Is your team ready for the 10 biggest HR trends? (part 1)
Deloitte recently unveiled its latest report entitled, “The Rise of the Social Enterprise.” After a year of research and multiple surveys conducted with business leaders and HR professionals around the world, the report, as its title suggests, highlights the growing importance of social enterprise.
It defines social enterprise as “an organisation whose mission combines revenue growth and profit-making with the need to respect and support its environment and stakeholder network. This includes listening to, investing in, and actively managing the trends that are shaping today’s world.”
The report found that in today’s increasingly transparent world, organisations are judged not only on their financial strength, quality of service or workforce satisfaction but also on their social connection to customers, partners and their contributions or impact on society overall. The growing importance of social capital is evidently seen when 65% of CEOs surveyed, rated “inclusive growth” as their top-three goals, three times greater than the importance of “shareholder value.”
The report further identified 10 human capital trends that create an integrated view of the social enterprise. Respondents were asked to rate each trend in terms of its importance and readiness. The findings revealed that majority of the respondents agree that each of these trends is important, however, most organisations are not yet ready to meet these expectations.
Let’s take a closer look at the first 5 HR trends and possible challenges:
The symphonic C-suite The most important trend that was identified is the need for C-suite executives to operate in a more integrated manner, what is known as the “symphonic C-suite”, while still leading their own individual functions. This crucial approach helps leaders to understand and better manage complex social capital issues. The report revealed that respondents with a symphonic C-suite team are more likely to expect their companies to grow at 10% or more in the coming year than those whose leaders operate independently. What’s more, the research also concluded that only a symphonic C-suite team is able to lead the following nine trends successfully.
The workforce ecosystem: Managing beyond the enterprise One of the survey questions was to ask respondents to forecast the makeup of their workforce in 2020; 37% expected a rise in contract workers, 33% foresaw an increase in freelancers, and 28% expected growth in gig workers. More and more business leaders and HR professionals are recognising the fact that the workforce today is no longer made up of only full-time salaried people. Nevertheless, many companies are not yet ready to manage a work environment that is made up of these “alternative work arrangements” Some concerns raised are related to legal issues, intellectual property, proprietary work practices, and a variety of cultural challenges. There is a need for business leaders to proactively work alongside HR professionals to develop integrated workforce strategies that are beyond their enterprises, to take advantage of the extended workforce options out there for the mutual benefit of all.
New rewards: Personalised, agile, and holistic HR professionals are well aware that employees today are asking for more personalised, agile and holistic form of rewards. However, the report revealed that only 8% said that their rewards programme is considered effective in creating a personalised and flexible solution to meet these demands. Ideally, this should not be the case as the trend in compensation is upward and organisations should start crafting a new design for rewards that is relevant to their employees. The field to expand in this trend remains wide and organisations need to start focusing on being the ideal employer by providing the employee experience that is desired by all, not just by “being competitive in the market”.
From careers to experience: New pathways This trend is accelerating in importance each year as technology continues to shift the skills landscape. For instance, almost all industries in the world now are experiencing some form of disruptions due to the ever-increasing usage of new technologies such as AI, robotics and automated systems. People are worrying about the future of their career, hence, the importance of allowing employees to “acquire valuable experiences, explore new roles and continually reinvent themselves” set centre stage. However, the research found that only 59% of survey respondents rated their organisations as effective in empowering its people. Many wanted to create career models with an “upward path” but faced difficulty in doing so as the tools and systems for continuous learning to make this an institutional process are not quite ready.
The longevity dividend: Work in an era of 100 year lives This fascinating trend sees future-looking organisations acknowledging the fact that we are now living longer, hence the need to work longer. The survey revealed 20% of respondents are partnering with older employees to develop new career models. Nevertheless, there are various challenges and concerns to using “seasoned workforce” such as older skills, age bias and pension shortfalls. As we continue to live longer, there is a need to change our perceptions towards talent models, pay practices and cultural values. Organisations need to rethink their workforce strategies, change their mind-sets and adopt fresh approaches to create innovative practices and policies to support such extended careers. We still have five more predications to share with you – stay tuned for “Is your team ready for the 10 biggest HR trends? (part 2)”.
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