The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted unprecedented levels of change and challenges for HR professionals.
Through the utilisation of technology, HR leaders now have an opportunity to pivot to a new post-pandemic reality – evolving the way they navigate each stage of the employee lifecycle. There’s also an opportunity to shape and enhance the employee experience (EX) and connect the people strategy to the business strategy to underpin business performance.
To stay ahead of the curve, Humanico has identified 5 main HR challenges in today’s organisations. This will allow you as a leader to better prepare for stronger and more resilient workplace culture.
1. Dealing with talent demand and retention
With the recruitment landscape constantly changing, HR leaders must embrace a new and innovative approach to understand the talent they already have. By leveraging technology, organisations can identify changes in the needs and expectations of their employees, as well as their priorities.
A technology-driven strategy can:
- help people leaders find and identify talent within the organisation
- improve the employee experience
- increase performance and engagement
Acquiring relevant data and insights will provide you with a more holistic approach. Implementing simple and effective HR software can improve the day-to-day experience for all your humans, facilitating collaboration and enhancing the overall employee experience. A clear career development plan can also be created, which helps boost morale, engagement and especially loyalty.
2. Moulding a new culture in a hybrid world
There are many ways to respond to the new reality of the hybrid workplace, but it has to be more than offering new benefits or perks. It means making foundational changes to workplace culture.
So how do you cultivate a constructive culture so that all your employees feel connected? As an HR leader, it’s crucial to provide your managers with innovative ways to communicate and better understand their people through the lens of compassion and empathy.
Firstly, start with a solid communication plan. This includes tools such as video conferencing, phone calls, and instant messaging such as Slack and Chat. Secondly, provide your managers with digital channels and data to survey their team members and gain meaningful and truthful feedback. These insights will enable them to make better decisions and to build trust.
3. Enabling future leaders
Due to the current talent shortage, internal promotions and opportunities are critical to an organisation’s long term success. HR leaders must implement strategies to equip future leaders for promotional opportunities. One way to do this is through succession planning.
Succession planning empowers your current and future leaders with opportunities for growth within your company. Technology is revolutionising this process by providing data-driven insights on productivity levels as well as leadership capabilities. By focusing on needs and strengths, organisations can begin to determine what learning and development programs to implement in order to provide career support and genuine opportunities.
4. Re-engaging employees in times of uncertainty
Throughout the last two years, employees have experienced uncertainty and tremendous changes in the workplace. Since the rise of the hybrid work model, organisations are finding it more difficult to keep employees meaningfully engaged. Therefore, a re-invention of processes used to engage staff needs to be examined.
By getting to know your humans on a deeper level, HR leaders can start to connect their employees to a bigger purpose at work. This helps them to cultivate a greater sense of self-awareness and belonging. And through the implementation of software, you’ll also be able to measure and understand how engaged, fulfilled, and happy your people are.
5. Providing a healthy, inspiring and positive employee experience
A modern employee’s happiness goes beyond a good salary. While competitive compensation may affect retention, employees are equally if not more concerned about feeling valued, secure, supported, and respected. Organisations can offer an excellent employee experience (EX) by taking a more streamlined approach to assessing and managing this process.
Providing each human with interesting, challenging, and exciting work – alongside opportunities for growth and impact – will give your people a reason to stay with you for the long term. Furthermore, through the use of the right HR software, leaders can begin to gain insight into what motivates their people, producing engaged, efficient workers. This in turn leads to increased profitability and greater business performance.
In summary
The future of work is moving well beyond the traditional approach of management. As the workplace continues to change and challenges emerge, HR leaders play an even more crucial role.
With the right technological tools and strategies, leaders can enhance the employee experience by using data insights to understand their organisational capability and build more effective teams.
At Humanico, we strive to help organisations grow and thrive. Together we’ll uncover your people’s strengths, visualise your company’s human map and provide a strategic blueprint of how to maximise their capabilities.
For more information about how Humanico can help you overcome HR challenges, get in touch with us today.
