By Valerie Chua
Knowing the diverse set of skills HR managers need to develop is important to keep your company ahead of its competitors.
Over the past two years, the workforce has become a significant aspect of business success. Plenty of industries felt the impact of the great resignation, and it wouldn’t be strange to say that some companies are still trying to recover from the gaps in leadership caused by this social phenomenon.
As a company, having gaps in your corporate structure while the economy is still trying to recover from the pandemic is the last thing you want to experience. Avoiding this situation should be a motivating factor for your recruiters to up their skills during the talent acquisition process.
There are multiple ways for your HR team can improve their skills and practices. While undergoing training may help improve your team’s workflow, being on top of trends that drive events like the Great Resignation should also be on your HR department’s agenda.
Knowing what makes employees tick and using the knowledge to your advantage ensures that your employees won’t decide to leave you for greener pastures. This article will decode some of these trends to help your team develop skills and keep your most talented assets.
Why Should Your HR Team Keep Up with Workplace Trends?
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There’s a straightforward reason why your company should involve itself with trends that affect its employees: you want to keep the workplace happy. A harmonious workplace gets more work done as happy employees tend to be more productive than those who are not. Such employees are willing to go the extra mile for their teammates.
Happiness also brings out the best in employees. Managers happy with their work will lead by example, and employees will be more eager to support each other and are not afraid to make mistakes. Finally, the Great Resignation showed us that employees are no longer afraid to move on to greener pastures if their current situation is not to their liking.
Current HR Trends That Can Affect Employee Morale
Knowledge is half the battle, and it is a vital weapon if your HR team is trying to do everything it can to keep employees within the company. These trends should be able to help many HR teams identify which skills they should improve.
One of the biggest ideas that get passed around workplaces nowadays is the importance of an employee’s well-being. The COVID-19 pandemic made plenty of people rethink their careers and priorities. This increased preference for employee well-being will likely become a permanent fixture in future employment arrangements.
With employees increasingly becoming concerned over their physical and mental health, the hiring process for most HR professionals will also become more difficult. Hiring experienced managers and specialists would also prove to be tough.
Finally, various factors relating to the pandemic will also influence how work will be done now. Safety and health concerns remain paramount as the world deals with COVID-19. Meanwhile, remote work and outsourced teams are becoming popular ways to address productivity issues in the office.
The Most Important Skills HR Professionals Must Learn in 2023
The trends discussed earlier show how dynamic the human resource industry is in the wake of a world-changing event like the pandemic. HR teams should constantly be on their toes to achieve the goals set by the management.
While taking leadership training for career growth can do plenty of things to improve HR’s workflow, achieving their goals will be difficult without these skills. This section will talk about which kind of skills your HR team should have for the coming years.
1. Critical soft skills
In consideration of employees prioritizing their well-being over other things, it’s becoming important for any respectable HR team to empathize with employees and adapt to unpredictable situations. The following fall under the soft skills: communication, negotiation, and leadership. Empathy is also a necessary trait for these soft skills. Check out other soft skills HR managers need to develop in order to discharge their job effectively.
2. Performance Management skills
Establishing an effective performance management system can be tricky, as not all industries are back at full operational capacity. However, proper performance management will motivate employees to work harder. This is where creating a loyalty program for employees will come in handy.
3. HR Multitasking skills
HR personnel wears different hats according to the situation. This truth only became more apparent due to the remote working arrangements plenty of companies went through during the pandemic. Your HR team should be able to properly do multiple tasks at once to meet your company’s rising staffing requirements.
4. Transparency
This can be considered a subsection of soft skills, as this usually connotates how the HR department communicates with the employees. However, putting this under a different category emphasizes just how important transparency is to employees. Being clear about what the company will be doing moving forward make workers invested in the company. Transparency is a unique way to practice ethical leadership in the workplace.
5. Data analysis skills
The modern workforce now runs on data. HR personnel should be able to handle and process copious amounts of data without any problem. Data analytics will become an essential skill as more and more companies switch to the cloud for file management.
Equip Your HR Department with the Necessary Skills
The world will continue to change in unpredictable ways, and businesses will adapt to survive. With the recent changes emphasizing the need for human resources, HR departments worldwide now find it imperative to update their skills to recruit and maintain skilled employees.
The skills mentioned above are only the tip of the iceberg. Applying these skills to HR work will result in successful work environments filled with capable and motivated professionals.
