The last few years saw HR challenges brought about by the pandemic, technological advancements, and other drastic changes influencing workplace functions worldwide. Adequate planning can give you a head start in facing any incoming challenges. Stay updated on the latest HR trends to ensure your plans align with current standards and practices.
Whether you’re part of a recruitment firm responsible for matching talents with companies or an HR professional looking to improve workplace conditions, you should constantly identify changes to keep your organization afloat. Doing so prevents any further issues from potentially crippling your workplace functions.
We have identified four HR trends and challenges that can transform workplaces in 2023. While some may have been ongoing for the past years, recent developments in work culture have sped up their implementations. These HR trends are:
- Improvement of Employee Experience
- Effective Workforce Planning
- Holistic Approach to Employee Wellbeing
- Reskilling and Upskilling
The Future of HR: 4 Trends and Challenges in 2023
1. Improvement of employee experience
Employee experience is the worker’s perception of their stay with a company. They spend a significant fraction of their lives at work, so giving them a valuable employee experience to make every second worthwhile is essential to their well-being, performance, and retention.
An overworked employee is unproductive and ineffective, which may result in low-quality work, absenteeism, and high turnover rates. Unfortunately, the Philippines’ highly competitive work landscape doesn’t help— 52 % of Filipino professionals feel burned out because of work at least a few times monthly.
Recent shifts to flexible work setups can mean career development opportunities have been less defined. While data shows 47% of HR leaders prioritize employee experience, 44% believe their companies don’t offer clear career paths, which might encourage employees to leave for another company with clear development tracks.
It’s crucial to provide employees with a defined trajectory to help them set career objectives to target. With it, workers become more engaged and dedicated to their work and are less likely to leave their jobs.
2. Effective workforce planning
The COVID-19 pandemic and emerging social trends gave rise to unanticipated HR adjustments. Given the country’s rapidly shifting work landscape, analyzing the future of work is essential.
The future of work refers to changes in work, workers, and the workplace that will take place in the years to come. While many companies equate this with hybrid work setups, the future of work is more expansive than that. It may include talent scarcity, high turnover rates, and shifting skills.
Forecasting the future of work allows you to anticipate incoming HR trends and formulate responses accordingly. A systematic way to approach this is through workforce planning, which involves the analysis of your organization’s workforce to prepare for future staffing needs.
Workforce planning involves identifying skill gaps and addressing them accordingly. Employing the following steps can help you facilitate your plans.
- Supply Analysis – Identify your company’s current labor demographics and skill sets to get an idea of what your workforce consists of.
- Demand Analysis – Forecast your company’s plans and needs. Your findings can serve as a benchmark for your solution analysis and monitoring.
- Gap Analysis – Compare your findings in the supply model to those in the demand model to identify gaps in your workforce.
- Solution Analysis – To address these gaps, develop appropriate strategies, including recruitment, upskilling, reskilling, and outsourcing. Your solution analysis can determine if your company needs to expand, scale down, or restructure to meet demands.
- Monitoring – Observe the effectiveness of your solutions and use the findings to improve them sustainably. Moreover, you can apply your results to future workplace planning implementations.
3. Holistic approach to employee well-being
Burnout and mental health issues are prevalent among professionals today. One of the current popular HR trends is conducting mental health webinars to solve the issue. However, these only provide quick fixes and don’t address the root of the problem. You could approach the issue by implementing programs supporting employees’ mental and physical well-being.
That said, you can also target one of the primary influences on worker well-being: finances. A 2021 survey reports that Filipinos experience the highest level of money-related stress in the Asia Pacific region, with 51% of respondents claiming they were “stressed about their current financial situation.”
Money worries affect worker performance and productivity. As such, a financial policy that addresses and upholds employees’ living standards should be an integral part of your workplace procedures. The following are only some adjustments you can implement:
- Normalize conversations about financial anxieties to break down stigma and encourage concern and empathy among colleagues.
- Ensure that your workforce knows all the benefits your company offers and how to maximize them to meet their needs.
- Commit to paying fair and livable wages without discrimination.
- Reasonably improve your benefits packages to accommodate economic adjustments such as recessions and inflation.
- Conduct financial education seminars. You can also inform your workforce about government and private programs that seek to improve financial planning and literacy.
4. Reskilling and upskilling
One of the significant HR challenges during the wake of the pandemic was the Great Resignation, which saw a large percentage of U.S. workers resign from their jobs to seek greener pastures. This was also observed in the Philippines.
According to a 2022 study, 62% of HR professionals saw a rise in resignations, particularly from Gen Z employees. The fact that younger generations are more likely to leave their companies for better treatment is significant. Moreover, by 2025, millennials could comprise 75% of the global workforce, while other data shows Gen Z might make up 27%.
These numbers stress the importance of catering to the needs of younger workers, considering 86% of millennials would willingly stay at their current company if it offered career development opportunities. Moreover, 93% of millennial and Gen Z professionals expect their employers to provide learning opportunities.
Upskilling and reskilling help you build talent mobility. Letting skilled employees transfer to other roles allows your organization to maximize its talents. You can create an internal mobility policy to guide role transfers. It’s also essential to invest in training and mentoring. Supporting talent mobility develops workers who can occupy vacancies during shortages.
Embrace the Future of HR
Rapid advancements in technology, politics, and society in the past few years brought changes that organizations never anticipated. You can then expect that 2023 will bring trends that are just as unpredictable.
Fortunately, you can effectively address unanticipated challenges by planning. Preparations can make your work environment worthwhile for your employees during periods of uncertainty.Feel free to seek help from trained recruitment experts to help you plan for the incoming year. Consult with Manila Recruitment today to address your headhunting concerns.
