2023 HR Trend: Shifting to an employee-first approach
As the future of work continues to evolve, more companies are shifting to an employee-first approach. In order to stay ahead of the curve and attract and retain top talent for your firm, it’s imperative to be aware of continued demand for things like better employee experience and workplace flexibility.
By adopting a flexible, people-centered approach, businesses can make sure that the needs and wants of their employees are at the center of their HR strategy.
Here are a few global HR trends that, as we look beyond 2023 and beyond, will affect how companies all across the world manage the employee lifetime.
Developing your current talent
It’s a good idea to broaden your recruitment strategy to include your existing workforce, whether you’re utilizing them to backfill a position or when you’re looking to fill a new one. Businesses can also demonstrate their concern for current employees by offering upskilling opportunities, encouraging self-directed learning, or just following up with them frequently to find out how things are going and what they think the company can do to improve.
Investing in current talent is more crucial than businesses realize. In fact, a Gallup survey found that almost 50% of American workers may be considered “silent quitters.” What does this actually mean? When an employee doesn’t feel engaged or fulfilled at work, they may quietly leave.
Businesses that don’t invest in their existing talent see a decline in employee engagement. Because of this, your HR strategy should put a lot of emphasis on retention initiatives.
These initiatives might involve holding so-called “stay interviews”, in addition to offering opportunities for skill upgrading and other forms of personal growth.
1. Stay interviews
A stay interview is just as important as an exit interview.
Employers can assess a current employee’s overall job happiness and morale by conducting a stay interview. Companies benefit from a greater understanding of what motivates people to work for them and what areas may require development. This could help companies find the first points of pain before they become big problems.
Employee surveys can be used to conduct stay interviews, but face-to-face interactions are frequently more fruitful. While doing one-on-one interviews with a few people from different departments may not be simple in large organizations, it can give firms a lot more insight into the demands of their current staff.
2. Upskilling
Upskilling your workforce means helping people keep learning, either through training programs or other development opportunities, to close any gaps in skills and improve their abilities.
Gallup found that 65% of workers think it’s important for an employer to help them learn new skills when they’re looking for a new job, and 48% of American workers said they would switch to a new job if it offered career advancement and training opportunities.
Offering upskilling opportunities benefits both people and their employers. It gives employees the chance to broaden their skill sets and advance their careers, which frequently results in more employee engagement and better retention rates for firms. Several instances of upskilling possibilities include:
- Online or virtual courses
- Coaching sessions
- Internship or mentoring programs
Reevaluating employee experience
To attract and retain top talents, you need more than a good wage package. It’s more important than ever for businesses to think of new ways to affect their employees’ lives in a meaningful way, which means taking a more personalized approach.
Before updating your perk offerings, it is best to ask for employee feedback. If you ask your employees what perks they would like, you might find out that they would rather have a tuition stipend than a gym allowance. By making perks fit the needs of your employees and realizing that they don’t work for everyone, you’ll make your current staff feel appreciated and make your company more appealing to top talent.
When evaluating the employee benefits program at your company, it’s important not to forget about the mental health part. Employees in place a high value on working for organizations that prioritize their mental well-being. While occasionally giving employees a day off for mental health purposes is a great start, businesses should look at other options to demonstrate their genuine concern for their employees’ mental health.
Flexibility is the “new normal”
Being adaptable about the location of the people you hire may be necessary for many firms. It’s highly unlikely that all the talent you need will be in one central area. By expanding your search to the global market, your business will be able to take advantage of a wider range of opportunities and strengthen your workforce in the process.
It’s essential for workers to have flexibility in their work schedules and methods. The transition to remote work during the pandemic demonstrated that people do not need to spend their working hours shackled to a computer in an office; in fact, a sizable portion of the workforce has no desire to return to this way of life.
But in addition to being flexible with regards to where and when people work, this also entails treating each candidate with consideration for their particular needs and objectives, which starts with the hiring process. Finding out about a candidate personally could be all that is required. What hobbies and pastimes do they have? How or by what are they motivated? Allowing people to be themselves and showing interest from the beginning helps the business since it results in:
- 140% increase in employee engagement
- 50% increase in team performance
- 90% increase in team innovation
- 54% lower turnover
Use of automation to support greater HR strategy
We’re beginning to see more automation in the workplace than ever before as technology develops at a rapid rate. The pandemic is largely to blame for this change since it forced many businesses to switch quickly to remote work, which in turn forced them to try out new ways of using technology in the workplace.
As a result of this shift, 67% of businesses increased their usage of automation and artificial intelligence (AI). Automation and AI have the potential to be extremely beneficial for businesses, whether by removing tedious activities like manual payroll entry or by providing them with a competitive edge.
For example, if you’re a staffing organization looking to streamline your back office processes so you can focus on the best part of your business: people building and reallocating your resources for more marketing, sales, and company-growing projects, back office automation software can benefit your company, and particularly your HR team, by giving them automation to:
- Streamline the onboarding process
- Ensure compliance and avoid costly penalties
- Automate redundant back-office tasks
- Implement a unified system of record
- Manage everything from a mobile app
By making it easier for HR teams to handle administrative tasks, they’ll have more time to work on things like improving hiring, onboarding, and retention.
Want to learn more about how our back-office automation software can eliminate tedious work for your HR team? Contact us today.
About Bilflo
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Source: SafeGuardGlobal