The New Year is here and it offers us heaps of promises and exciting new opportunities. There’s much learning to be done, many challenges to take on, several obstacles to overcome and plenty of successes to achieve and win. And like you all I’m really excited about all these experiences that we have ahead. Particularly of interest are the trends we’ll see regarding HR in 2017.

As technology continues to rapidly evolve and alter the way we communicate, compute and educate ourselves, we can expect further innovations in the workplace as well. Many processes will be made more efficient to enhance our experiences. Employees will continue to be the key on how well companies adapt, navigate through challenges and surpass disruptive forces. Basically to ensure your brand is well positioned to attract and retain talent, you’ll be giving more importance to employee needs in 2017.

To sum it all up, here’s my take on the trends we’ll see in HR in 2017:

1. Recruitment

The evolution of recruitment will continue as it remains to be an essential function of HR in 2017. What we can expect to see are these trends:

Employer Brand

Thanks to social media outlets employees have several avenues to vent their frustrations or spotlight their contentment. This has forced employers to continuously improve, maintain and harvest a vibrant and pro-employee environment. Now more than ever, the employer brand is a pivotal strength for companies to be able to attract and maintain talent. In 2017 you can expect companies to be working hard to create a positive employer brand.

Candidate’s Experience

To attract the best talent you’ll need to adopt a “customer focus” approach to your recruitment process. Recruitment in 2017 will see companies being more open to a personalized experience for candidates. It’ll focus on how their employer experience will be different from other companies and how their careers can benefit from being part of the team. The entire process, of course, would need to be more efficient, swift and easier to go through.

Employee Engagement

To have a stronger employer brand, more aligned recruitment managers and a positive work environment, companies need to have strong employee engagement strategies. To truly be able to attract top talent every existing employee will need to play an ambassadorial role. The message they convey will be directly impacted by how engaged, aware and aligned your employees are.

Mobile Experience

People are more inclined to access company websites, career and recruitment pages, and conduct searches on their mobile devices than laptops and PCs. Hence it’s imperative for companies to have mobile friendly websites and career pages to attract talent.

Process Automation

Just imagine how simplified and efficient the entire recruitment process can be if physical, paper versions of resumes were done with. For candidates a paperless experience is not only efficient but also gives them a positive impression of a company that’s embracing change and technologically advance.

2. Performance Management

In 2017 performance management will be mainly driven by the changing dynamics and demands of the workforce. It’s now becoming a necessity to rethink and evolve this essential process to cater to a progressive talent pool. And here are the trends I expect to see in 2017:

Frequent Reviews

Annual feedback and development plans are too infrequent and often aren’t that impactful. Hence, to keep performance aligned to that of the organization’s you’ll need to have performance discussions as frequent as quarterly, monthly and even weekly. That way you’ll stay on track with company goals and avoid the surprise of missing targets.

Efficiencies Through Automation

Embracing technology and automation will be key in the strive for efficiencies in the performance management process. Companies will turn to cloud-based and mobile solutions that’ll enhance the employee experience, make the process less cumbersome for managers and be able to truly extract the most from the process in terms of employee and career development.

Focus on Goal-Setting

HR in 2017 will focus on goal-setting and its achievement than formal performance management discussions that aren’t able to truly hold value or be unbiased. And that’s why companies will give emphasis to individual objectives and key results based on the overall alignment to the company goals.

3. Leadership

There’s a huge build up to this year thanks to the events and discussions that have been going around in the past few years regarding leadership. I expect 2017 to be a pivotal year for leadership and here are the trends you can see:

Recognize Talent

When you’ve acquired a talented group of individuals it’ll be massively difficult for you to retain them if they aren’t challenged, engaged or recognized. To compliment motivational strategies of line managers the top management must play its part in engaging with and recognizing contributions of talented employees. Along with being visionary and strategic thinkers you as a leader need to connect with your company’s talent so that the hands on ground are recognized and feel celebrated for the hard work they put in.

Diverse Workforce

Companies who’ve gotten diversity right have shown higher success rates and it’s definitely not too late to get on the bandwagon of shaping your company around this ideology. Gender diversity is just the starting point. Companies need to be diverse in areas of demographics, education, skills and personality. A strong diverse workforce, in general, will enhance a leader’s mark as being a true driver of performance from just about any mixed group of people.

Engage And Communicate

An annual message alone can’t convey the emotions that a leader truly feels. Would you really be able to achieve your goals with a team who don’t share the same emotions and feelings as you? As a leader you should give weightage to continuously and frequently communicating and engaging with your workforce. Focus on the emotions behind the goals and objectives of the company and make it a personal challenge for your team to strive for. Objectives that are backed with emotions will produce a stronger drive from your team.

HR in 2017 could look the same as it has in previous years – why change anything that hasn’t broken yet, right? The problem is that even if a process isn’t broken the dynamics and demands of talent has altered. Basically if you don’t evolve the HR function you will find a hard time attracting, motivating, retaining and extracting the most from your talent. HR in 2017 is headed towards exciting new frontiers. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.

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