HR in Focus | 2024 & Beyond

With another year packed full of change and evolution, I am sharing my take on 5 trends shaping the future of HR.

Value Generator

Value has for a long time underpinned the work we do in HR. Adding value to the customer and the business. As we move ahead, HR is positioned to not only add but to bolster organizational value. Armed with an integrated people strategy, grounded in skills not roles, enabled through an organizational system with fixed concepts such as compassion and human-centered leadership, not only will HR bring value to the customers and business but unlock performance and capability like never before.

Regenerative Models

When thinking about HR, the past has been tethered to resourcing. Bring the people, provide basics such as pay and benefits, and ensure productivity and utilization are extracted. Not judging, it’s just facts based on how we have organized around industrial age models. As we continue to move into ecosystems of community, working agile across the organization, we must reimagine resourcing. How can we create systems of human sustainability? In what ways will we evolve to create organization design criteria that fuel people? I believe it’s time to weave contribution and impact into our utilization models so we not only create great places to work but also improve the well-being of people at work.

Employee Experience

While a newer space in HR, this concept has lived in the creative and technology domains under user experience and human-centered design for some time. Using a lens of empathy to curate thoughtful experiences for workers is no longer a nice to have, it’s foundational. The space of EX in HR has existed at best topically, mainly through surveys such voice of employees, to understand what matters and how people feel. While important, it doesn’t go the distance. The real work is intentionally designing the climate and elements that will allow flourishing at work.

HR as a Product

For so long HR has been considered a service and one that, when the going gets tough, is usually first to go. When we begin to conceptualize HR as a Product, the use of solutions becomes primary and when activated correctly, drives immense value and meaning in business strategy. The measuring of effectiveness, the adoption, and the user experience all become new ways to drive ROI for HR. Within this paradigm so too rises new ways of working including agile (please say goodbye to the waterfall) and makes change management a core element in deployment and readiness.

Technology and AI

I’d be remiss if I didn’t include the vital role HR will play in Tech and AI. Understanding the tech stack, integrating tools across platforms, and becoming dangerous with data insights to convert to business-centered actions. Immersing in this space while diving headfirst into the use of generative AI as a force of productivity and trading out low-value work, will all become new basics for the HR pro moving ahead.

Adding a bonus to the 2024 list.

All of the above requires HR to lift from the trenches and move from partnering with the business to consulting with the business. HR as subject matter experts in organizational effectiveness will enable employee, system, and organizational health to be framed in a new way. ?Using a toolkit of options to meet the business where it’s at versus a playbook that shepherds a one-size-fits-all roadmap.

It goes without saying – work, workers and the workplace have changed.

Organizations have been disrupted and will continue to move in a perpetual state of evolution. One of my favorite quotes was by Justin Trudeau at WEF ?2018, “The pace of change?has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again”.

Transformational HR is ready to take center stage, leading the design and construction of tomorrow's workplace. One rooted in human-centered practices, unleashing value while improving the lives of people at work.