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Introduction
If you have a good team in place, you can confidently fight any battle.
This is a line that was spoken by my college basketball coach before our annual training camp commenced. It is now over 15 years since I graduated from college, but this line continues to remain in my mind and stuck with me. The statement goes beyond sports and holds good for corporate life as well. The success of a company is determined by its employees. The HR team is essentially the backbone that determines the progress of any organization. From hiring the right individual for each role, creating a conducive environment to learn and work, helping individuals succeed with the right mix of training and feedback, and grooming the next generation of business leaders; HR teams help create successful businesses. HRM Trends change every couple of years. Like every other field of work, technology has impacted Human Resource Management as well.
In 2014, we published this blog post titled ‘Latest Trends in Human Resource Management’. The four trends that we examined were:
- Big Data
- Career Development
- Social Media Skills & Employer Branding
- Work-Life Balance
We are mid-way into 2019 and in these past five years, we have seen several changes in the way people are hired, groomed, empowered, and evaluated. This blog post is an attempt to examine some of the current HRM trends.
Current HRM Trends
- AI-powered hiring platforms
- Personalized onboarding & learning
- Focus on employee experience
- Integrated performance management
- LinkedIn influencers & Job portal ratings
AI-powered Hiring Platforms
Remember the time when you used a job portal to find a job? You would sit and create an account on the portal and enter all your information and then wait for an email confirmation. This would be followed by looking at all matching vacancies and then sending your CV to all those relevant companies and praying that someone would respond and call you for a written test or interview. Artificial Intelligence is changing the way hiring platforms function now. We are seeing the integration of chatbots and powerful recommendation engines within job websites. Going beyond technology and user-experience, integration of chatbots is one among the many HRM trends that have become popular.
Platforms like Harver and Cutshort.io claim to use intelligent algorithms, which match candidates looking for jobs with prospective employers. These AI-powered platforms filter out irrelevant job postings and profiles and offer both organizations and employees a better hiring/job-search experience.
AI is evolving and algorithms are becoming more powerful with each passing day. Learn how AI can help with internship placements. The day may not be far away when AI helps complete screening and candidates just present themselves for the final interview. We would have to closely observe how these HR platforms evolve and how job seekers interact with the changing processes, systems, and culture.
Personalized Onboarding and Learning
How does your organization induct new employees into the organization? Is it the usual – form-filling on day-one, followed by presentations by different department heads crammed into the first week of the employee’s time at the company? Unfortunately, most organizations do not place a great deal of importance on the onboarding program. People believe that by handing out printed booklets or making employees attend long sessions filled with presentations and lectures will motivate the new hires.
Times are changing
After the millennials, Generation Z is entering the workforce. Holding their attention and training them is a new L&D challenge. In an earlier blog post, we saw how organizations are using Mixed Reality to Make Employee Onboarding an Immersive Experience. We are seeing the growth of learning systems that have in-built recommendation engines that are powered by AI. Systems are designed to examine the talents of employees and recommend the best course that will help them do their tasks better.
This is different from older systems that purely rely on ratings and reviews to recommend courses to learners. Recruitment does not just end with hiring and onboarding. In immensely competitive job sectors, especially in industries like Technology, Retail & Consumer Products, Media & Entertainment among others, HR has a tough time retaining the best talent.
Organizations are creating personalized learning paths for their employees based on the skills and knowledge levels of the employees. Instead of a single-size approach to training, L&D and HR are working in close partnership to create training content that meets individual requirements. People with similar skillset are grouped and trained together. Collaborative and social learning networks allow peer learners to challenge each other to complete modules.
This adds to the learner experience and motivates employees to complete the courses on time. We have repeated this line in multiple scenarios and continue to do so now, an organization that offers its employees a great learning environment is bound to have happy employees. Happy employees will work together to help the organization achieve its business goals. Employee happiness is one of those HRM trends that will never go out of fashion and is key to the growth of an organization.
The Employee Experience
Never undermine the importance of creating a positive and happy employee experience in your organization.
Most often we observe that organizations tend to focus on creating a great customer experience but miss out on the employee experience part. In an earlier blog post, we had examined in detail on why organizations should invest in creating a memorable employee experience.
Organizations should consider them employees to be assets and derive the best out of them. The sum of all experiences that an individual has from recruitment discussions to interview, onboarding, project deployment, exploring different opportunities within the organizations, resignation, and exit interview is what comprises the employee experience.
By creating positive employee experiences, organizations create a sense of belonging and advocacy among their employees. Thus, increasing employee referrals for either hiring new talent or acquiring new business.
Integrated Performance Management
As learning in the flow of work becomes the new norm and L&D experts recommend the adoption of ‘Continuous Learning’ at the workplace, one important factor needs to be considered.
How does one measure the efficacy and benefits of learning being deployed at the workplace?
This also brings into focus the importance of data analytics in modern workplace learning and how a powerful data-friendly learning platform like Origin Fractal can give organizations a 360◦ view on employee learning and help them make better decisions.
In an earlier blog post, we examined how Organizations could Map RoI on eLearning. Organizations that use a learning delivery platform like an intranet, LMS, or LXP have a good chance to measure the effectiveness of learning. This does not stop with just measuring employee/learner performance. What do organizations do with the data that they collect? Data is used to influence employee hiring and retaining decisions. Based on course feedback and efficacy, L&D teams are tasked to build better eLearning programs that can help employees.
Efficient tracking of training-linked performance helps HR to determine ideal salary and compensation packages. Looking beyond purpose, passion, and creating value for others, we work for salaries proportionate to our efforts. Hence measuring performance is definitely a key HRM trend.
LinkedIn Influencers & Job Portal Ratings
From being a digital repository of CVs, LinkedIn has evolved substantially to become a key HRM trend. Articles, videos, messaging, adverts, the match for match feature cannot be dismissed. LinkedIn has seen some phenomenal changes after its acquisition by Microsoft. The platform is being used as an effective tool by individuals to build their personal brands with thoughtfully written content, sensible comments, and sharing useful professional information.
LinkedIn has truly become a powerful destination where individuals showcase their skills and talents with thought-provoking articles and videos to impress recruiters. In turn, recruiters use LinkedIn to identify potential candidates, screen, and hire them. There are LinkedIn influencers across different industries, who are usually titans of the world of business. When they post an update or share some information, the likes multiply in minutes and they have a large audience.
Job portals serve two primary functions – they connect individuals with their potential employers and give employees a chance to share feedback about the organizations where they have worked. Portals like Glassdoor and company profile pages on Google allow users to post their feedback about organizations. With a steady mix of both genuine and fake reviews and complaints, it is up to the individual to verify claims and make a wise decision.
In an era where we look at multiple reviews before buying a product like a smartphone; it makes sense to take a measured call on where one wishes to work or not. Job portals also created added headache for organizations, making them weed out false complaints and replying to genuine feedback. At the end of the day, it is a mix of brand and reputation management. Bad news travels faster than good news. Therefore, it is essential for organizations to create a positive impression among both employees and the general public. What is your take on key HRM trends? Do share your thoughts in the ‘Comments’ section.
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