As the business landscape changes with ever-increasing speed, so does the role of human resource (HR) professionals. HR has come a long way from processing employee paperwork to now holding a strategic position and often a chief seat at the senior leadership table. Having founded a platform for complete candidate skills and job fit assessment, I see firsthand how adequate insight into candidates’ skills and behaviors can offer HR teams invaluable information that can aid in meeting the most pressing personnel challenges.
To help you stay abreast of the changes, here is a closer look at the issues facing HR this year:
1. Finding And Landing High-Quality Talent
When it comes to acquiring top talent, the game has changed. The tight labor market continues to create significant challenges for HR. In XpertHR’s recently released survey, "Top HR Trends for 2020," HR professionals reported recruiting and hiring as their most critical challenge. Of those respondents, 51% said that their organization is facing an “extreme challenge” recruiting and hiring high-quality candidates, more than double the number (22%) from just two years ago.
So how can companies begin to bend the cost- and time-to-hire curves backward? Create competitive advantages for talent processes by offering tailored incentives. Use skills tests and behavioral assessments during the initial stage of the hiring process, and determine what motivates top talent. For some new hires, it may mean a larger paycheck, but for most employees, it means development opportunities, flexible working conditions, management responsibilities, greater autonomy, a better job title or even the chance to do good in the world.
2. The Revolving Door Of Talent
The World Health Organization made headlines last year when it classified burnout as a medical diagnosis, defining burnout as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” Sixty-two percent of respondents to a survey published in Emplify's “2020 Employee Engagement Trends” report suffer from burnout at work. In the face of widespread burnout, it is not surprising that the same study found nearly 73% of respondents are open to new career opportunities, and for respondents who have been employed by their current company for less than a year, that number is 77%.
The fight to retain top talent starts with making employee wellness a priority. Though the answer may not be as obvious as it seems, a study published in the journal Career Development International found that many highly engaged employees are also exhausted and ready to leave their employer. Companies are at the most significant risk of losing their most motivated and hard-working employees due to high stress and burnout.
The solution? Develop processes to ensure that workloads are more reasonable. Offer flexible work options. Create a company culture that encourages work-life balance. And educate staff about the warning signs of burnout and ways to combat it.
3. Developing The Next Generation Of Leaders
Businesses spend billions of dollars annually on leadership development. The scarcity of in-demand talent and the high cost of attracting and retaining talent means many corporations are setting their sights on inside talent. Employees are more motivated to stay with a company that offers leadership training, according to a recent survey. However, 47% of respondents are dissatisfied with their employer’s current learning and development opportunities and would prefer more flexibility in learning opportunities and real-world application wherever possible.
To retain employees, organizations need to create or expand leadership development programs to meet the needs of their workforce. Implementing innovative approaches to learning new skills, such as self-guided online learning, on-the-job coaching and virtual training can help improve engagement and lower costly employee turnover.
4. Finding Resources For Workforce Development
While mega-companies like Amazon are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in workforce development initiatives, many businesses are reluctant to invest heavily in training and development. Although there is no promise of a return on investment, organizations of all sizes should initiate training strategies and structures that grow over time and deliver a competitive advantage. Investing in the training and development of entry-level employees is a strategy that is gaining momentum, as their positions are most easily filled once the trainee moves up the corporate ladder.
Training and development don’t have to consume a massive portion of your budget. Online evaluations and training courses are relatively inexpensive and can provide employees with in-depth insight into their own skill sets and a self-guided path for learning new skills or improving existing skills. Investing in your workforce will create a loyal, productive team.
5. Achieving Diversity With Inclusion
Workplace bias — both conscious and unconscious — continues to impede the hiring, development and promotion of underrepresented groups. Although many companies have made great strides in hiring a more diverse workforce in recent years, the likelihood that organizations will be able to retain this staff without explicitly structuring an inclusive workplace is low. Evaluating skills and gaining insight into behavioral patterns prior to an interview can help combat bias by elevating candidates based on job-fit metrics, not demographics.
If HR focuses on diversity without creating a culture of inclusion, the diverse mix of people we hire will be less likely to stay. Organizations must establish strong policies to protect employees from negative behaviors. Creating a culture of inclusivity improves retention and acts as a magnet for talent, drawing a more diverse set of applications. Companies must build an inclusive culture. Training to policies to ensure people are aware of their biases and aware of how to not act on them is critical.
Although the tight labor market presents some unique challenges, adopting these recommendations can help your organization stay ahead of the curve.
Traditional industries are being disrupted, economies are facing headwinds and workplaces are evolving rapidly.
These are just some of the many factors affecting human resources management and the time-proven practices of recruitment, performance management and workplace training. To better prepare for these challenges, human resource (HR) managers can strengthen their expertise with a Master of Human Resources Management (MHRM).
Here are five challenges human resource management is facing that HR managers should be preparing for today.
Government regulations
Human resources management practices around the world are regulated by government legislation that outlines fair practices for both businesses and employees. In Australia, all businesses and human resources managers must heed commonwealth legislation that includes (but is not limited to):
- Fair Work Act 2009
- Racial Discrimination Act 1975; and
- Sex Discrimination Act 1984
However, despite the existence of this legislation, a Fair Work Commission and a Fair Work Ombudsman, mistakes are still being made.
One of Australia’s biggest single employers, Woolworths, recently revealed that they had been underpaying employees.
They had short-changed workers employed under awards that are protected by the Fair Work Act.
Woolworth’s misdeeds came hot on the heels of a smorgasbord of underpayment cases in restaurants and the hospitality industry. Before that, there were more underpayments at Coles, McDonald’s and KFC.
With such large organisations failing on just one aspect of government regulations, we can expect individuals and organisations to be paying closer attention to these and other regulations in the future.
Economic growth
While international economies are experiencing negative economic growth – that is, the value of the goods and services they produce is decreasing – Australia’s economic growth is being measured in fractions of a per cent.
This doesn’t mean those individual organisations can’t turn a profit, but it does put more pressure to perform on every business function. Human resource management is one area of business that has a number of levers to pull that can improve economic growth.
The process of strategic human resources management integrates business strategy and human resource management to achieve economic goals. It’s something that’s been identified as a capability gap across the Australian Public Service (APS) – which includes Treasury, the Australian Tax Office and several government departments.
To address this gap, the APS has introduced a human resources profession stream, similar to practices in the UK, New Zealand and Singapore. This involves the development of an HR professional network and an HR workforce strategy for the APS.
Outside of the APS, businesses are increasingly looking to human resources management for economic advantages from recruitment, performance management and workplace training. As economic growth becomes more challenging to achieve, strategic human resource management will play an essential role in the success of a business.
Social issues
There are many social issues that arise in workplaces, such as:
- gender inequality
- racial inequality
- wage inequality
- sexual harassment; and
- occupational stress.
In addition to affecting employees and becoming a factor that affects human resource management, these issues can also have a personal and direct impact on those in the human resource management team.
Of all the social issues, gender inequality is one of the most significant challenges facing employees in Australia, with no change in the 20.8 per cent pay gap over the past year.
This stagnation comes despite around three-quarters of businesses implementing a gender equality strategy or policy. Unfortunately, less than a third of businesses are scrutinising those policies.
Governments are now starting to take action on gender inequality. Meanwhile, Football Federation Australia made international headlines by confirming equal pay for both male and female national teams.
Human resource managers can also play a role in closing the gender pay gap with a deeper awareness of issues in diversity and contemporary strategic human resource management. You can achieve this by upgrading your qualifications with a Master of Human Resources Management (MHRM).
Employee engagement
Employee engagement has been described as the holy grail of employers, but there’s a wide range of definitions to explain what it actually is. It’s often reduced down to discretionary effort – that little bit of extra care and attention that employees choose to put into their work. This is what can lead to more satisfied customers, lower expenses and improved outcomes all round.
The challenge for human resource management is that the attitudes of individual employees are usually influenced by those working with and around them, not by someone from human resources. Instead, employee engagement can be improved by human resource managers through better recruitment and workplace training.
For example, transformational leadership is a leadership style that encourages interpersonal communication – something that creates a high involvement workplace and a strong, healthy culture.
By hiring managers with transformational leadership skills or providing training in transformational leadership, human resource management can play a critical role in improving employee engagement.
Technology advancements
Until recently, the great advancement in technology for human resource management was HR management software. These computer applications store information about individual employees, their goals, training and many other data points. However, while HR management software has revolutionised some human resource management practices, there are some new technology advancements to look out for.
Data security was once as simple as locking the filing cabinet – and maybe the office door for added security. When things went digital, network security protected with an impenetrable, invisible ring around the office.
Now human resources management data is likely to be stored in the cloud and accessed from multiple locations by laptops, tablets and phones. Data security is now a factor affecting human resources management as Sony found out in 2014 when hackers stole 38 million files – including the personal information of employees.
Another technology advancement that will affect human resources management is AI or Artificial Intelligence. Data science advisors to the Australian Government, Data61, have developed a roadmap for key areas of AI specialisation in healthcare, urban development and natural resource management.
Unlike the doomsayers who predict job losses from AI, Data61 predict that AI will change what work looks like, but it will create jobs rather than destroying them.
Once the domain of the information technology department, human resource managers must be aware of these and other technology advancements. With a Master of Human Resources Management (MHRM), you can ensure you’re ready to manage these challenges for reduced risk and increased competitive advantage.
Learn more about our online Master of Human Resources Management. Get in touch with our Enrolment team on 1300 701 171.