By: Christina Nguyen
We’ve already mentioned multiple times on this blog how the pandemic has disrupted and transformed the working and everyday world. To highlight it again, the pandemic revealed how feasible it was to work remotely, allowing employees to live life more on their own terms and companies to expand their reach beyond geographical borders.
Changing boundaries also resulted in changing workplace dynamics and expectations, which meant human resources had a lot to catch up with. Here are some key points of the transformative journey HR has been on and where it’s headed into 2022:
Reskilling and upskilling employees.
We’ve mentioned before that the pandemic also accelerated digital development, bringing us new technologies and upgrading current ones. This means employees need to catch up and HR needs to help them do so. In a 2021 Deloitte study, 72% of executives stated that training existing staff was essential to navigating future disruptions.
This makes sense ‒ if a pandemic can happen so quickly, who knows what tumultuous insanity the future could bring? If your employees have an arsenal of new skills to leverage, that’ll give you more peace of mind. Training programs might dig into company time and profits, but they’ll pay off when you get to keep your employees rather than spend time hiring new ones.
Improving the employee experience overall.
Aside from training your employees, it’s more essential than ever to make sure they actually enjoy their role. Now that (remote) employees have access to a broader array of jobs due to virtual work, it’ll take more than an easy commute and a luxurious office space to retain them.
There are many things HR can do to enhance the employee experience. Streamlining the onboarding process, responding to concerns with more empathy and actual actions, improving benefits, paying attention to employee mental health and conducting workshops on healthier management strategies are all great options. We’ve even written some articles about the employee experience here, such as how to show more kindness at work and how to work remotely more efficiently. It literally pays off in both your heart and your bank account. Highly engaged teams experience greater profitability and less turnover.
This one’s pretty broad, but the points below will delve into more specifics, so read on!
Developing soft skills, particularly emotional intelligence.
A crucial part of the aforementioned upskilling needs to involve soft skills, not just hard skills like learning how to code. It makes sense ‒ if you’re working remotely, your staff won’t have as many opportunities to connect, so the few interactive moments should be of quality. Many of your staff have also been through a lot, such as grieving losses from the pandemic and other ups and downs. It’s essential to show empathy to these stress-inducing tough times, even if your own circumstances might have lightened up.
Higher emotional intelligence will help you and your team respond better to fellow team members working flexible schedules to accommodate busy lives that might differ from yours. We’ve even written up some benefits of heightened emotional intelligence on our blog, such as having a better capacity for managing negative emotions, an easier time understanding differing perspectives and better communication of your feelings. HR can help by holding workshops on the above and refine their screening process to seek more emotionally attuned candidates.
A push for diversity, equity and inclusion.
We’ve mentioned in our marketing trends blog post DEI shouldn’t just be a public-facing act for your customers to enjoy but also an internal force to better support your employees. Even if your team isn’t too diverse at the moment, you never know when things might change. The ubiquity of remote work is also a significant factor in hiring beyond geographical boundaries, so it’s possible your dream candidate might be in another state or freshly immigrated from an unfamiliar country. You might even have new clients from other parts of the world with noticeably different cultures and working styles.
Being open-minded and inclusive can help your business better understand every facet of your employees, customers and vendors and even increase profits, innovation and creativity. Fostering a healthy, empathetic sense of belonging helps everyone to safely express themselves so they can live up to their true potential. So take some initiative to develop or attend bias training as well as training to spot culturally insensitive behavior. Be sure the executives are also onboard not just for the fatter bank accounts, but also for a genuine desire for employee mental well-being. This is especially crucial for industries that have traditionally been skewed towards certain demographics, such as the very male-dominated field of engineering.
Being more purpose-driven.
Besides profits and feeling a sense of accomplishment, why did you start your business in the first place? What was your mission and vision to your customers? Uniting your employees through a common purpose can help develop a sense of collective, spirited camaraderie and improve profits. To better help your company develop purpose, open up all lines of communication and encourage team members to share all their ideas.
Once you think you have a solid purpose, make sure this is communicated to all current and new employees in a consistent manner ‒put it in the recruiting and onboarding documents. Repeat it at meetings. Keeping this information front and center will help foster a strong, cohesive team.
How do you see human resources and human capital management evolving? How do you think your business can communicate (or find) its purpose?
Let us know in the comments below!
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About Stingray Advisory Group LLC: Stingray Advisory Group LLC is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and is a proud member of Local First and the West Michigan Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. We help small businesses grow by providing guidance in financial planning, website development, marketing, and more.
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