What Trends are HR Leaders Focusing on in 2022?

Many HR leaders have identified the following areas as key trends and main areas of focus for the 2022 business year.;-

• Building critical skills and competencies

• Organisational design and change management

• Current and future leadership

• Future of work

• Diversity, equality and inclusion

• Environmental, climate issues & sustainability

These priorities for the human resources function are key to enabling success for businesses as a whole. Most HR leaders say that improving operational excellence will be critical in 2022, more so than in prior years reporting that business transformation will be a major focus.

For many HR professionals, this transformation will focus heavily on creating a truly hybrid environment — deploying a workforce model in which employees split their time between on-site and remote work and have more flexibility in where and when they do their jobs.

What are the key HR trends for 2022?

Many top HR priorities for 2022 reflect an urgent response to its identified HR trends, which are forcing organisations to change their workforce and workplace strategies. This, in turn, means HR leaders are having to evolve the way they identify, attract and retain critical skills and redesign work to enhance the employee value proposition (EVP) and drive business performance.

This moment gives us a unique opportunity for HR leaders to shape the future of work in ways not previously considered a possible win-win for both employees and employers.

Trend 1: Hybrid work is leading business transformation

A large majority of HR leaders expect that at least some of their employees will work remotely after the pandemic. This shift to hybrid work will be a massive driver of transformation, and HR leaders must be prepared to show their support for both the business and its employees.

Trend 2: More and new skills are needed

The total number of skills required for a single job is increasing, and new skills are replacing old ones. Many of the skills that were present in an average job posting in 2018 will be obsolete today.

Trend 3: Employee health must be improved

Employee performance stayed high during the pandemic, but disruptions have already made long-term and hard-to-reverse impacts on workforce health — that is, the health of employees, the state of trust between individuals, teams and leadership, and the work environment (e.g., feelings of inclusion). Ineffective approaches to hybrid work will only exacerbate these impacts.

Trend 4: Employees want to feel heard and valued

HR leaders need to build a more human employer-employee relationship and employment agreements to meet employees’ requests that need to be heard and valued. All HR leaders across HR sub functions have a role to play in ensuring the Employee Value Proposition (EVP) holistically centers employees as people.

Trend 5: Diversity, equality and inclusion in the workplace is vital

Along with expectations of greater empathy and a more human work environment, there is increasing pressure to improve equality and inclusion within organisations. In particular, there is mounting pressure from all of HR’s stakeholders — internally and externally — to make real progress on diversifying leadership.

If you’re a HR or other business leader who would like to learn more about the above trends or any other HR matter, please do get in touch - Contact us