The role of HR within organizations is currently going through a major shift. Just recently, human resource managers had very few roles to play other than recruiting workers and offering them basic support to be able to work for them. In the current competitive world, however, the scramble for top talent has woken up business executives to the significance of employee engagement, development and retention. At this game-changing moment, HR leaders are working hard to design processes that can help create unique employee experience. Here are skills that apply to most leadership positions but will be specifically critical to HR in the near future.
Understanding the Employee Journey
If you have been in business for a few years, your marketers have most likely developed strategies to help you better understand the mindset and emotions that occur throughout the journey of a customer with your organization and your product. Through this, the marketers are able to track each touch point a customer goes through from the time they get information about your product for the first time to the point they make a decision to buy. It is less costly to maintain customers than actually acquire new ones, which ultimately makes customer mapping quite valuable for marketers. HR leaders can learn a lot from their own marketing departments and get a similar effect by replacing “customer” with “employee.” You don’t, therefore, have to leave your organization to learn this skill and future-proof your career. In the near future, only HR leaders will the ability to create employ journey maps that can track each phase from recruitment to exiting the company will be successful.
People Analytics
Through people analytics, HR leaders can know where they are falling short and where they would like to improve. For example, if you are encountering difficulty attracting new employees or developing more female leaders, the solution is to be collecting data regularly. The more you do this, the easier it will be for you to compare different factors and identify potential causes of labor issues. The rise of HR technology will, however, make your life easier by collecting, analyzing, and transmitting the data you require to make the right decisions.
Training for Excellence
Once you have gotten the data you need, it is the right time to consider how you will empower your employees. As we move deeper into the digital era, web based training will become more useful. As businesses will focus on bringing several employees together from different geographical locations to disseminate information quickly, controlling costs and managing time will also take central focus. With the many ways your employees can get your organization into trouble by being ignorant of critical processes, training will help ensure they are not only consistent but also concise and effective.
Coordinating with Others
Organizations are currently putting great emphasis than ever before on strong interpersonal skills. HR leaders need to learn fast that collaboration is crucial in their work environment. At the workplace, workers should play off each other’s strengths and adapt flexibility to changing circumstances. Strong communication skills, ability to work with a range of different personalities and awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of other people have already become central to effective HR management.
New Ways of Thinking
After identifying potential pain points, it is important to rethink processes and design better strategies to eliminate the barriers. Use design thinking. A recent study shows that HR departments that provide the most value are five times more likely to be using design thinking. For this process to be successful, HR leaders will have to depart from the decades-old models of onboarding and performance management.
As the current business world and workforce continue to evolve rapidly, it’s evident that HR leaders need to develop alongside if they are indeed going to keep pace with the changes. Arm yourself with these skills to secure the future of your career.
