The Top Five HR Trends For 2017
Some companies seem
less gung-ho to ditch annual performance reviews than they were a year ago.
HR leaders are sizing up a handful of challenges that they weren't
yet facing in the early days of 2016. Over the next 12 months the solutions to
those obstacles will have to evolve and adapt as the overall business world
does the same. Still, it's worth taking a look back at what's changed in the
past year in order to see what's in store for human resources professionals in
2017. These are five of the biggest trends impacting the field right now.
All the fuss and bother over the
past few years about integrating millennials into the workplace is officially outdated. It’s now time
to welcome in the next generation. In 2017, the oldest members of generation Z
will be turning 21–23 (there's some debate as to whether the new generation
begins in 1994 or 1996). In the meantime, those on the older end of the
millennial spectrum are already in their mid-30s. Many have been in the
workforce for over a decade, having served as managers, VPs, startup founders,
and CEOs for quite some time.
Gen Zers . . . are now just
starting to enter the workforce as interns and even entry-level employees.
Gen Zers, on the other hand, are
now just starting to enter the workforce as interns and even entry-level
employees. This will present new challenges for HR leaders looking to figure
out how (and even whether) this new
generation brings something fundamentally different to the workplace, and what
it may take to prepare millennials to lead them.
A string of ugly scandals in recent
years has hit companies like Zenefits, Wells Fargo, ANZ Bank, Mitsubishi, Volkswagen, Toshiba, and others.
What they have in common is that all have been attributed, in one way or
another, to a toxic work culture where unethical business practices were
encouraged. In most cases, impossibly high standards set by executives and
upper management led employees to cut corners (or worse) to reach them.
A combined Columbia and Duke
University study found that an emphasis on figures over people can encourage
unethical behavior—a finding that should surprise no one. As Shiva Rajgopal of
Columbia University explained, "Our research provides systematic
evidence—perhaps for the first time—that effective cultures are less likely to
be associated with "short-termism," unethical behavior, or earnings
management to pad quarterly earnings."
Not every company that vowed to
kill annual reviews has seen the results that switch was supposed to provide.
It may be discouraging that it takes a spate of scandals and
scientific research to come to that conclusion, but it's probably a good lesson
for companies to reckon with in 2017 all the same. HR leaders and executives
have been talking more regularly about culture in recent years, so some shifts
in the right direction may already be underway.
But what's also clear is that
creating an ethical work culture requires companywide input—it can't just come
from the top. This year, businesses that care about that may look to their HR
teams to find ways to have those conversations with all of
their employees more meaningfully and more often.
In 2015 and 2016, a number of big-name
companies—including Deloitte, Adobe, Accenture, GE, and more recently
SAP—announced plans to leave behind the annual
performance review. This led many others to follow suit, making the last few years
all about breaking with the old.
We're now roughly a year into that
movement, and it seems to have slowed. Not every company that vowed to kill
annual reviews has seen the results that switch was supposed to provide. In
fact, some have actually found that employees'
performance and engagement dropped as a result.
Getting rid of outdated systems isn't always enough, it turns out.
Companies are also realizing they need to design a strong alternative in order
to make the transition successful. This understanding means we'll likely be
seeing HR leaders spend more time on data collection and change management in
2017. These days, performance management is an information game.
One knotty question these same companies have run into is what to
do about pay. Should firms that swap a traditional annual review for continuous
and/or peer-based performance evaluations keep making compensation decisions
the way they used to? And for those that have reformed (or trashed) their
employee ranking systems, how do you then calculate pay fairly and
competitively?
Traditional job descriptions are
going out the window.
As 2017 gets underway, some HR
professionals are coming around to the idea that linking performance management
to compensation can actually undermine the intended purpose of ditching the
annual review—to create a more learning-based approach with increased feedback
conversations. The solutions are still evolving, but there are already some ideas being tossed
around about how to separate pay from performance and get the
desired results.
A study by Fieldglass revealed
that in 2015 the average company's workforce consisted of 54% traditional,
full-time employees, 20% contingent workers (freelancers, interns, and
contractors), and 26% that existed in a gray area somewhere between the two
(including remote and part-time workers). The researchers predicted that by
2017, the share of "nontraditional" workers would grow to 25%
contingent, 34% gray area, and 41% traditional workers.
The impact on job titles and responsibilities, how teams work
together, and much more is already proving enormous. With over half of the
workforce working in nontraditional positions, HR managers have their work cut
out for them. They'll need to focus more on developing innovative ways to
engage and integrate this new workforce into their organizations' cultures.
In a survey last year,
businesses told Deloitte researchers that the
top issue they faced was in redesigning their organizations to fit this new
reality, with 80% saying they were currently restructuring or had recently
completed the process. One trend we're already seeing, as a result, is the
spread of cross-functional, ad hoc, and steering teams—which in many cases
replace or supplement the work of a traditional, full-time team of people all
working onsite together in the same department.
Similarly, traditional job
descriptions are going out the window. These new types of teams are utilizing the full
skill-set of each employee, rather than limiting them to a narrow range of tasks
and skills demanded by a conventional department. This means that an employee
with a passion for PR and a talent for graphic design may be able to do both as
a project's needs evolve. Some call it the rise of
"comprehensivism."
For HR leaders, performance
management will need to become more fluid as a result. Whether or not a given
employee has one manager, several, or none at all, they still need to get
feedback—including, increasingly, from their peers—in order to keep
learning and improving. To do that, they'll also need to feel free to ask for
it from whomever (and whenever) they want. The shift toward self-steering
learning and development is already underway, and it's up to forward-thinking
HR professionals to smooth the way for it.
STEFFEN MAIER
https://www.fastcompany.com/3066976/the-future-of-work/the-top-five-hr-trends-for-2017
No comments:
Post a Comment