HR Leaders Top Five Priorities in 2023
More than 800 HR leaders across 60 countries, who participated in the recent Gartner survey, put Leader and Manager Effectiveness on top of their 2023 priority list (60%), but many HR leaders will also prioritize Organizational Design and Change Management (53%), Employee Experience (47%), Recruiting (46%) and Future of Work (42%).
What is the motivation behind these priorities? Executives are facing a triple load:
1. Organizations find themselves in confusing and uncertain times:
a. Rising inflation
b. Scarce, expensive talent
c. Global supply constraints
2. HR leaders must make many compromises.
HR leaders have to manage technology and people investments, foster a positive employee culture and experience, and simultaneously transform HR to be more digital and automated.
3. New employee expectations redefine retention and attraction:
a. Flexibility: More than half of employees agree that flexible work policies will impact their decision to stay with their organization.
b. Shared goal: 53% want their companies to address the issues they care about.
c. Wellbeing: Nearly two-thirds of all companies have added new benefits to their well-being strategies or increased existing benefits.
d. Person-first experience: Around 4 in 5 employees feel it’s important that their employer sees them as a person, not just as an employee.
Let’s discuss these priorities more. What are the problems? And what are the possible solutions?
1. Leader and Manager Effectiveness
Problem – Leaders Need a New Approach
24% of HR leaders believe their approach to leadership development does not prepare leaders for the future. Leadership must adapt to the changing work environment. The leader-employee relationship is being transformed into more human-to-human by the environmental changes of social and political turmoil, work-life fusion and flexible work arrangements.
Solution – A Human-Centric Leader
Leaders must be human-centric because of the human-to-human dynamic at work. This means that they should lead with empathy, authenticity, and adaptability. These qualities have been listed as the core characteristics of great leaders for some time, but they were not considered obligatory. These traits are now required by employees.
2. Organizational Design and Change management
Problem – Work Friction and Change Fatigue Are Leading to Attrition
45% of HR leaders believe that their employees are tired from all the changes. Due to continuous disruption caused by digital transformations, economic uncertainty and political tensions, CHROs place a high priority on organizational design and change management. However, many employees are losing the willingness to work with change after years of such disruption. Worse still, high levels of employee “change fatigue” are associated with lower motivation to stay at the organization – 43% of employees experiencing above-average fatigue want to stay at the organization, in comparison with 74% with lower fatigue levels.
Solution – Adopt an Open-Source Change Strategy
With an opensource strategy, CHROs can reduce change fatigue and help employees navigate through periods of uncertainty. This is a less prescriptive approach than top-down strategies and more collaborative. Employees are involved in the process and not just told what will happen. Open-source change strategies are 14x more likely for organizations to succeed at change. They notice a reduction in the risk of change fatigue among employees by 29 percentage points, and an increase in employee motivation to stay by up to 19 percentage points.
3. Employee Experience
Problem – Compelling Careers Are Critical for Retention
44% of HR leaders believe their companies don’t have attractive career paths. Data on employee career preferences found that only 25% of respondents are confident in their careers at work. Three out of four looking for new roles are open to exploring opportunities outside their company.
Solution – Three Key Career Growth Moments
The present day fractures have created new career “must do” for HR. This has changed the traditional HR approach towards career growth:
a. Employees are spending 65% less time in the office, so it becomes harder for them to see career options. Employees need to be able to see clearer career opportunities and HR leaders have to support them in this.
b. The employees aren’t ready for the future. In 2024, 33 percent of job listings for 2019 will no longer be relevant. Task for HR leaders – to share diverse colleague examples to show multiple routes to career progression.
c. Employees don’t have the right options to reach their personal goals. 65% of employees are questioning the role of work in life. The solution of HR leaders is to provide objective reflection that will help create the best-fit careers.
4. Recruiting
Problem – Sourcing and Onboarding Against Attrition
Thirty-six percent of HR leaders feel their sourcing strategies do not provide enough resources to help them find the skills that they require. In today’s hybrid-driven labour market, employees must confront the realities of low supply and low retention.
Solution – Leading in a Volatile Labour Market
Three strategies for better recruitment include finding accessible, not just available, talent with labour market intelligence, building an equitable internal, not just external, labour market and developing onboarding programs based on emotional proximity.
5. Future of Work
Problem – Workforce Planning Is Disconnected From Today’s Reality
51% of HR leaders believe their workforce planning is limited to headcount. The assumptions around which workforce planning (WFP) has operated no longer hold in today’s environment. Therefore, strategies that were used in the past are no longer effective in the current environment.
Solution – Match Your Planning to Today’s Realities
Instead of assuming we can predict future skills needs, access enough talent, fill future gaps by buying and building, and dictate when and where employees work, we need a new approach that unlocks new strategies. Start anticipating near-term shifts in critical work itself by evaluating tasks and workflows, redeploying tasks flexibly across your organization to add slack and resilience, experimenting with innovative sourcing models and empowering employers and employees to achieve desired ways of working.
If you’re looking for new ideas, fresh perspectives and insights on the future of work, then you’ll want to attend HR Vision Events.
