Timeless Human Resource Trends

The issue of talent, specifically how we as business leaders will hire, retain, and train not only our future organizational leaders but also the average Joe or June employee, is this year’s biggest obstacle to the success of CIOs. Human resources is responsible for the entire employee life cycle and is not just focused on recruiting or hiring new employees, which is why HR and recruiting are inextricably linked.

The employment life cycle includes six different stages including 1) Recruitment 2) Selection 3) Performance 4) Succession 5) Development 6) Transition. For this 2016 HR and recruiting trends blog series, I focused on trends from four different areas including 1) Recruiting, 2) Human Resources, 3) Technology, and 4) Leadership.  Each of these areas while involved in every area of the employment life cycle are focused on two or three stages except for human resources which I view in a broader sense.

#1 – Focus on Holistic Human Resources

As I mentioned above, while recruiting is important, talent involves more than just hiring and hiring. It includes training, engagement, culture, and HR administrative tasks. All of which are important in order to be effective in all aspects of human resources from strategic to administrative and everything in between. It’s what makes HR so challenging for senior leaders to grasp. There are many shades of human resources.

For the CIO, the barriers to success when it comes to talent in 2016 are focused not just on recruitment but skills, resources, funding, and the culture and structure of the organization. These are all things that are extremely hard to quantify from a metrics and analytics standpoint. This doesn’t make them any less important for senior leaders.

#2 – Administrative HR Continues to Complicate Things

One of my favorite parts of human resources is the constant evolution when it comes to compliance, case law and regulations. In 2016, HR will be required to provide ACA Reporting for the first time. They will also encounter new changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act and be bombarded by constant changes by the National Labor Relations Board at least for this next year. If a republican candidate is elected president, the power of NLRB will shift but not before HR is thrown a new series of curve balls including the NLRB’s recent decision on employee’s being allowed to audio and video record company meetings and conversations or take photos as part of their employee rights.

#3 – The Rise of the SMB HR Practitioner

One of the reasons I was drawn to blogging and social media as an HR practitioner was the ability to connect with other mid to senior level HR professionals like me who were in the trenches. We shared best practices, lessons learned and built friendships that have continued for going on eight years. In 2015, we saw a host of new small to medium sized business HR and recruiting technologies being offered. For the first time, SMB HR pros are armed with tools and technologies that are as good or better than their enterprise counterparts. I’m excited to watch the rise of the SMB HR Practitioner who in my opinion is often more nimble and industrial because they have always had to MAcGyver their way to success. Imagine what they can do with the best tools and technologies at their disposal for their organization.

#4 – Employee Life Cycle Expands

We’ve seen the definition of a candidate for employment change as the evolution of employment branding and the candidate experience influence how we engage, build relationships and recruit candidates. The same holds true for employees from onboarding to their transition out of the organization as an alumni. The employee life cycle will continue to expand in length as companies will focus on boomerang employees and the building of alumni networks and the hiring of contract and contingent workers who will continue a relationship with their previous employer long after their employee end date.

#5 – Measuring HR

While I’m excited of HR being front and center among senior leadership and in publications like The Harvard Business Review, the focus continues on measuring the effectiveness of HR and moving the human resources department from cost center to revenue center. This includes HR building relationships with other senior leadership staff and looking beyond the traditional Excel spreadsheet to measure our impact on the organization. We will continue to look to data and analytics to further prove our worth.

HR needs to start with not with proving our or their worth but with believing it ourselves. We don’t have to justify the reason for being present in executive meetings. Talent and human capital is paramount to the success of an organization. Measuring the effectiveness and impact of HR is important because it helps us speak a common language with our senior leaders. We need to first believe, we have every reason to be in that executive meeting. Our worth is already proven. Talent is the talk of every CIO, CEO, CFO and beyond. Metrics, data, and reporting only help demonstrate the ripple effect of HR in every department of the organization.