The State of HR: Looking Back and Envisioning Forward

Each year-end brings reflections on the past and expectations about the future. Sometimes, these reflections are captured in single words.

At other times, reflections manifest in themes.

In the past eight months, I have had the incredible privilege of meeting in person with over 8,000 HR and business leaders in Latin America, Saudi Arabia, India, Dubai, Malaysia, China, Europe, and the U.S. Some times, we met in large groups (up to 4,000); but often, we were in more intimate settings (25 to 50). I have done dozens of podcasts and webinars with tens of thousands of participants, and I engaged in weekly posts and daily comments through LinkedIn with followers around the world. In each of these settings, I work to share, learn, and envision the evolving state of our field.

As 2023 turns into 2024, let me offer some themes on HR looking back and envisioning forward.

Looking Back for HR Themes

In my travels (and other research), I have observed:

1.??Now is the time for HR.

The words of the year capture today’s social, technological, economic, political, environmental, and demographic trends. Increasingly, people and organization themes are at the forefront of business agendas as evidenced by:

• Major business conferences (World Economic Forum, Davos; World Business Forum by WOBI; TED; and others) more frequently refer to people, leadership, and organization issues.
• Government regulators (SEC in the U.S.) now require disclosure of human capital since human capital is material for investor decisions.
• Intangible value in equity and debt shapes financial decisions, with up to 80 percent of a firm’s market value tied to intangibles and 25 percent of intangibles related to human capability.
• ESG attention has focused attention not only on “environment” but increasingly on social and governance issues.
• Boards include more rigorous assessments of human capability as critical to delivering strategy.

Committed HR professionals seek new insights because people and organization issues are part of every stakeholder discussion : employees, business leaders, boards, customers, investors, and communities.

2.??? Evolving assumptions about the future of work, including:

• Demonstrating HR impact through analytics. HR is less about doing HR work and more about delivering business results. Analytics reports the impact of overall human capability investments on stakeholder outcomes and also helps prioritize which HR initiatives have the highest opportunity.
• Organizing isolated HR initiatives into an integrated framework. While we see a host of latest initiatives (hybrid, skill-based organization, genAI and HR, flexibility/agility, well-being, etc.) that follow a traditional S-curve, these initiatives can be organized into a meta-HR framework (we call human capability ).
• Navigating paradox. Many like to present models of “from . . . to.” I see more evolving models of “and also,” which comes from navigating paradoxes : economic and also social requirements; digital information and also human creativity; short- and also long-term; individual competencies and also organization capability; agility and also stability; statistical data and also observational insights; diversity of opinions and also focus of actions; etc.
• Finding certainty in uncertainty . Without doubt, uncertainty about the future reigns. Instead of chasing uncertainty, I see an increased focus on certainty, or what the individual or organization values most. Regardless of what happens, we ought to focus on how we want leaders or organizations to respond based on core values and adaptive actions.

3.??? Commitment and goodness of HR professionals and business leaders who, for the most part, are positive, welcoming, committed to learning, and wanting to make a difference. What a delight to listen to the questions they have about how to make a difference in people’s lives by creating more viable organizations.

These themes will likely continue into 2024 as I experience HR and business leaders recognizing the changing environment and seeking to implement these (and other) future-of-work assumptions.

Envisioning Forward into 2024

We bring research, observations, LinkedIn comments, and personal engagements into The RBL Institute . In the Institute, we partner with senior HR leaders to pick four think tanks a year where we capture future trends and where we can have dialogues to make progress. In 2024, we will do think tanks on:

• HR value added outside-in. HR is not about HR but about creating organizations that succeed in the marketplace. If an organization does not succeed in the marketplace, we have no workplace. So we will probe how HR delivers marketplace value with customers, investors, and communities.
• Transformation. In a VUCA world, agility has become a key capability. We will explore specific skills to enable business, HR, and personal transformation. This will evolve agility from ideas to actions.
• Digital technology (AI) and HR. AI as a source of information will change how HR work is done. We will discuss how HR professionals can help their organizations enact a digital (AI) strategic agenda. We will also examine how AI advances how HR work is done.
• Employee expectations. The employee/organization relationship continues to evolve with studies of satisfaction, commitment, engagement, experience, well-being, and personalization. We will consider what’s next in employee work relationship with a focus forward on offering hope.

These are clearly not the only human capability issues for 2024. Weekly LinkedIn posts and newsletters (https://lnkd.in/gbRqJHkW ) and daily comments offer insights on these and other topics. In addition, through our think tanks, we will offer RBL Institute members thought leadership coupled with specific and personalized actions to move ahead. If you want to know more about participating, contact Joe Grochowski ([email protected] ).

Based on these reflections and predictions, my single word for HR 2024 is opportunity. Like any field, HR has cynics who decry what HR is not (yet). I tend to be a hopeful optimist about what HR can become. By looking back to see progress and envisioning forward, I (we all!) hope to respond to greater opportunities in 2024.

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Dave Ulrich?is the Rensis Likert Professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and a partner at The RBL Group , a consulting firm focused on helping organizations and leaders deliver value.