Top 3 Emerging HR trends for 2020

There were plenty of big changes and advancements in HR last year but this year looks set to be even bigger. From workplace learning to performance tracking and reviews, we’re seeing continued change at every stage. Some of these changes started in 2019 or even before and are simply gearing up for even bigger leaps in 2020 while others are entirely new. We’ve taken a look at HR as a whole and have identified 3 top HR trends that we expect to see in 2020.

HR Trend #1 – Preparing for the Workforce of the Future

We spent much of last year talking about the workforce of the future in one way or another. Technological advancements, environmental and economic changes plus demographic developments have seen our workforce change drastically over the years. These changes will only become more pronounced and no doubt entirely new ones will develop in the coming years as all of these areas continue to shift and change at a fairly rapid rate.

Preparing for the workforce of the future is, therefore, a two-step process. Firstly, identifying the most recent and upcoming changes in the workforce to directly prepare for these. Secondly, ensure you have the data and technology to be able to quickly react to any unforeseen changes. In the more distant future and even predict these new changes before your competition does.

For the immediate future, here are some of the biggest workforce changes that are already underway and are likely to only become more prominent in the coming years.

Diversity

The world is only getting smaller with the ability to recruit from across the globe and to relocate more accessible than ever.  Our workforce is becoming more diverse. Diversity can improve innovation, efficiency, and even productivity within a business so businesses should embrace and encourage this change, but they also need to be prepared to integrate this new diversity into one company culture.

Transient Workers

Temporary and part-time workers, as well as employees that work from home, all pose a challenge to today’s businesses, yet these roles are making up an increasingly larger portion of the workforce. Businesses can benefit from new skills and experience by taking on temporary or freelance workers for an efficient way to complete projects as well as provide the flexibility to keep top talent happy or secure talent from across the globe with work-from-home roles. Unfortunately, these roles are also notoriously challenging to integrate properly into the workforce. To prepare for this increasing trend, businesses need the technology and systems in place to provide the same employee experience to all workers including those that may not be there all the time or work away from the office.

Competitive Benefits

Benefits packages are getting increasingly competitive and employee expectations are higher as a result. The range of benefits packages available is also increasing in line with the changing demographics and values of our population. With new benefits like pawternity leave offering employees holiday to spend time training a new puppy are increasing in popularity and there is added pressure to provide these benefits packages and come up with more innovative ones to differentiate from other companies.

HR Trend #2 – A Consumer-style Experience

A greater focus on people in the employee experience is nothing new but HR professionals are still figuring out what this means and how to do it right. One key emerging employee experience trend is a more personalised consumer-style experience. B2B industries have been taking a leaf out of the B2C book for a while now and HR professionals are just realising how these same principles can apply to the Business-Employee relationship.

To achieve this, businesses are looking at ways to give greater flexibility and accessibility to employees with convenient self-service systems they access across devices and intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces. Just as in retail, personalisation is also key to a great experience. From simple personalised welcome messages on employee dashboards to personalised learning paths, this new experience is designed to be more engaging and effective.

The key to a consumer-style employee experience is the right technology. An HR solution that can provide the flexible, self-service employee portals and AI-driven personalisation is essential for a streamlined experience and we expect many HR solutions will similarly change their focus this year to ensuring their interfaces are clean and easy-to-use.

HR Trend #3 – A Holistic Approach

While a focus on employee experience is definitely a key trend, the shift towards a holistic HR approach is perhaps the more important trend. This new approach looks at HR as a whole and how the individual stages and processes affect end-to-end HR. This means looking at both short-term and long-term effects, combining analytics with intuition and looking at ways to add value to all stakeholders, not just management. It’s an entirely human-centric approach that still embraces technology.

This year, we expect to see HR moving from the role of simply mitigating risk and ensuring compliance to executing business strategies. In order to utilise HR to their full potential and begin positioning them as a strategic asset in this way, businesses will need to take the holistic approach. As well as looking at the processes and stages that make up HR and improving all these areas to improve the whole, we also need to start looking at HR as a part of the business whole and how it both influences and is influenced by other business functions as well as the business values, mission, and goals.

Other Emerging 2020 HR Trends

Don’t forget to look out for other emerging trends this year to stay ahead of the curve and the competition. If you want to find out how SuccessFactors could help your HR teams be more prepared for unexpected change, talk to one of our team today. This world-class HRMS has everything you need to take on the current HR trends looking to shape 2020 as well as the agility to take on future and unknown changes.