Industry Research Summary: The Future of the HR Function 2021

Since early 2020, Human Resources (HR) has faced unprecedented challenges due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Seldom in history has the HR function needed to pivot so quickly and dramatically to meet such urgent workforce and business needs. These trends are requiring HR to rethink its roles and priorities while the world of work is transforming.
 

How well does your HR department meet the changing needs of your organization? What role does HR leadership play in your organization's business/strategic planning process? What should you focus on to prepare for further changes over the next two years?

To learn more about the current state of the HR function, HR.com's HR Research Institute conducted a survey-based study that looks at the attitudes, concerns, priorities, and skills of today’s HR professionals as well as their views on what is critical for the future.

HR professionals give themselves mixed grades when it comes to meeting the needs of their organizations. More than half (57%) of HR professionals say that their top leaders would give their organization’s HR departments a score of 8 or higher on a 10-point scale, and 58% give their own departments high ratings. However, only 41% say employees would rate HR as 8 or higher. This suggests that HR views itself as better aligned with the needs of top bosses than with the needs of the employees they are tasked with supporting.  

Further, only 14% strongly agree that their HR function boosts employee performance.

 

HR leadership is an equal partner in the business/strategic planning process in 58% of organizations. An additional 21% say that during the planning process, HR is asked for talent-related input. HR likely has a considerably lower impact in the 22% of organizations where HR leadership has no significant role in business/strategic planning or where HR is asked to develop a talent strategy after the business/strategic planning process is complete.

Looking two years ahead, HR is most likely to be concerned about economic conditions, health and safety, and talent shortages.

The first two are likely a reaction to the ongoing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, talent shortages seem to indicate that many HR professionals remain hopeful about the economy and expect it to be strong enough to make talent shortages an issue in the near future.

Another potential impact of Covid-19 is distributed labor due to remote work technologies, but only 24% of respondents cite it as one of the top four external challenges.

The biggest gap between the perceived importance of a skill and HR’s current proficiency in skill is in the area of leveraging HR data/analytics. This is followed closely by skills gap in the ability to think strategically and improve the employee experience. Both are a critical to organizational success.

In looking at which HR functional areas are expected to be most critical in the next two years, three areas are cited by just over 40% of participants:
 

DEI seems to have become a higher priority as incidents of police violence and associated social justice movements—especially in the United States—have raised the awareness of DEI-related challenges in the workplace. Leadership development and change management are perennial issues, but the massive work-process changes and leadership challenges of the last year have likely raised their prominence as issues.

Interested to learn how these outcomes and insights may apply to your organization? We invite you to download and read the research report and infographic today.

 

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