hand in enlightened organisations.
(Barbara Lavernos , Deputy CEO at L'Oreal (5)
HR’s journey from support function to strategic partner has accelerated in recent years. During the pandemic, the CHRO and the HR function became as important to the company as the CFO and the finance function were in the global financial crisis (6). The importance of the CHRO and the function they lead will likely continue as many of the most significant challenges facing organisations (see FIG 1) essentially have people elements at their core. The ability of CHROs to assume new responsibilities, drive transformation for the enterprise, and reinvent and upskill the HR function, and therefore meet these higher expectations, will be critical to organisational success (7, 8).
CHROs have the ability to drive a company’s growth and business outcomes by effectively using people strategy, data insights, and technology to the company’s advantage.
Chuck Robbins, Chair and CEO at Cisco (9)
FIG 1:
For over a decade, I’ve published an annual set of predictions or trends that will shape work and HR for the upcoming year. For 2024, I want to frame these instead as ‘opportunities’ rather than ‘predictions’ – mainly because they will likely take more than a single year to play out. They are informed by the research and work we do at Insight222, interviews with guests on the Digital HR Leaders podcast, conversations with senior HR leaders, thinkers, and industry analysts, and market analysis. References are numbered throughout, and a comprehensive list is included at the end of the article.
Get involved – what should opportunities #11 and #12 be?
Readers may note that the title and accompanying image indicate 12 opportunities, whereas only ten are outlined. That is because – as was the case in the previous three years - I’m keen to crowdsource the final two opportunities from readers. What other opportunities should be included? Please let me know in the comments section below, and I’ll add my favourite two to an updated version in the New Year.
THE 2024 OPPORTUNITIES FOR HR
The first ten opportunities for HR to accelerate its journey from support function to strategic partner are set out below:
1. Prove the value of a fairer, healthier, and more humane organisation
One of HR’s key responsibilities as the steward of people and culture in the organisation (10) is to advocate for a ‘people, first’ approach. With record levels of burnout (11, 12, 13), deepening skills shortages (14), and raised employee expectations about work (15), HR has a pivotal role to play not only in hiring, developing, and retaining great talent, but fashioning the culture and environment to enable talent to perform and thrive. Putting wellbeing at the centre, developing an inclusive and equitable culture, personalising the employee experience, and listening and acting on the employee voice, are just four ways to deliver on this opportunity. Collectively, these initiatives are designed to reinforce the ‘H’ in HR and demonstrate that building a fairer, healthier, and more humane organisation isn’t just the ‘right thing’ to do for the workforce, but that it drives business success too (16). Indeed, research by firms including McKinsey, BCG and PwC (see FIG 2) finds that companies that provide a clear people advantage, who consistently invest in building and developing their human capital and imbue a compelling employee value proposition and experience are more resilient and enjoy better financial performance than their peers (17, 18, 19).
FIG 2:
2. Prepare the organisation and HR for the age of AI
While the hyperbole about generative AI has deepened HR’s engagement with AI (20, 21), research from Gartner finds that only 22% of HR leaders are highly engaged in enterprise-wide discussions on the topic (22). HR should seek to play a leading role as early studies find that AI doesn’t just boost operational performance and productivity (23) but can be used to build better organisations too (24). Four areas where HR should lobby to get involved – all while reinforcing the ‘H’ in HR - are (i) Aligning the workforce transformation that will be required due to AI in line with company strategy and vision (25). (ii) Leading on the development of responsible AI policies and enablement programs (26). (iii) Prioritising high-impact use cases for deploying AI across HR programs and the employee lifecycle (27, 28, 29, 30, FIG 3). (iv) Reimagining the work of key HR roles including the automation of repetitive tasks and increasing the focus on high-value strategic work (31, 32) (v) Building upskilling programs for leaders, managers, employees, and HR professionals. Research finds that if companies can activate the growth combination of data, technology, and people, they stand to gain a premium of up to 11% on top-line productivity. (33).
AI is the defining technology of our time, creating a massive paradigm that will transform the way we work with even greater impact than the introduction of the PC
Kathleen Hogan , Chief People Officer at Microsoft (34)
FIG 3
3. Redesign workplaces and work for the hybrid era
Since the pandemic, 90 percent of companies have embraced a range of hybrid work models (35) with most employees now working remotely over 25% of the time (36, FIG 4). Moreover, eight out of ten CHROs say they have no plans to decrease the amount of remote work in the next 12 months (37). Indeed, Nick Bloom predicts here that in the coming years remote work will experience a ‘swoosh effect’ due to the impact of technology as well as new firms and managers being more open to remote. (38, 39). The debate shouldn’t just be fixated on where people work, it should also provide an opportunity to test traditional assumptions about how work is done and whatwork even is (40). It’s likely that this transition will play out over many years (41), and will require experimentation, data collection and analysis, and iterative learning. This provides the opportunity for chief people officers – and their people analytics teams - to play a leading role in the redesign of work and workplaces for the hybrid era. Research is already being published on topics such as when in-person matters most (42, 43), how teams that are intentional about collaboration are more productive (44), and how to drive innovation through adaptive teaming (45). Hybrid is here to stay, so let’s make hybrid work!
FIG 4
4. Shift people analytics from insight to impact
As Isabel Naidoo, chief people officer at Wise, articulated at the Insight222 Global Executive Retreat in Colorado in September, 2023: “People Analytics is the fastest route to credibility for the chief people officer.” (46). Certainly, for HR to be a truly strategic business partner, it has to have an impactful people analytics function. Insight222's fourth annual People Analytics Trends study, (47) finds that the discipline continues to grow in importance and influence with 22% of people analytics leaders now reporting to the CHRO (compared to 13% in 2020). The challenge for many companies is to move people analytics from insight to impact (48, 49). Our research identified eight distinct characteristics (see FIG 5) that set Leading Companies apart from their peers and enable them to deliver value on a consistent basis. Chief people officers wanting to shift their people analytics team to an ‘A Team’ (see FIG 6) should focus on understanding their organisation’s most pressing business priorities and then align and prioritise people analytics activities that will support them. A capable and flourishing people analytics team eases the path towards a quantified organisation (50) and an evidence-based HR function (51) Certainly, people analytics is a foundational capability to helping HR progress and realise the opportunities outlined in this article.
People Analytics is the fastest route to credibility for the chief people officer
Isabel Naidoo, Chief People Officer at Wise (46)
FIG 5
FIG 6
5. Partner more effectively with Finance
Deploying financial capital and human capital together is the secret to the success of a talent-driven organisation (52). If HR seeks to become a truly strategic partner to the business, then it needs to have an effective partnership with finance not least because of increasing regulation about the disclosure of human capital information (53, 54). Research by Insight222 (55) finds that when it comes to delivering value with people analytics, a strong relationship with finance can make the difference. Of the 65 (out of 271 companies) surveyed who confirmed that they had built a partnership with finance, 99% reported that the people analytics team had delivered measurable outcomes over the last 12 months. In HR, we need to be better at building business cases for investment, and in quantifying the commercial value of what we do – just like other business functions. Building a strong and mutually beneficial partnership with finance – like Alan Susi at S&P Global (56) and Laura Wright Shubert at MetLife (57) have achieved – is a good place to start.
6. Build the skills-based organisation
Talent gaps and shortages represent the most pressing challenge that companies face (58), with three-quarters of CEOs being concerned about how the availability of key skills will impact on their growth strategies (59). These talent scarcity challenges will only be exacerbated by shrinking working populations – especially in the G7 economies (60) and rapid advances in technology meaning that 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted by 2028 (61). This is leading to a shift from the traditional focus on jobs to one on skills (62) and the continued rollout of internal talent marketplaces (63, 64) with one study finding that 90% of companies are moving towards a skills-based approach (65). The effort to do so should not be underestimated with the same study finding that less than 20% are currently adopting skills-based approaches to a significant extent. While it is still early days, benefits cited by companies that have made this shift include (i) Standard Chartered unlocking productivity of $2.1m from a talent marketplace pilot in India (66, 67), (ii) IBM improving diversity through skills-based hiring (68), (iii) Unilever increasing productivity by 40% and significantly reducing attrition through its internal talent marketplace (69), and (iv) J&J democratising career development and mobility for its employees (70). The undoubted potential of skills-based approaches for hiring, learning, internal mobility, compensation, and workforce planning is tantalising, but it also makes it difficult for organisations to know where to start. HR can help by identifying a challenge in a specific business function and/or location, partnering with a senior business stakeholder and piloting a skills-based approach, starting to build a skills taxonomy, and then learning and iterating as you go.
As companies jostle to build a complete picture of what they need (for the future of work) and how to get there, we’re fast learning that the real currency is skills
Placid Jover, Chief Talent Officer at Unilever (71)
FIG 7
7. Make workforce planning strategic
The shift to skills, the pace and frequency of transformation, and rapid technological advances have all increased the urgency for organisations to become proficient in strategic workforce planning. It is now a top three challenge for people leaders (see FIG 8, 72). The availability of data-driven insights is altering the landscape with responsibility for SWP increasingly coming under the auspices of the people analytics team – this is the case in 50% of companies, based on 2023 research by Insight222 (73). This is driving the expansion from a pure focus on cost and operational based workforce planning to strategic and skills-based workforce planning (74, 75), which enables organisations to get a clearer view on future talent needs and how to close any gaps (76, 77). Steps for HR leaders to do this well include (i) Linking SWP to the business strategy (78). (ii) Joint ownership of SWP with the business and close collaboration with finance. (iii) Prioritising the most critical workforce segments. (iv) Focusing on skills as well as cost. (v) Combining HR, business, and external data to get a full picture (79). (vi) Measuring the impact of workforce planning activities and linking these to business outcomes. (80, 81)
FIG 8
8. Advance diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging
The business case for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) continues to grow stronger. In a recent McKinsey study, leadership diversity is convincingly associated with company performance, societal impact, and employee experience (82, FIG 9). Moreover, research by Insight222 found that in 2023 – for the third successive year - DEIB is the area where people analytics is adding the most business value (83). These timely reminders of the value of DEIB are important in a year where the US Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action led to some companies rolling back on their DEIB initiatives (84, 85). As such, HR leaders have a critical role to play in advancing the DEIB agenda in their organisations, demonstrating that it isn’t just the right thing to do, but that is demanded by employees and leads to better business outcomes. People analytics can help in terms of enabling the organisation to measure outcomes and drive action (86), using advanced analytics to get deeper insights on belonging and inclusion, and supporting organisational moves to be more transparent – including providing data that forms the basis of annual DEIB reports e.g. Microsoft (87). Also, with demographics meaning that 150 million jobs will shift to older workers by the end of the decade (88), HR has an opportunity to ensure that their organisation is able to attract, develop and retain older workers, and enable them to thrive.
FIG 9
9. Empower and invest in people managers
75% of HR Leaders say that their managers are overwhelmed by the growth of their job responsibilities (89) while more than 50% of managers report feeling burned out (90). These concerning statistics are not surprising given that the role of the manager is being changed beyond recognition due to digitalisation, hybrid work and agile initiatives (91, 92). The pressure is exacerbated by companies cutting middle management roles in the current macroeconomic climate. Given that studies find that investing in people managers leads to better firm financial performance (93) and is key to realising the opportunities from AI (94), it’s time to better support and empower people managers. One way HR can do this is through democratising people data to help managers to be more productive, support decisions on hiring, promotion and pay, and equip them with insights to be more effective and human leaders. The benefit of successfully democratising people data to managers are vast, with one 2023 study calculating that in a 10,000 person organisation, this could amount to $400 million in cost savings, and almost $200 million in revenue expansion (95, 96). HR leaders can also support people managers through being more thoughtful about spans and layers, reimagining the role of the manager, implementing capability building programs, and prioritising manager experience and wellbeing (97).
10. Prioritise HR upskilling
If HR is to become a true strategic partner to the business and realise the opportunities from new operating models (98) then chief people officers need to prioritise efforts to upskill their HR professionals – particularly on topics such as business acumen, technology, and analytics (99). At Insight222, our HR in the Digital Age study identified nine skills for the future HR professional to be more data driven, experience led, and business focused (100, 101). Additionally, our 2023 study, Upskilling the HR Professional: Building Data Literacy as Scale, highlighted the critical role of the chief people officer and their direct reports in role-modelling the use of people data and analytics (102). With another study by Mercer finding that 41% of chief people officers wish they had had greater depth in people analytics prior to assuming their roles, there is clearly significant room for improvement (103). On a more positive note, 55% of companies now say they have a data driven culture in HR, which is up from 42% in 2021. 2024 is the year to improve this further, and from a data literacy perspective, Insight222 research highlights five skills (see FIG 10) that HR professionals need to develop (104). Moreover, the study also highlights that the investment required is between $600-$800 per person for an upskilling program (see example in FIG 11). Now is the time to invest in upskilling HR professionals.
FIG 10
FIG 11
References
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(40) Lynda Gratton – Redesigning How We Work (Harvard Business Review, 2023)
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(44) Mary Baker , 4 Modes of Collaboration Are Key to Success in Hybrid Work (Gartner, 2021)
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(76) Alex Browne and David Green ?? - Nestlé's 4B Methodology to Strategic Workforce Planning (Digital HR Leaders podcast, myHRfuture, 2023)
(77) Laura Wright Shubert and David Green ?? - How MetLife Made a Success of their Strategic Workforce Planning (Digital HR Leaders podcast, myHRfuture, 2022)
(78) Alicia Roach and Chris Hare - How to Democratise Strategic Workforce Planning (Digital HR Leaders podcast, eQ8, myHRfuture, 2022)
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(86) Lily Zheng - To Make Lasting Progress on DEI, Measure Outcomes (Harvard Business Review, 2023)
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(91) Diane Gherson and Lynda Gratton - Managers Can’t Do It All (Harvard Business Review, 2022)
(92) Stacia Sherman Garr and Priyanka Mehrotra - What’s Holding Back Manager Effectiveness, and How to Fix It (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2023)
(93) Emily Field, Bryan Hancock, Stephanie Smallets, Ph.D., and Brooke Weddle - Investing in People Managers pays off literally (McKinsey, 2023)
(94) Emily Field , Bryan Hancock, Ruth Imose, PhD, and Lareina Yee - Middle managers hold the key to unlock generative AI (McKinsey, 2023)
(95) Lexy Martin - Unlocking Manager Effectiveness: The Next Driver of Value (Visier, 2023)
(96) Lexy Martin and David Green ?? - How to Democratise Data for People Manager Effectiveness (Digital HR Leaders podcast, myHRfuture, 2023)
(97) Bill Schaninger, Ph.D., Bryan Hancock, and Emily Field – Power to the Middle: Why Managers Hold the Key to the Future of Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2023)
(98) Sandra Durth, Neel Gandhi, Asmus Komm, and Florian Pollner – HR’s new operating model (McKinsey, 2022)
(99) Dave Ulrich, Joe Grochowski, Norm Smallwood, and Joseph Hanson - What Makes an Effective HR Function? (The RBL Group, 2023)
(100) Manpreet Randhawa - 9 Skills HR Professionals Need to Succeed in the Digital Age (myHRfuture, 2023)
(101) Caroline Styr and Ian Bailie - HR in the Digital Age (Insight222, 2021)
(102) Naomi Verghese and Jonathan Ferrar - Upskilling the HR Profession: Building Data Literacy at Scale (Insight222, 2023)
(103) Gordin et al (see reference 7)
(104) Verghese and Ferrar (see reference 99)
A selection of other 2024 HR predictions and trends
There are a plethora of other resources documenting predictions and trends for HR and the future of work in 2024 including:
Gartner - Top 5 HR Trends and Priorities for 2024
Visier Inc. - 10 Workforce trends for 2024: The New Rules of HR
Mercer – 2024 Global Talent Trends
McKinsey - What matters most? Eight CEO priorities for 2024
Ken Oehler – RADICL People Predictions for 2024
Damon Klotz and Didier Elzinga - 7 trends that will define HR in 2024
Dr. Solange Charas and Stela Lupushor - HR and Workforce Trends Predictions for 2024
Dan Schawbel - 10 Predictions for 2024 from a World-of-Work Expert
Joelle Emerson - New Data: 2023 DEI Trends & 2024 Opportunities
Francesca Di Meglio - 8 HR Trends for 2024
LinkedIn News - 34 Big Ideas that will change our world in 2024
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Green ?? is a globally respected author, speaker, conference chair, and executive consultant on people analytics, data-driven HR and the future of work. As Managing Partner and Executive Director at Insight222, he has overall responsibility for the delivery of the Insight222 People Analytics Program, which supports the advancement of people analytics in over 90 global organisations. Prior to co-founding Insight222, David accumulated over 20 years experience in the human resources and people analytics fields, including as Global Director of People Analytics Solutions at IBM. As such, David has extensive experience in helping organisations increase value, impact and focus from the wise and ethical use of people analytics. David also hosts the Digital HR Leaders Podcast and is an instructor for Insight222's myHRfuture Academy. His book, co-authored with Jonathan Ferrar, Excellence in People Analytics: How to use Workforce Data to Create Business Value was published in the summer of 2021.