Three trends for the HR world in 2023

One of the leading business transformations introduced with the pandemic is the transition towards a hybrid working model.

In the face of this operational change, companies have already begun to question how best to adapt their offices to the new organisational requirements. At the same time, they need to continue to ensure a positive culture, looking for new models of cooperation and considering how to take into account the needs of different generations and people in their workplaces. 

As companies and daily life slowly return to pre-pandemic activity, one point becomes clear: the home office will remain open. 

Research and interviews with hundreds of managers from different industries have shown that around 70 percent of companies - ranging from small businesses to large multinationals such as Apple, Google, Citi and HSBC - plan to implement some form of hybrid working, so that employees can divide their time between working with colleagues at the office and working from home.

But how is the difference between these two ways of working perceived?

What has emerged from recent research is that small meetings can be efficient both by video call and in person. In this case, the main advantage of the virtual format lies in the fact that a few people connected to a virtual room appear in small frames, which are easy to see and locate. 

In contrast, almost half of the respondents to the research report that the quality of video call meetings of 10 or more people is significantly lower than in smaller calls. In these situations, people appear in smaller frames, which makes it difficult to see the faces and gestures of the participants.

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But another issue is controversial: how much influence should workers have over the days they work from home?
On the one hand, many managers believe their employees should be allowed to choose their own working hours.

Research in which more than 35,000 Americans were interviewed as of May 2020, showed that 32% of employees no longer want to return to the office after the pandemic. These are often employees with young children who live in the suburbs and for whom the commute to work is challenging. At the other extreme, 21% tell us they would never want to work from home again. These are often young, single employees or people living in flats in the city centre.
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Faced with such radically different visions, it seems natural to let the employees choose. One of the managers interviewed stated:

“I treat my employees like adults. They decide when and where to work, as long as they get the job done”.

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Three tips on how best to handle hybrid work

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Define a transparent strategy

More than ever, in the age of hybrid working, transparency is a core value to be pursued and maintained at the company level. It can help employees to stay engaged and motivated and feel part of a united team, even if they work from different locations. But how to do this? 

• Regular and clear communication with employees about the company's goals and activities
• Involving employees in decisions that affect their work and well-being
• Creating an inclusive and collaborative company culture

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Strengthening team harmony with team building events

Team building can be an effective tool to strengthen teamwork in a hybrid mode as it creates a sense of belonging and collaboration. How to do this? Here are some activities:

• Sports challenges, outdoor games or cooking classes to foster communication and mutual support
• Escape rooms, treasure hunts and mysteries to solve to foster a sense of belonging and build interpersonal relationships
• After work, tastings or creative activities to encourage the exchange of ideas and get to know each other better
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Furthermore, the company management must be involved equally with the participants, providing guidance and orientation to build a solid and collaborative team even remotely. For more ideas on how to organise successful team building, discover all the activities designed for this purpose. 

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Provide training and support

It is essential that the company provides employees with the tools and know-how they need to work effectively and collaborate with their colleagues, regardless of their location. It is therefore important to offer employees training and support opportunities to manage remote work better and maintain high productivity levels. And what better way than by organising company meetings, offsite conferences or kick off? 

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Over the past year, we have seen large movements of talented people who have re-evaluated the importance of work and what they want out of life. This phenomenon, referred to as 'Great Resignation' or 'Quiet Quitting', has pressured employers to provide jobs their employees want to stay in. In 2023, it will be essential to offer people fulfilling work, continuous opportunities for growth and learning, flexibility and diverse, value-oriented work environments.

Moreover, the acceleration of digital transformation will increasingly lead humans to share their work with intelligent machines and robots, which will have huge implications for the skills and talents required by companies in the future. 

This will mean having to update and retrain a considerable number of people in our companies and hiring new people with the skills needed for the future. These skills will include creativity, critical thinking, interpersonal communication, leadership and the application of 'human' qualities such as caring and compassion.

As there are more roles than candidates, it is increasingly important for organisations to ensure that they retain their current staff. High turnover and recruitment of new talent is often very costly: the average employer spends EUR 3,700 and 24 days to hire a new employee without considering the lack of experience and expertise that only long-term workers have.

There are two main issues concerning attraction and retention: how to keep people on board and how to reduce the time it takes to reach the wanted skill level.

Here are the five most common causes that lead employees to leave a role: 

• Uninspiring organisational atmosphere 
• Poor training opportunities 
• Lack of independence at work compared to self-employed work
• Poor decision-making influence
• Extreme workload  

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Seven ways to attract and retain talent in your company

Self-reflection

As with any significant change, human beings are not made to change course blindly, and neither are the employees of a company. In the event of problems with staff, it is essential to take control of the situation and learn what went wrong, both internally - defining aspects to be improved - and externally - through competitor analysis. 

In addition, why not ask your current staff to find out why they chose to continue working in your company?

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Writing attractive job descriptions

It may not seem innovative, but you need to know what's on offer before wooing talent. And with so many sought-after roles available, you need to stand out. But being attractive is only half the solution; the other part is about showing an honest picture of what will happen. So be sincere and write in a tone that reflects the interview process and the day-to-day relationship.

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Offer a bright future

In times of uncertainty, employees want and need to feel secure. But security and stagnation are not the same thing - and the difference lies between not worrying about the next paycheck and fearing being stuck in a rut.

For this reason, your company needs to reassure talent that they will not end up exactly where they started five years earlier; but will be a part of continuous growth. 

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Work benefits, and more

Herzberg's two-factor theory provided a solid basis for understanding job satisfaction. People still want to be rewarded for their hard work, but why should this reward be linked to the job?

The vast majority of workers do not define themselves by their occupation. They want to live their lives comfortably. And by doing so, they will feel valued, resulting in a more relaxed and dedicated workforce.

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Confidence, autonomy and support

As children, our lives are dictated by parents, teachers and authority figures. But when we enter the working world as adults, this constant degree of overbearing control is limiting. It is therefore crucial to strike a balance and allow employees to create their own paths. Setting goals is a great way to keep track of this. 

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Feeling appreciated and rewarded for your work

The days of extravagant offices with slides and bean bags, or pizza days instead of a pay rise, have become a cliché. The reality is that people want to be appreciated for their work. This appearance can initially seem attractive, but it is incomparable to the recognition of respected and valued employees.

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Offer a genuinely welcoming culture

The first step in retaining talent is to foster belonging. This means providing clear and non-oppressive onboarding. Ensure that the new hire is not kicked straight out the door through which they entered. This goes beyond performative gestures and is your best chance to seriously practise what you preach.

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In this respect, companies are devoting more and more energy and resources to employee well-being, integrating ad hoc solutions into their corporate strategies. An example of this transition is Doctolib, a French company spread throughout Europe, which has chosen the Kampaay solution to organise effective onboarding and corporate events. Here's how.

The role of human resources (HR) within companies is changing rapidly. In the past, HR was mainly responsible for recruiting and managing human resources, but today it is becoming increasingly important in defining and implementing corporate strategy.

‍One of the main reasons for this change is the fact that companies are becoming more aware of the value of their human resources. People's skills and capabilities have become valuable assets for the competitiveness of companies. As a result, HR is gaining an increasingly important role in corporate strategy definition.

Another reason why HR is becoming increasingly important for strategic decisions is the changing dynamics of the labour market. With increasing competition and rapidly evolving technologies, as mentioned above, companies need to be able to attract and retain the best talent to remain among the top competitors.

Finally, the growing importance of social and environmental issues is pushing companies to pay more attention to human resources management. Companies must demonstrate a commitment to diversity and inclusion, as well as to environmental sustainability. In this context, HR plays a crucial role in ensuring that the company adopts responsible and sustainable human resources management practices.

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How does human resources fit into the overall picture of change?

McKinsey recently conducted research on how companies can best organise themselves for the future. The current experiment suggests that companies share three characteristics: they know what they are and what they stand for; they operate with a fixation on speed and simplicity; and they grow by increasing their capacity to learn and innovate.

HR can help foster this transformation by facilitating positive change in these three key areas and the nine imperatives that branch out from them.

Identity (who we are): 

Companies that pursue a purpose are more likely to generate significant long-term value, which can lead to higher financial performance, greater employee engagement and increased customer trust.

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Agility (how we operate):

Organisational agility improves both business performance and employee satisfaction. Human resources can be influential in moving an organisation from a traditional hierarchy to a marketplace that provides talent and resources to a collection of small, empowered teams, helping them fulfil their missions and acting as a common guiding star.

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Scalability (how we grow): 

The new normal of large and rapidly recurring skill gaps implies the implementation of transformative, not piecemeal, retraining initiatives. In this, HR's role can be to drive value creation.

We can therefore conclude that the role of HR is becoming increasingly important in defining and implementing corporate strategy. Human resources need to be more and more involved in defining a strategy to ensure that the company can attract and retain the talent it needs to succeed and manage human capital responsibly. 

These three trends highlight the transformations that HR teams will have to face and have already started to take action on.

Managers and anyone working in HR must find new solutions and strategies to facilitate this change, often opening up to new, promising opportunities.

This is why Kampaay has developed a solution that aims to provide a tool to support HR in facilitating the management of engagement activities and solving the three main critical issues encountered:

1. Low and poor value team building activities: budgets allocated to each function or team for activities related to the development of corporate culture and team building are spent inefficiently
2. Unstructured and inefficient processes: budgets and activities (and their impact) are managed and monitored in an unstructured manner and without a clear strategy
3. Lack of skills and time: the internal organisers of these activities (function or team leaders) lack the skills and time to be able to manage the activities with greater added value
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In this way, HR gains much more control by centralising certain activities and favouring the three trends we have analysed together:  

• Trend 1: Work from home does not end here 

Virtual, hybrid and in-person events will be increasingly important to bring value to employees and make the most of the few moments to meet.

• Trend 2: How to attract new talent and learn to hold onto it

Creating effective onboarding and engaging resources early on and spending time on developing growth plans takes time. Finding a solution like the Events Management Solution can relieve HR teams of repetitive tasks.

• Trend 3: HR, the new player in corporate strategy

Organising events to create value, corporate culture and learning activities are becoming recurring necessities.

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