HR trends to watch out for in 2016

January 28, 2016 12:00 am | Updated September 23, 2016 11:00 pm IST

Five trends are going to have major play in the human resources profession in particular and people practices in general in 2016. In this calendar year, not only do we expect more CEOs, HR heads and middle managers to talk about the impact of these trends on their lives but also individual employees, as their careers will be equally shaped and impacted by them. Let us turn our attention to a few trends.

Fundamental shift in the organisational face: changes in the workforce mix

Depending on the geography organisations operate in, HR professionals will see both a ‘silver tsunami’ of retiring baby boomers who constitute the grey generation, and an increasing flood of talent, with nearly half the global workforce by 2020 being from the millennial generation. The confluence of the generational mix and the proverbial war of talent to attract and retain talent will require organisations to proactively invest in shaping a culture that provides the licence to ideate and autonomy, builds mastery and employability, and creates an experience that is underlined with a sense of purpose and transparency, which is what the employee of choice is looking for.

Personalised people practices: think people, not process

Twenty-first century enterprises will need to deliver a unified distinctive employment experience for a ‘workforce of one’.

The premise of design needs to be people rather than policy, programme or platform.

Organisations will need to balance the need to modify processes at will with a discipline related to timing changes to a new release of functionalities and deliver increased levels of employee service expected by selecting technologies and partners with an openness to change, experience in the particular industry and fit into the organisational culture.

Always-on HR: employee services on an app, anytime, anywhere

Most organisations now recognise that their business models need to evolve to have policies, processes, programmes which resonate with employees and other stakeholders who now prefer interactions that are created with a digital mindset and on a digital platform.

Reinventing the user interaction with HR on an application accessible and available anytime and anywhere is the key.

Across the employment lifecycle, we will see changes in employee relationship management by using digitalisation so as to enhance awareness of organisational values, behaviours, and opportunities; enthuse advocacy of a culture that values potential, proficiencies, performance and passion.

Engaging, enabling and empowering people: balancing HR - heart and results

Beliefs, intentions and actions need to be aligned to reflect the desired organisational culture. To deliver on the value proposition we promise, people policies, process and programme design need to be built on tenets that put the employee first.

Organisations will need to shift the practices in the workplace environment, from management-led to employee-led and managemen-embraced. This will require authenticity, flexibility and trust in dialogue and application to engage people, inverting the pyramid so leaders see their role is to enable people and empowering individuals to recast their roles as CEO of their careers.

This will fundamentally change:

• Recruiting, which will evolve to be seen as talent acquisition in a seller’s market, as new roles with new skill/location/level combinations emerge.

• Performance management, with individual and collective contribution being valued equally and nurtured real time and employee driving decisions related to frequency in goal review and feedback.

• Career management, with many more options opening as new technologies and ways of working lead to new roles being sculpted.

• Learning, as the need will be to build integrated professional, technical and domain competencies for the roles being played by individuals.

• Talent management, with potential identification being extended deeper into the workforce and internal as well as external talent pipelines being created to mitigate succession risks for key positions.

Integrated decision support: increasing insight from information

As delivering the value proposition for the 21st century workforce becomes more challenging, organisations will need to shape practices built on evidence-based insight. This will require investments in identification and reporting of key metrics, data modelling, data management, data warehousing, business intelligence platforms, and analytics.

The insight garnered needs to drive decisions that impact the employment experience and organisational culture. We will need to shift from an orientation of prescription to an orientation of prediction so we can ensure people and teams are future-ready.

Ability to predict individual potential, outcomes related to talent acquisition, performance outcomes, gaps in proficiency and impact of the employment experience on passion will enable HR professionals to shift the language used to reflect a quantitative measure of returns on the investments the organisation is making.

The writer is chief human resources officer, HCL Technologies

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