The Fourth Industrial Revolution brought a lot of change in the human resource industry. Here are the top 10 HR trends that will shape the future of work in 2021, so you can make informed decisions for your organization.
10 Human Resources Trends That Matter Most in the 2021 Workplace
Human resource management (HRM) is concerned with managing the organization, focusing on the system and policies, and operating appropriately and in accordance with the latest technology trends to be able to deal with the challenges of working life.
The technological revolution (Internet, social media, big data, artificial intelligence, robotics, etc.) has changed the HR industry and transformed the world we live in.
The challenge for organizations is precisely to learn to bridge the gap between the new needs of the workforce and the requirements demanded by the current business ecosystem.
We find ourselves in a new era, often referred to as the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” in which the workforce is increasingly digital, diverse, global and efficient with social media and automation.
At the same time, the needs and expectations of companies are also evolving faster than ever before: new profiles, tools, technology, business models…
So, it is necessary to rewrite the rules of the organization, hiring, development and management in order to attract and retain the workforce of the 21st century.
HR management trends are used to describe the social and economic transformations we are experiencing in the 21st century and to serve as a decalogue for business leaders and human resources, for the optimal management of human capital, marking a new set of rules for the current socio-economic environment.
However, how is the business world adjusting to the new HR trends? What role should HR departments play?
10 HR Trends You Need to Know for 2021
Understanding industrial transformations is crucial to keeping up with the rapid developments taking place. Here, we’ve discussed the top 10 HR trends that will shape the future of work in 202, so you can make informed decisions for your organization.
1. Learning styles for career development
Learning tools are changing rapidly. Traditional systems are being complemented or replaced by a wide range of new technologies such as YouTube, edX, Udacity …
Developing unique learning styles is important to support employee career advancements because it can help staff complete training quicker and work more effectively.
A career requires continuous learning and advancement. Effective learning of new work processes is a natural part of the career ladders. Taking the time to understand your natural learning preferences can make a big difference to your job performance.
New HR trends are forcing companies to redesign their strategies, offering opportunities for learning and continuous development.
Understanding and developing an organizational culture that stimulates and fosters creativity and innovation in the workplace are imperative for organizations seeking a competitive advantage.
The organizations that encourage creativity and innovation, are increasingly flexible and already have dynamic career development models.
2. Shaping the Organization of the Future
The way organizations operate today is radically different from how they operated ten years ago. Due to the demands of organizational change, HR executives consider the construction of the organizational model of the future important.
Organizing for speed, agility, and adaptability plays a key role in this new model.
As organizations become more digital, they face an increasing imperative to redesign themselves to facilitate rapid learning, move faster, adapt more quickly, and embrace the dynamic job requirements of their employees.
Breaking with hierarchical structures and moving towards models focused on teamwork, each with resources and decision-making capabilities, is necessary to be able to compete and win in today’s business environment.
Transformational leadership and inter-team collaboration require new leaders with skills such as negotiation, resilience, and systematic thinking. Leaders who know in detail the abilities of each individual in order to be able to form new groups quickly and efficiently, and how to define clear and quantifiable objectives for each of the teams.
There are techniques such as organizational network analysis (ONA), which help companies to know and identify the experts and the connections between the different teams.
3. Recruitment and talent acquisition
Recruitment refers to processes involved in identifying, attracting, shortlisting, interviewing, and filling vacancies.
Talent acquisition is an ongoing positioning strategy to find specialists, leaders, or future executives and acquire skilled workers to meet the organizational needs.
Talent acquisition tends to focus on long-term human resource planning and recruiting candidates to fill vacancies within an organization.
In today’s digital age, the brand image that a company projects must be attractive to be able to attract the best talent.
That is why more and more companies are making more efforts in the management of employment branding, which consists of reinforcing the image and perception of an organization towards its clients, employees, and especially its potential candidates.
The talent acquisition process requires an effective mix of attributes, including experiences in the professional environment and a solid professional development plan.
In fact, it is just as necessary to carry out outreach campaigns that attract new candidates as it is to carry out marketing campaigns to promote a product or service. This can be done through cognitive tools and other videos and gamification solutions.
4. Employee experience management
Employee experience is the journey that employees encounter and observe over the course of their tenure in the organization.
Improving the employee experience has become a top priority. Every organization recognizes people as their greatest assets and invests in customer experience.
An employee brand explains a company’s reputation, and the experience the employee tells the world can become a competitive advantage.
To recruit and retain Millennials, HR departments are using new approaches such as design thinking and employee journey maps. They are focusing on understanding and improving the employee experience, we must not forget that a good employee experience leads to a good customer experience.
We also must not forget to monitor and analyze the satisfaction of different types of workers such as freelancers, part-time employees and alumni.
5. Reinventing performance management
Performance management is a continuous process of planning, monitoring and reviewing employee’s work objectives and overall contribution to the organization.
In recent years, organizations have radically changed the way they evaluate their employees, and for this, HR managers must be retrained to implement new work monitoring methodologies.
Team-centric methodologies are being adopted, which focus on teamwork. Rather than looking at individual employee achievements, they focus on evaluating the impact of their contribution to the team.
Keep in mind that if the team wins, the employee wins; and therefore the company.
Qualitative information is what helps organizations identify the most productive employees and run promotions and other rewards with them.
6. HR Digital Transformation
HR digital transformation is the process of changing HR services and processes through the use of social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) technologies to make HR more efficient, effective, automated and connected.
HR departments play a crucial role in helping the digital transformation of a company. They face a double challenge: on the one hand, to transform the activities of the department itself and, on the other, to transform the workforce.
According to data from a survey report, 33% of the HR teams are using some form of artificial intelligence and 41% are actively developing mobile applications to offer HR services.
HR leaders who are capable of adopting new technologies and ways of working, as well as constantly reinventing themselves, will have a strong impact on the results of the company and the experience of its employees.
7. Reimagining leadership in the age of disruption
There is no doubt that the workplace is undergoing an unprecedented level of change.
Senior HR executives intend to reinvent human resources for the digital age as they embrace the disruption of the way organizations work and rethink how leaders and employees should be prepared for success.
Leadership in the digital age will not look like leadership as we know and love it. New leaders need to have different skills than previous generations, but most companies haven’t moved fast enough to develop digital leaders.
The new type of leader must know how to build and lead teams, keep people connected and loyal, and promote a culture of innovation, learning, and continuous improvement.
It is necessary to build new leadership models, since now companies aspire to different goals such as innovation.
HR leaders need to redesign their organizations with the aim of being more dynamic, team-centric and connected and rebuild their organization’s culture in a way that keeps the workforce motivated to deliver results and meet shifting customer requirements.
This is one of the greatest needs of companies today since only 5% of companies believe they have good leaders with skills in the digital field.
8. Diversity and inclusion in the workplace
Diversity and inclusion are two related concepts – but far from interchangeable. A diverse and inclusive workplace is one where everyone feels equally involved and supported in all areas of the workplace, regardless of who they are or what they do for the business.
In the turbulent political environment in which we find ourselves where nationalisms have gained ground and demographic changes make different generations, Millennials and Baby Boomers, coexist in the same workplace, they have made diversity and inclusion strategies one of the priorities for the digital era.
Diversity and inclusion directly impact the brand, performance and corporate objectives, becoming one of the most relevant aspects for the talent acquisition and building employment brand strategy.
78% of employers believe that the proper implementation of these strategies represent a competitive advantage for the company.
Organizations are required to establish a new set of rules based on transparency and influencing changes in measurement processes and tools to identify possible problems of gender inequality, racial or disparities in compensation and rewards.
9. HR Analytics (People Analytics)
HR analytics is the data-driven and goal-focused method of collecting and analyzing HR processes, functions, challenges, and opportunities in order to improve an organization’s workforce performance and achieve sustainable business success.
HR Analytics can also be referred to as people analytics, talent analytics, or even workforce analytics.
The digital transformation has given rise to a new professional profile, the HR analyst. Organizations are redesigning their analytical teams to develop digital solutions that allow them to measure, analyze and use information, and thus understand in depth each part of the operations processes.
HR analytics is being applied to a wide variety of business processes, with hiring those that most require this measurement, followed by performance management.
New analytics tools give executives a great mix of metrics to help them understand which strategies are really driving results.
10. Embracing the future of work
The nature of work is changing in the 21st century as a result of the growing adoption of cognitive technologies and the digitization of processes.
Preparing for the future work environment requires extensive changes in both skills and mindset.
The future of work is being shaped by two powerful forces: the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace, and the expansion of the workforce to include a talent balance-sheet.
Automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence systems are transforming the workforce. In turn, organizations are redesigning workplaces to take advantage of the implementation of these technologies.
While some dramatize the negative consequences that these technologies will have, it is proven that the use of these tools will not only help create new specialized jobs but will also increase productivity.
Jobs should be thought of as a set of tasks that, if they can be automated, will help focus human efforts on the customer experience, the employee experience, and the organization’s value proposition to society.
Key skills such as critical thinking, decision-making and problem-solving are the building blocks that create a framework to help employees identify changes in their work environment quickly and adapt response strategies aimed at achieving the outcomes they desire
