Forbes: The Top 5 HR Trends For 2024

What are the biggest HR trends for 2024? Of course it depends on who you ask. But all year as I've spoken to HR practitioners and tech companies these are the themes everyone has top of mind:

1. GenAI

No surprise GenAI is going to come into play a great deal for countless HR functions. In 2024 we'll deploy and leverage it with more wisdom and discretion than we did in 2023. It will play a starring role in our ability to treat employees like the consumers they are, but with some caveats.

I saw a lot of organizations diving into GenAI's capabilities whether or not we fully understood how it works and what it works for. There are certainly two sides to this, at least, and a lot to think about. As a for instance, the collision of authentic thought leadership and GenAI has been interesting to say the least, and we've seen some ethical and potential privacy issues as well.

Also interesting is that seizing the power (and ability to shortcut individual effort) of GenAI was partially responsible for two labor strikes, among the actors and writers working with Hollywood. The agreement forged to end the strikes may have enormous implications for how employers far outside of Hollywood can use AI in the future.

GenAI certainly isn't going anywhere, and there's plenty to like. In HR it's enabling us to automate countless talent acquisition and management tasks and improve, refine, and streamline a lot of processes. processes. It's providing support and assistance that's actually intelligent, which reduces friction and improves employee experience when it comes to needing answers and information. It's helping us to make smarter decisions in everything from hiring to engagement to service delivery.

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2.Compensation

Compensation is changing. With new expectations and needs around flexibility, equity, transparency, and delivery, what used to be a relatively staid process has become a bit of a wild west show. in 2024 it's going to settle down in a better model that fits today's realities.

One key reason: the world of work was rocked by the surge in "quiet quitting" in the past couple of years, and employers had no choice but to take note of employee needs. As Gallup noted in its 2023 State of the Global Workplace Report found, pay has a lot to do with it, and not just what people are paid, but when and how. 28 percent of respondents in the report said they would change issues around pay at their workplace, including being paid more promptly, and being rewarded for their role in great results, receiving gas vouchers to help with their commute.

This isn't going to change. In 2024, it will be even more important: as more and more employers weigh a return to work policy, they'll need to provide compensation and benefits that address employee pain points around getting paid as well as the cost of heading back into work.

Factor in transparency and equity as well as delivery, and compensation requires a new approach. Having the capabilities to deliver off-cycle and on-demand pay options and varying pay frequency for instance, speaks volumes about an employer's willingness to treat employees as individuals not as numbers.

3. Employer/Employee Relationships

Given so many changes around where, when, and how work is done, it's not just the friction points around employer/employee relationships that have markedly increased, but how deeply they impact that fundamental connection. In 2024 smart employers will work on easing the friction and its impact on everything from engagement to performance, retention to growth. This will extend to evaluating the burden on managers as well.

What does a poor relationship look like at present? Consider the sentiments around return to work, performance, and trust, according to a Gartner report. Only 26 percent of organizations report that their employees fully comply with on-site attendance requirements — that's scarcely more than a quarter of the organization's workforce.

Performance expectations are still out of touch: Almost 50 percent of employees see their current performance as being unsustainable. In terms of trust, just 50 percent of employees actually trust their organization. There is still some pain evident around pandemic-era shrinkage and layoffs, even if temporary. It doesn't take much to see a connection to the need for further transparency.

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4. HR Tech Platforms

With HR tech in general, the level of sophistication, power, and intelligence just keeps rising. But with the emergence of HCM and other HR platforms that can handle a whole array of capabilities, we'll see more organizations of all sizes addressing their HR tech needs from a platform mindset.

The impetus for this is far more than "if you build it, they will come." Organizations need to accelerate and scale growth, better manage talent, provide consistent UX as well as consistent support, and make smarter decisions — and that's just to stay afloat. Compliance issues and other work-related regulations and legislation continue to evolve, and staying on top of those takes a systemic approach. Remote, hybrid, flexible, and multi-hub workplaces add an astonishing layer of complexity, which AI and machine learning (ML) can handle, streamline, and overcome.

The emergence of AI and ML, though, has its own profound impacts. Organizations are going to have to better consider how they deploy AI (for instance in recruiting and hiring), and ML (for instance in predicting retention). For many, the answer is a hefty platform that can integrate into existing programs but enfolds everyone into the same environment, and can provide the overall intelligence and data leaders need to make strategic decisions. I'm also seeing that these muscular platforms aren't just for large organizations: SMEs can lean on them as well.

5. Skills Plus Learning And Development

I see these two trends and one – and by putting them together I'm also making a plea for employers to see that they are two sides of the same coin when it comes to setting your employees and managers up for success. In 2024, I hope, we will focus on developing our existing talent from a skills perspective, and leaders will come to see the role L&D plays in their organizational growth.

First, the skills part: during the digital transformation, the idea of core competencies was, well, blown out of the water. Particular skills are needed to harness increasingly sophisticated and powerful tech to better do our jobs — and on levels. The pandemic threw us into a far greater dependence on digital work environments, which meant learning those tools. AI has prompted another jump in competencies as we learn to harness it. Going skills-based instead of focusing on college degrees or years of experience means recruiters and managers can be far more flexible in finding or promoting the right talent.

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Now the L&D part: Leaders need to deliver not just L&D programs, but a learning culture — and they may need to come to grips with the fact that they don't. A recent edX study found a gap that needs to close: while half of executives believe their organization provides employees with a strong culture of learning as well as the time to spend learning, that's not what most employees think.

In fact, only one in five employees strongly agree. It's not that the leaders don't value L&D or understand their function in terms of business as well as talent objectives: they see L&D programs as a means to upskill at scale (53 percent), drive employee performance (50 percent) and keep employees engaged (also 50 percent). I've sat in on discussions regarding the merits of L&D, particularly in an era rocked by quiet quitting and other stealth impacts on the workplace. The trend is simple: it's more important than ever.

There’s More

What I didn't put in this list of my Top Five are a few more. Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB) initiatives continue to matter in talent acquisition as well as talent management. Internal mobility strategies will continue to play a key role in engagement and retention — and can be better leveraged with DEIB in mind.

Lastly, the pace of change is a continuing trend. Just how quickly HR technology is evolving can put HR teams in the hot seat in terms of having the best, the fastest, the smartest, the newest. But HR has also reached a maturation point in terms of effectiveness and scope. Not that we won’t see continuing improvements, but we have an incredibly strong foundation of capabilities to work with.

My advice: don't feel you have to pivot after every shift or change. Whatever technology you're leveraging, make sure you focus on transparency, communication, relationships, and data-driven reporting when it comes to your talent strategies. That's not a trend at this point. But it's always a best practice.