{"id":11205,"date":"2018-11-28T11:38:14","date_gmt":"2018-11-28T10:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/?p=11205"},"modified":"2018-11-28T11:38:14","modified_gmt":"2018-11-28T10:38:14","slug":"hr-trends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/blog\/hr-trends\/","title":{"rendered":"6 HR trends to look out for"},"content":{"rendered":"

At no other time in history\u00a0have people teams had<\/span> such a big impact on the bottom line of business. Advances in tech have evolved HR\u2019s role beyond administration, and Human Resources professionals are expected to be more strategic.<\/p>\n

As an HR tech company, we’re lucky to be able to regularly swap ideas with human resources leaders and analyze industry experts\u2019 findings. Based on these impressions, we have distilled the major emerging topics in HR.<\/p>\n

Here are six HR trends we expect to rise in the coming years:<\/em><\/h3>\n

1. Back to human<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s no secret that machines are taking on many manual, repetitive, and even problem-solving tasks. But capabilities like empathy, autonomous creativity, moral judgment, and the creation of meaning remain exclusive to humans.<\/p>\n

Focusing on the\u00a0human<\/em>\u00a0in\u00a0human resources<\/em>\u00a0is becoming a competitive advantage for organizations. Company culture, team dynamics, individual strengths, career journeys, health, wellbeing \u2013 these are all things people teams are expected to look after.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll also have to safeguard basic human needs in a world with technology all around us. Dan Schwabel writes in his\u00a0new book\u00a0Back to Human<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cTechnology has created an illusion that today\u2019s workers are highly connected to one another, when in reality most feel isolated from their colleagues.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Who, if not HR, will be there to restore people\u2019s sense of social belonging in the workplace?<\/p>\n

HR departments will continue helping people build meaningful relationships through ongoing conversations with their peers, managers, and team members. Technology will merely be a means to an end, not the solution itself.<\/p>\n

[cs_gb id=11831]<\/p>\n

2. Continuous re-skilling<\/h2>\n

The shift from fixed job titles and detailed job descriptions to skill-based, ever-evolving roles is reflected in how the learning space evolves.<\/p>\n

HR industry analyst\u00a0Josh Bersin<\/a> said in his opening keynote at UNLEASH Amsterdam:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe skills gaps are bigger than ever. We now have a complete disruption of the ways careers work. Vertical, traditional careers are less and less popular, less and less important. So we need better tools for people to continuously re-skill themselves.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Microlearning<\/a>, that is completing bite-sized learning units as opposed to time-consuming courses, fits the bill perfectly and is quickly gaining popularity in the eLearning sector.<\/p>\n

Helping employees acquire new skills is becoming a top priority for modern HR departments. According to Josh Bersin, unsurprisingly, \u201cthe learning space is one of the fastest-growing areas in HR technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

3. Data ethics in people analytics<\/h2>\n

The amount of data organizations can collect about employees grows exponentially each year. Distilling the data down to something useful is a great challenge. But it\u2019s not the only one.<\/p>\n

According to people analytics leader David Green<\/a>, staying ethical and maintaining employees\u2019 trust is the most important and difficult part of people analytics.<\/p>\n

Legislation struggles to keep up with the pace of technological innovation. So for the most part, it\u2019s up to organizations to use employee data in a fair way that respects the individual\u2019s privacy. Employers that neglect ethics while using people analytics have to expect employee backlash. And even bad press, as in the case of Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n

People analytics is on the rise and here to stay. It\u2019s only by getting data ethics right early on that it will bring lasting value to organizations.<\/p>\n

4. The double-edged sword of AI<\/h2>\n

AI is currently very, very stupid. At least according to\u00a0Google\u2019s AI chief Andrew Moore<\/a>. But it is creeping into our workflows and advancing at breakneck speed. How we deal with AI will change the workplace for better or worse.<\/p>\n

Over the next couple of years, the yawning gap between hype and substance in artificial intelligence will start to get smaller. More importantly, the necessary discussions about the limitations and pitfalls of AI in human resources will go on.<\/p>\n

AI has great potential for creating a better experience at every stage of the employee lifecycle. But it also has a dark side.\u00a0Cathy O’Neil, mathematician and author of Weapons of Math Destruction<\/em>, told CNBC<\/a>:<\/em><\/p>\n

“When we blithely train algorithms on historical data, to a large extent we are setting ourselves up to merely repeat the past. We’ll need to do more, which means examining the bias embedded in the data.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If done right, AI will make our working lives a lot easier and free up time to focus on the human side of human resources. But first, we need to get the data right.<\/p>\n

5. HR in the flow of work<\/h2>\n

Let\u2019s face it: HR is infamous for introducing cumbersome tools and processes that prevent people from getting their work done. Luckily, many HR folks polish the profession\u2019s reputation by creating environments that foster productivity and wellbeing.<\/p>\n

On their way to becoming workplace productivity enablers, HR departments will have to become somewhat invisible. They\u2019ll start to support areas like learning and performance as a natural part of people\u2019s work, not separate from it. The role of HR will be more about creating an empowering culture, nudging employees, training managers, and being where people need you.<\/p>\n

As David Mallon, Chief Analyst at Bersin by Deloitte, has put it:<\/p>\n

\u201cHR and technology have to be work-centric, not HR-centric. Productivity in the flow of work is about not getting distracted by interfaces.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He added that people get more productive when \u201cyou’re focused on the data model and the decisions that this tool helps you to solve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Embedding HR activities in people\u2019s workflows takes time and dedication, but work-centric HR will come sooner than later.<\/p>\n

6. Overcoming HR tool overload<\/h2>\n

There are thousands of HR vendors out there and new ones popping up all the time. Staying on top of things gets increasingly difficult for HR professionals. You really need to know what you want before implementing technology blindly.<\/p>\n

Once you\u2019ve discovered what problems you want to solve, it\u2019s not unusual to end up with more than ten HR systems. If these systems are difficult to use and don\u2019t speak to each other, productivity loss is sure to follow.<\/p>\n

As a result, we\u2019ll see more HR software vendors that focus on building intuitive user interfaces and guided workflows. Another way to tackle HR tool overload is to avoid double work by keeping your data in sync.<\/p>\n

Integrations between HR, communication, and productivity tools will become more important than ever. Software that focuses on aggregating data from different specialized HR tools will clearly benefit from this trend.<\/p>\n

Finally, HR tools need to facilitate real interactions and meaningful experiences. At Small Improvements, for instance, it was never our goal to keep users in our\u00a0performance management tool<\/a>\u00a0as long as possible. Instead, we encourage people to use it as a starting point for face-to-face conversations.<\/p>\n

\n

To sum it all up, a lot of what HR will focus on is about understanding and improving the employee experience. We’ve learned that technology alone doesn’t solve problems in the workplace. So the thoughtful, ethical, and resource-effective use of tools for collaboration, performance, people analytics, and more will keep human resources departments busy this year. And sometimes, a good conversation is all it takes to keep managers and employees productive and engaged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What changes can HR professionals expect in 2019? Based on insights from HR practitioners, experts, and analysts, here are our six biggest workplace trends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":11204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rethinking-hr"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.small-improvements.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}