From occupying a seat at the leadership table to brainstorming in a closed conference room, HR has grown as an imperative part of the company’s C-suit, and yet the challenges facing HR have only increased. HR plays a critical role in driving strategic growth, performance management, employee experience, training, compensation and hiring allegiant employees. Apart from this, the HR managers need to constantly groom themselves with the latest knowledge and information so as to overcome the challenges which the industry is likely to face in the near future. Here in this blog, we shall discuss 10 such major challenges facing HR in the upcoming years.
1. Talent Retention
Most of the HR’s across the world believe that they would have to fight tooth and nail so as to retain top and outstanding employees in the near future. While the economy is becoming globalized, the markets are expected to become more and more competitive. The HR’s have to prepare themselves for the dire consequences as an extra strenuous effort would be needed to establish loyalty amongst the employees.
To overcome the challenges facing HR, most companies have started using ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) for the on-boarding process and induction. This has not only streamlined the onboarding system but made the entire process employee friendly as well. Certainly, ATS has improved both candidate quality and employee experience.
Additionally, HR’s commitment to offering competitive base wage rates and addressing wage drift ensures fairness and transparency in compensation, crucial for retaining top talent. Lateral hiring strategies and contingency recruiting are employed to fill critical roles efficiently, strengthening the candidate pipeline and enhancing the employee value proposition (EVP).
2. Leadership Development
Another challenge faced by HR managers is how to build next-generation organizational leaders? As the number of top performing candidates is increasing, the employers are finding themselves indecisive on how the organization’s future pillars will be developed? The attrition and employee turnover rate is giving jitters to the recruiters.
To cultivate next-generation leaders, HR is focusing on insourcing talent and implementing candidate-centric recruiting practices. This approach, combined with direct placement and strategic candidate sourcing, is designed to optimize the candidate experience and manage the turnover rate.
The HR managers and the recruiters are having a tough time in implementing employee engagement strategies which may pursue them to stay with the organization for a longer time.
3. Challenges in HR: Developing a Healthy Corporate Culture
Over a couple of years, corporate culture has become one of the deciding factors for job seekers. With the growing demands and competition in the market, the companies have to work round the clock to expand, grow and sustain in such a volatile environment. The company culture gets affected either directly or indirectly as every resource now is overburdened and is overloaded with work. This seriously deteriorates the healthy work culture which leads to more politics, chaos, and clashes.
Efforts to minimize employee turnover and combat quiet quitting are integral to fostering workplace well-being. This includes adopting knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) for non-core activities, allowing HR to concentrate on core competencies and talent management.
4. Attracting Top Talent
One of the greatest challenges in HR is attracting top talent. Gone are the days when only the job seeker had to sell himself to the recruiters during the interviews. Nowadays, companies too have to sell themselves and prove that they are better than the rest in the market. The talent shortage is the major concern that is forcing every company to take appropriate efforts to attract talent and to become the first choice amongst the job seekers. The need of the hour is to have a healthy corporate culture and impressive brand value so that it entices the top talent for the organization.
Talent acquisition strategies now prioritize mobile recruiting and offer fixed-term contracts for flexibility, often with compensation depending on experience (DOE). Talent assessment tools and independent contractor agreements are also becoming more prevalent to attract diverse talents.
An Applicant Tracking System proves handy in timely attracting and hiring top employees. An ATS helps to make a talent pool of the candidates. The resumes are parsed and stored in the ATS database with complete candidate information. The recruiter can directly search the ATS database for a candidate with the desired skills. This significantly reduces the time-to-hire cycle.
5. Flexible Timings and Workplaces
The modern day job seekers or we can say that millennials just love flexible workplaces and time schedules. The aim is to keep the things in a result-oriented way but avoid the stereotype 9-to-6 job. This under no circumstances disrupts the company’s discipline rather it gives the much-desired freedom to the employees which result in better productivity and efficiency.
6. Transparent Communication
Most organizations fail to incorporate a culture that promotes transparent communication and open leadership. This adversely affects an employee’s morale as well as his dedication to work. In fact, by removing the communication barriers and the long hierarchies, an organization can attract more talented candidates.
7. Career Growth
To shine out over the competitors, the organizations should take the employees’ career growth and advancement seriously. These challenges facing HR are a major contributor to the elevation of the attrition rate. If the company is offering good opportunities for employee career growth, there will hardly be a reason for an employee to switch.
The HRs have the challenge to foster a culture of continuous learning. The training offered to the employee should:
- be relevant to the employee’s job profile.
- have engaging content.
- be available in such format that offers flexible learning.
Organizations are now investing in bespoke assessments and talent management systems that support career progression, directly impacting employee turnover rates positively.
Most of the LMS(Learning Management Systems) are online and offer advanced features such as gamification of the topic so that employees remain engaged and learn at a time which is convenient for them.
8. Better Compensations
Yes! After all, it’s a money game.
HR departments are revising base wage rates and including on-target earnings (OTE) in compensation packages to make them competitive and appealing to high-performers.
If a company is having an exceptionally talented employee, then it must offer him/her great compensation and other benefits so that he stays with the company. The employers today are offering lucrative packages which the candidate cannot refuse. It’s high time that the recruiters should fold up their sleeves to stay unprecedented of their counterparts.
9. Quality Employee Experience
In the fast-paced companies, high staff turnover has become a very common affair. The companies may be able to hire the best and high rated employees but keeping them around is the next biggest HR challenge. But, if employees are getting better compensation, good and transparent work culture, etc, they are very less likely to hop. It’s the employee experience that counts.
Better compensations also do not work sometimes especially when the employees remain dissatisfied with their work profiles or feel that their growth chances are stagnated. To boost modern day employee experience, the companies can offer e-learning opportunities/ training, flexible schedule, work-from-home facilities, crèche in office, gym facilities, etc. The HR’s have to collaborate and work to build a culture that is awe-inspiring, motivating and welcoming.
10. Embracing Change with Ease and Grace
The challenges facing HR are the only constant. Anyone who doesn’t go with the flow is at a high risk of failure. It is the responsibility of the HRs to ensure that the employees are fully competent with the changing technological and business trends. They need to continuously up-skill the employees with the competencies so that any changes in the market are dealt with ease and grace.
The first impression of any company is made by the recruitment process that it follows and the onus is on HR’s to ensure that the recruitment experience that gets offered is the best of all. The organizations must upgrade to the latest technology such as cloud-based applicant tracking system which aids in faster and efficient recruitment application processing. An ideal ATS takes care of every single need right from application receiving to on-boarding of the employee which spares enough time for the HR managers and recruiters to work on other retention and acquisition strategies.
Read more from our blog:
Why you should use recruitment software