To start the year pinpointing HR tech trends has started to become a trend per se. A little bit like Pantone’s colour of the year or even fashion. The difference between hiring trends and fashion is that fashion looks back and HR looks forward.
Job openings have been rising in the last couple of months, which means the competition for top talent is fierce. According to a report, it’s taking much longer to fill high-skilled positions in IT. The average time it takes to fill a position rose from 14.9 days in 2020 to 21.5 in 2021. So employers are going above and beyond to attract talent.
In Belgium, they’ve started offering private health insurance. Dutch firms have reduced work hours. Irish companies began offering a four-day workweek. Germany and the U.K. have started offering more paid leave. The UK even included sports and fitness equipment as part of working perks.
What led us to this point?
Last year was the year of “The Great Resignation”, a year when workers quit their jobs at historic rates in the United States. And that tendency has been spreading in Europe. According to a study from Microsoft, 41% of the global workforce is considering leaving their job this year and the UK alone saw an all-time high of one million job vacancies last July. And though the pandemic is seen as the scapegoat, the reasons behind it run deeper.
Remote work made it easier to change jobs. Experts cite the lack of adequate childcare, anxiety over covid exposure–bothered by vaccine mandates–, burnout, better work opportunities, self employment and better pay.
Looking to 2022, there will be no slowdown in recent trends such as mobility and flexibility. So, I’ve selected five trends you can’t miss.
1. Remote will be the norm and not the exception
Flexibility is the word to keep in mind, whether it’s around how, where or when people work. We’ve been witnessing an unprecedented switch to remote or hybrid and distributed workforces – companies have been forced to cope with the new era. The remote work revolution was embraced, in 2020, by tech giants, Facebook and Spotify, and back then Mark Zuckerberg even said that 50% of the company’s workforce could be working from home within the next decade.
According to a survey, 55% of the 20-38 year-olds surveyed plan to work from home post-Covid. And this means 25% of employed Millennials plan to continue to work from home in some capacity. 37% plan to work from home part-time and 27% plan to continue to work from home full time.
Another survey shows that 64% of employees surveyed would rather work permanently from home than take a 30k salary rise. And some are even quitting their jobs instead of giving up working from home.
2. New skills as an employee retainer
According to a 2019 survey of 3,500 managers, only 29% of new hires have all the skills required for their current roles. So, skills development will be a major trend. This will play a role in keeping workers motivated, and motivated employees bring extensive benefits to the wider organisation, such as increased performance, improved retention and improved customer service performance.
The survey also found that in key functions such as IT, the positions filled today will require up to 10 new skills in just 18 months. Keeping up with those skills will keep workers motivated and challenged.
We’ll witness the rise of more intense but shorter programs and bootcamps. For some time now, coding bootcamps have been seen as the antithesis of traditional higher education. The programs normally last weeks and are focused on technical training. But recently the two of them have been joining forces. Last year, Flatiron School announced it was working with the University of Cambridge, in the UK, to launch a 10-week data science program.
Many workers are looking to gain new skills and bootcamps and other short-term programs may provide a quicker way to earn a credential than enrolling in a university. This will help retain employees, since 10% of people from Western Europe, surveyed by YPulse, claimed they left their jobs because there were no advancement opportunities and 11% said they wanted to get into a different field.
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3. HR, AI and hyper automation will become commonplace
Analytics specialists from Gartner made a list of 10 main technology trends, structured around the idea of “people-centric smart spaces”, that businesses should consider for this year. Hyper Automation is one of the trends, and it implies the use of technology to automate tasks and unload employees in any business industry. It’s all about functional improvements of a company and unlike automation, it’s data-driven and not process-driven.
Among the latest technologies hyper automation deals with is: AI, Machine Learning, IoT or Robotics. And their main goal is to automate routine processes and augment humans. Hyper automation improves efficiency, optimises processes and workflows and lowers operational costs for businesses. It has the potential to automate entire end-to-end workflows. For example, it could explore how HR processes can influence their sales revenue.
It will also open up a new level of opportunities for IT professionals to become versed in how the associate tools and technologies blend to create solutions. Ultimately, it can create more job satisfaction in an era when almost every industry is struggling to retain and hire employees, since hyper automation can help employees achieve work-life balance by automating tasks and it also gives human resources the time to focus on higher value-add activities. And according to the Ypulse survey, 15% of the people surveyed said they left their previous job due to an unhealthy work-life balance.
4. Take care of your employees’ data
The pandemic unleashed a number of cyber attacks. The flood in remote work has expanded the use of potentially vulnerable services such as VPNs combined with the absence of security at home. This enhanced the danger to people and companies.
In 2020, the United Nations warned that during the pandemic, malicious emails increased by 600%. Adding to that, the evolution of technology is creating a trust crisis, as people become more aware of how their data is being collected and used.
A recent security research suggests most companies have unprotected data and poor cybersecurity practices in place, making them vulnerable to data loss. According to IBM Cyber Security Intelligence Index, 95% of cybersecurity breaches are caused by human error. So, to avoid falling victim to cyber threats, companies need to put security policies and controls in place. Start cybersecurity training programs and show employees how different procedures and frameworks work together.
A good employee cybersecurity training program can take the stress away at work and provide a more secure workplace by giving employees the confidence in technology and cybersecurity procedures. This way, employees will feel their data and clients’ data is safe.
5. Power to the people
It is key to remember that when the employee’s career goal matches what the company is trying to achieve, they will stay and contribute to the team effort. And that focus on people needs to start as early as the recruitment process.
The value of “culture fit” as a job requirement has been debated for a long time. Culture-driven recruiting is hiring on aptitude and attitude first. If a company builds a great culture and shows it to the world, it will attract like minded people. If people believe in the place they are working for and share the same values, they’re more likely to stay and also more likely to refer the company to future employees.
But building a culture that attracts the best talent out there requires work. Companies that refuse to listen to their employees’ needs are destined to have high turnovers and low productivity. If there’s a leadership dysfunction, the company will have a broken culture which makes it impossible to recruit for cultural fit. Most people won’t stand for toxic environments and, if they do, they won’t be as productive as they could be.
According to the Ypulse survey, 19% of the people surveyed said they quit their previous job because it wasn’t good for their mental health. A study from Deloitte found that 72% of workplaces have no mental health policy, which means organisations are failing to see mental health and wellness at work as a priority.
The World Health Organisation listed the top risks to mental health in the workplace and they are: poor communication and management practices, limited participation in decision-making or low control over one’s area of work, low levels of support for employees, inflexible working hours, inadequate health and safety policies and unclear tasks or organisational objectives.
The thing is, employee well-being is no longer an employee benefit, it’s an employer’s opportunity to support employees in all aspects of their personal and work lives. Companies need to encourage work-life balance, which comes down to flexibility and making work integrate with real-life matters. And employers who allow that have a competitive advantage in attracting and retaining top talent.
Employees are more empowered and that means more companies are providing them with anything and everything they need to succeed. Employees have been given a voice by regularly soliciting and acting on their feedback, providing opportunities for employees to grow through more autonomy, additional responsibilities or even an entirely new role, recognising employees frequently to increase their engagement and confidence in their own abilities and provide employees with the tools, training and authority they need to excel.
What the future holds
The pandemic brought changes that McKinsey calls the “new possible”. The traditional workplace hierarchy is about to be replaced by a more flexible and responsive model, built on higher levels of connection. In this approach, organisations work together with their employees to create personalised, authentic and motivating experiences that strengthen individual, team and company performance.
It’s called Employee Experience (EX) and it takes into account what people value, acknowledging the life stage, personal circumstances and personality type. Employees want to be able to influence outcomes allied with a strong sense of identity and belonging. In a time when people are thinking about why and where they work, EX may be the real differentiator for organisations to stand out from the crowd.
Landing.Jobs can help you find the right tech talent for the job regardless of where they are in the world and also provide practical solutions to help you overcome the challenges of hiring, including the challenges of the new trends. Book your free demo to find out how we can help you navigate through this brave new world. 🌎
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