By Debbie Bolla
As 2019 comes to a close, it’s always fun to look back at our predictions piece from last year to see how our experts fared. Here are some trends that were anticipated and how they played out.
1. Bringing a consumer-like experience to the workplace. As technology continues to infiltrate our lives (hello Alexa and Siri!), Nikki Harland, senior vice president of HR at Paradies Lagardère, said that HR tech needs to be simple too. “Technologies that are complicated and filled with multiple gates and approvals will just begin to fall to the side,” she said.
Organizations embraced this in 2019 and it will continue -by 2021, 75 percent of organizations will include employee experience improvement as a performance objective for HR, reports Gartner.
2. Leveraging people data to improve processes. The data is there and HR is taking advantage of it. LinkedIn’s Global Recruiting Trends report finds that 64 percent of organizations use data and 79 percent have plans to in the next two years. “When HR couples the use of data and analytics with the information it gathers from relationships and reliance on emotional intelligence, it will be even better equipped to help manage the company’s primary assets (its people), predict, and manage change,” said Christine Esckilsen, chief human capital officer for Piper Jaffray & Co.
3. Getting creative to survive a tight labor market. Workplace flexibility continues to be at the forefront: Seventy-two percent of talent professionals agree that workplace flexibility is critical for the future of recruiting, finds LinkedIn’s report. “Companies will work harder to retain key talent through counter-offers, more flexible work arrangements, increases in the concept of job sharing, reassessing job requirements that may be excessive for what is really needed or for what is available, and job redesign to leverage the talent that is available,” said Maria Smedley, vice president of HR and strategy at Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corporation.
4. Creating brand strategies to earn a competitive advantage. “Employer brand is a large part of how you’re going to break through and break into these communities because it has to be genuine and has to be authentic. Any lack of authenticity will be visible to the world in seconds,” Harland said. Crafting an authentic brand continues to be a priority, with HRO Today research finding that 92 percent of respondents made expanding their company’s reputation as a great place to work a key goal.
And what will be on the agenda for 2020? To see what our experts predict, view our cover story.