Human Resources Trends in 2021 - Top 5

1. Talent retention comes through internal mobility

Nearly 50% of employees who left Schneider Electric, a company with more than 135,000 employees in 100 countries, said their departure was driven by a lack of career progression. To address this demand, Schneider Electric's team developed an internal talent mobility platform. It connects workers with new part-time or full-time jobs, as well as assignments and mentoring commitments.

You probably know how costly recruiting is. The cost of hiring someone from outside your organization can be significantly affected by the recruiting method, the level of the role, the length of the process and the geographic location. Internal mobility offers many advantages, including the fact that the candidate is already known to HR and does not need to adapt to the company.

Employees can explore new tasks or new areas of expertise, take on new challenges, acquire new skills and continue to grow professionally through internal mobility. In doing so, they remain engaged and motivated, feeling valued, supported and encouraged in the organization's career development.

By better meeting employees' needs and career goals, internal mobility directly affects staff retention and loyalty.

2. Burnout affects millennials more than ever

With managers and subordinates frequently changing places, middle management is known to be a difficult role. According to a 2015 Columbia University study, 18% of middle managers reported suffering from depressive symptoms, compared with 12% of workers and 11% of owners and executives. Middle managers have a harder time than senior managers maintaining relationships at work, according to research conducted during COVID, and only half of them feel they can rely on their colleagues.

Millennial middle managers are particularly likely to feel the effects of the epidemic. According to a MetLife study, they are much more likely to burn out than managers of any other generation. This is partly because they grew up in a society that values overexertion, and because they are part of a generation burdened by parental responsibilities and childcare. It is also understandable that millennial middle managers are exhausted, demoralized and stressed as the first anniversary of the pandemic approaches.

The pandemic has multiplied all kinds of professional stressors, and middle managers in their twenties have suffered the most serious effects. The shift to remote work has made the most fundamental part of their job, namely day-to-day staff management, much harder. At the same time, workers' mental and emotional health obligations have increased, and many middle managers have found themselves fighting to keep their direct reports from burning out.

3. Using people analytics to tackle business challenges

One of the most sought-after skills among HR professionals is people analytics, or the analysis of employee data. The Future Workplace course highlights various data use cases for HR leaders to solve business problems, including identifying high-potential employees, understanding benefits choices, and providing guidance on how to customize learning solutions.

Using data to examine the attrition of a diverse employee population and understand why some people leave the organization at a higher rate than others. People analytics helps answer the right questions, such as who is responsible for the high-potential promotion process, what qualifications are required, and whether there is evidence of unconscious bias in the selection procedure. Using people analytics as part of DEI helps companies understand many underlying reasons, formulate a hypothesis, identify evidence-based actions and use data storytelling to suggest solutions to the business problem.

4. Understanding young workers

Companies managing a workforce made up of traditionalists, baby boomers, members of Generation X and millennials, who currently account for more than 50% of the global workforce, are in an exciting time to work in HR. Generation Z is also entering the labor market.

Young workers are shaking up the old workplace with their ideals and career aspirations, leading to fundamental changes as the number of young workers grows. In order to balance their lifestyle, Millennials and Generation Z are looking for remote job options as well as flexible working hours. These generations have learned to value collaboration, teamwork and good deeds because they were raised with trophies.

5. Say yes to nudging and goodbye to policing

According to Wikipedia, nudging is a concept from behavioral science, political philosophy and economics that suggests using indirect suggestions and positive reinforcement to change people's behavior and decisions. Other methods for achieving compliance, such as education, regulation or law enforcement, stand in contrast to nudges.

These days, it is possible to observe two approaches in an office. The first chooses policing. Direction is indicated by arrows, there are signs everywhere warning people to keep a distance of 1.5 meters, and some areas are off-limits. The second approach, the alternative approach, chooses nudging or positive prompting. The office has been redesigned so that the required behavior feels natural. For example, desks are placed on dark carpeting. People will automatically keep the right distance since they tend to avoid walking on dark carpet.