HR future trends

The future HR 2

By Jan Marsli, Senior Manager in Sariba

There has been a slowly emerging change in Human Resources over the last decade. HR has traditionally focused on group processes and services to engage employees around the organisational needs. The emerging trend is a shift of greater equity between organisational and individual employee needs. We see this well reflected in the increased focus HR has put on areas such as diversity, inclusion, employee and human experience .

In the future, HR will be selling jobs instead of recruiting employees

The pandemic has accelerated this trend by highlighting how a change in the work experience has created new stars. We have for example seen multiple anecdotal accounts that personality traits such as introvert and extrovert, both in terms of engagement and performance have coped differently with pandemic work life, sometimes turning status-quo upside down.

We have long strived to engage employees, and that remains important. But this is also an area where HR has largely failed to create desired value - because we have treated it as a locked process, driven towards primarily achieving organisational goals. A secondary focus area has been around who is responsible for engaging employees. Questions I am often asked are:

  • How do we get management to take responsibility for employee engagement?
  • Is it not the line manager's job to engage employees?
  • Is there anything we at HR can do to engage employees?
  • Shouldn't employees engage themselves? Do they not also have some responsibility in this?
  • Do you have a model that is scientifically proven to lead to increased engagement?

Here is a little scientific fact around that *

Employees do not need to be engaged or engage themselves. There are very few employees who do not start a new job highly engaged! The job is to retain and renew the engagement employees already have, and the responsibility lies with everyone who directly or indirectly affects employee experience, and HR is not exempt here; Although HR needs to be supported by the whole organisation around this, it does hold the key to its success.

Employees need organisations to support them around basic motivational needs:

  • Relevance: When employees feel they matter and contribute towards value creation
  • Predictability: A workplace where it is possible to make plans and see opportunities
  • Control: Freedom to make decisions that support one's own and the organisation's goals
  • Security: Not only physically, but also financially and mentally
  • Respect: To be treated equitably
  • Balance : Having time and profit for both work, oneself and others

Organisations that need talent to succeed - which ought to be the vast majority - will not attract or retain talent if they do not create a work experience that meets these basic needs.

The future war for talent is intensifying

In many sectors, the need for deep expertise is being replaced as  complex work processes are automated. Broader competencies such as creativity or the ability to connect the dots are increasingly becoming in-demand, and that demand extends outside the sector or industry organisations have traditionally competed for talent with. This intensifies the war for talent, requiring organisations to increasingly create more differentiating employee experiences to attract and retain the very best.

Perhaps we should not just set KPIs and incentives around employees achieving organisational goals, but also on them achieving their personal goals, even if not work related?

I believe if HR is to succeed with this, HR needs to direct attention towards 3 areas:

  1. Smart listening and data understanding:
    We need to become much better at listening to employees and building up managers with the competence to listen and maintain dialogue. We need to become much better at using feedback, as we understand and make choices that allow us to design organizations that meet the needs that are specifically important to your employees in your organization. Processes, models and technology can be copied. The unique DNA that defines your organization is the basis for differentiation.
  2. HR-structure and integration:
    We need to have more integration and liquidity in the HR structure. We can't have a HR that is structured alone and operates in silos around processes. We need to think outside-in, not just around the needs of the organization, but around the needs of employees - and that requires the ability to understand the connections between, for example, hiring and skills development and collaborate around these - and link data from multiple subfields of HR together to understand these wholes.
  3. Adopt and refine disruptive technologies:
    Identifying disruptive technologies such as the Opportunity Marketplace gives more autonomy over previously rigid processes. This is because, no matter how well we listen and analyze, we cannot understand everyone's needs. Technologies that turn previously locked processes into loose frameworks for self-determination, or Peopleship, as we at Sariba call it, become not only important. It will be the foundation of HR and the future work experience that seeks to embrace diversity and allow for individuality.

In a nutshell, I think this shift can be summed up in a simple way; In the future, HR will be selling jobs instead of recruiting employees. Because there is an increasing need to create equilibrium between organisational and employee needs. Perhaps we should not just set KPIs and incentives around employees achieving organisational goals, but also on them achieving their personal goals, even if not work related? Long term that might just prove to be the real win-win deal!

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