By Cecile Alper-Leroux

The New Year is in full swing! The turn of the calendar from one year to the next brings the promise of a clean start, helping us see things with fresh eyes, and inspiring us to try new things. And 2017 is no exception. Here are my predictions for the world of people-first HR and business ahead.
 
The Voice of the Employee (VoE) Takes Center Stage
Customer satisfaction surveys have long been seen as the best way to understand how well organizations are meeting the needs of their customers. More recently, the Voice of the Customer (VoC) has become more nuanced with Customer Journey Maps and Net Promoter Scores.
 
As organizations recognize that to truly serve their customers they must invest in creating a great experience for their employees at work, the traditional employee engagement survey—often viewed as the way to assess how employees feel at work, which is key to their productivity—has become an insufficient tool for capturing the true Voice of the Employee (VoE).
 
Thanks to advances in natural language processing technologies, in 2017, organizations can continually scan their environments and get a deep understanding of the true sentiment and emotional gauge of their people. 
 
Organizations focused on retaining their best people will have to begin adopting these tools, or else they risk losing the hearts and minds of their people—ultimately affecting their bottom line.
 
The Workforce is Becoming More Fluid
The traditional workforce is changing faster than our organizations can keep up, and it is becoming increasingly obvious to many business leaders. An October 2016 commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Ultimate Software found that nearly 90% of HR and business professionals who influence their companies’ HR policies agree that the way employees work is becoming more fluid, flexible, and dynamic.
 
The notion of defining oneself as one thing at work versus “at home” is not new; but the blurring of lines and new ways to identify oneself is new, and it is having a significant impact in the workplace, creating the need for a new kind of HR, and for organizations to offer ever-more-fluid people policies and philosophies in 2017 and beyond.
 
Workers want more choice and flexibility in how they approach tasks (more collaboratively), jobs (more frequent changes and exploration), opportunities to advance in their careers (more quickly, and in a less linear fashion), and how they define themselves at work (in a more personalized, holistic way)—a trend I call “Workforce Fluidity.” 
  
The Primacy of the Employee-Manager Relationship
“People don’t leave companies, they leave managers.” This statement has been floating around HR circles for decades—and for good reason. Employees experience work and the culture of the organization primarily through interactions with their direct managers.
 
Today, people don’t want to be “managed.” They want leaders who inspire them to greatness, challenge them, and communicate openly with them, coaching them to be their best selves at work.
 
Looking ahead in 2017, I expect more and more companies to invest heavily in developing managers to become better leaders, and we will begin to see the fruits of these efforts. New diagnostic and prescriptive analytics tools will support manager development on a day-to-day basis—ushering in a new era of humanized people “management.”  
 
HR Agility Will Become the New Mode of Supporting Organizations
In 2017, we will continue to see our workplaces evolve into more human, people-centered spaces. Rather than reacting to pressure from business leaders and employees, HR leaders will initiate rethinking traditional policies to meet the needs of a more open and expressive workforce, taking a front seat in driving successful business outcomes.
 
This will do two things for HR professionals: we will become more innovative, nimble, and observant; and we will be forced to adapt to existing HR processes and practices to create more agile, human-natured organizations. This shift began a few years ago with the transformation of performance into a more dynamic, coaching-focused process.
 
In 2017, however, HR leaders will need to reinvent paid time off and compensation processes, two areas that are woefully out of synch with the workforce of today.
 
Culture Shapes the Employee Experience 
We all know that there can be a significant disconnect between an organization’s mission statement and what employees experience, or what really goes on within an organization. People entering the workforce in 2017 and beyond tend to be less trusting of authority, making it more important for organizations to gain the trust of their employees by demonstrating that they “walk the walk and talk the talk.”
 
This requires a culture of listening and taking action on employee concerns. Supported by smarter, more perceptive technologies in 2017, organizations will finally be able to “see” their culture at work and detect gaps in alignment between employees and the organization’s stated mission and values. Thus, these organizations can focus on defining philosophies and policies that address how people experience their work lives, and how the organization interacts with and treats their people and customers.  
 
For more of my thoughts on putting people first in the workplace, follow my musings on Ultimate Software’s Blog. 

About Cecile Alper-Leroux
Cecile Alper-Leroux is Ultimate Software’s Vice President of Innovation. With more than 20 years’ experience in both national and global markets, Cecile is an internationally sought-out speaker, thought leader, and visionary on human capital management trends, hot topics, and global strategies