HR Predictions: What To Expect In 2024?

Building HR skills: a priority for success

 

Here are the top 15 predictions for 2024.

1. AI Will Change Every Part of HR — and Every Role in the Company

Talent intelligence and recruiting, strategic talent management, employee experience, learning and development, people analytics, workforce productivity, safety, privacy, and ethics — and more to come. Dizzy yet? All these core areas of human resources (HR) are being changed right now by artificial intelligence (AI). But if you fear AI as a threat to you, it is quite the opposite. I believe this will be one of the most positive transformational technologies the profession has ever seen. In 2024, that means HR practitioners become change enablers, planners, and systems implementers.

2. AI Will Transform the HR Tech Stack

Not too long back, the CHRO assumed that their HCM platform was the system of record. Then, we added learning, recruiting, rewards, scheduling, and other applications on top of it. We then built portals to give employees access to these systems, stacking tools from bottom to top. Now, AI is flipping this whole model, and the big issue for HR departments in 2024 and beyond will be how to replace or supplement their HR tech stacks with AI extensions. Expect rethinking a lot of products as various providers implement AI in different ways.

 

3. The Employee Is Now In Charge: EX Employee Will Be Redefined

Employee Experience (EX) has become more complex; employees can now change their employers easily, they work in a variety of modalities, and, in general, have many more issues and needs. Rather than simply survey their workforce, organizations now need to open up listening channels and enable what I call “employee activation”—an active approach that includes listening, crowdsourcing of ideas, and direct management involvement in employee-driven programs. Vendors like ServiceNow, Firstup, Workvivo, Microsoft, Applaud, Leapsome, Simpplr, and hundreds of others are offering integration platforms for employee communications, listening, and access to backend apps.

4. Union and Employee Activism Will Increase

According to the Economic Policy Institute, Americans’ interest in unions grew by 53% in 2022, and public approval of labor unions is at its highest point since 1965. What this underlines is how important it is to listen to employees, ensure wages are fair, keep benefits competitive, and create a culture of trust and inclusion. When people feel their work is rewarding and they feel productive, they have no reason to push back. So, focus on culture, equity, and inclusion and a positive work experience—and do not forget the “deskless” colleague experience either.

5. Companies Will Accept and Adopt Hybrid Work Models

Does not matter where and when you do it, work is work. In 2024, we need to stop thinking about hybrid work as a “policy,” and instead as another word for “working.” People will come into the office when they need to, and we need to be training leaders to formalize and design meetings such that work done in the office maximizes that opportunity. If the only reason an employee comes into the office is to join a meeting that could have been done over video, that is a waste of her time.

6. Human-centered Leadership Will Take Center Stage

Josh Bersin Company research shows that the top-performing companies are the ones that consistently invest in leadership development, and among all HR disciplines, leadership development scores highest in business impact. But our research shows that leadership development budgets are down almost 40% from prior years ($200 to 300 per year versus $450-plus). It is time to reverse this slide, investing and focusing on the new model of more human-centered leadership—which is the very basis of the service economy we now work in. And as organizations become flatter, everyone needs to understand how to lead.

7. HR Will Get Pragmatic About the Skills-based Organization

While most HR leaders understand the idea of skills-based hiring, skills-based promotion and pay, skills-based career management, and skills-based workforce planning, we have been kind of stuck on the “how.” 2024 will be when this changes. I expect most companies will soon be committing to skills-based systems for learning, sourcing, talent mobility, and career development. If you do this right, you will start to finally see a genuine skills taxonomy emerge. This is because companies are finding that purpose-driven systems are the foundation of the important new systems needed for their future.

8. Recruitment Will Become More Difficult than Ever

As we move to skills-based recruiting, more and more of the process will have to be based on AI inference, culture fit, experiences, learning agility, and soft skills. You will still need to know employees’ job history and academic credentials, but they will no longer be sufficient or even strategic in hiring. And if companies cannot hire the right people, no process of performance management or development will move the needle. As a result, talent acquisition leaders, recruitment specialists, and recruiters are your best friends right now—but the way you hire also needs to change.

9. Talent Marketplaces, Internal Mobility, and Career Pathways Will Become Essential to Business Growth

In 2024, talent marketplaces and internal mobility tools will be everywhere. Why? Because it is edtech technology that actually works and deeply engages employees. To take one example, Seagate told us that its marketplace has already saved $20 to $30 million in reduced contractor costs, paying for itself many times over. Another important innovation is what we call “career pathways.” This idea means taking an employee in a given job family or role and empowering them to move to an entirely new internal post. Both approaches help.

10. Autonomous Learning Platforms Will Disrupt Corporate L&D

Since the early days of the Internet, training providers and Learning and Development (L&D) teams have been trying to make corporate training more personalized, relevant, interesting, and useful. Corporate learning and development is now a $340 billion business, so there are just so many tools, platforms, content, and assessments to check out. But a real game-changer has arrived: AI-powered “autonomous learning platforms,” which can generate and update content, personalize the experience, monitor and measure activity, and dynamically improve the business learning experience. Brace yourself for L&D that will look and feel very different.

11. Pay Equity and New Models of Performance Management Will Go Mainstream

We are currently navigating a period of rapid inflation, and employees expect their wages to keep up. The average U.S. salary increase in 2023 was around 4.6%, marking it one of the highest increases in recent years. Expect this to continue, so a holistic approach to rewards is now crucial. To do that, think about “systemic rewards,” moving beyond the old Total Rewards model to bring together the concepts of pay equity, pay for performance, total rewards, and team productivity. Time for a pay audit?

12. The Chief Diversity Officer Role Will Get a Major Overhaul

Traditionally viewed as compliance, regulatory, and training initiatives within HR, in 2023, the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) landscape shifted dramatically. Something of a DEI backlash has emerged, with Elon Musk famously stating, “DEI must DIE.” This has slowed diversity initiatives, forcing DEI leaders to exercise caution and integrate diversity more into the business (why we see new “Chief Operations and Inclusion” roles start to appear). This is fine: the most successful DEI initiatives are those promoting inclusion for business reasons anyway. Your DEI keywords for 2024 are pragmatic, business-oriented, and relevant.

13. The HR Operating Model Will Be Reimagined via Systemic HR™

Last year, I introduced the concept of Systemic HR—the evolved model of human resources, where we move from disparate specialty groups to integrated service delivery, then to products and offerings, and finally to integrated consulting and an agile operating model. 
 
Why this evolution has to happen: our profession follows trends in the economy, and that is where the world is going. Therefore, we now have to think of HR as an integrated set of services, offerings, and capabilities to help your organization perform at the level business today demands.

14. Building HR Skills and Capabilities Will Become Top Priority

To make 2024 a success, you need an HR bench up to the challenge. Build skills by starting a proactive HR career program that encourages HR professionals to move into the business, trying out specialist and business partner roles. Invest in your people, too: the average spending on L&D across all roles is around $1,500 per person per year, so allocate the same to HR and enroll your guys in your company’s leadership development and industry education. Why not also partner with a peer to compare your HR strategic plans?

15. Developing the HR Leadership Team Will Be Critical to Business Success

This year, the CHRO is going to be dealing with everything from a challenging labor market to AI and a likely slowdown in the global economy. All your existing work on things like building a flatter organization, modernizing recruiting, and implementing skills technology need to progress, at the same time. Work with your colleagues in talent and learning, recruiting, operations, technology, business partners, labor relations, DEI, etc., to set priorities. And to meet demands, it may well be time to look at developing the core HR team’s capabilities (time for an HR Academy?).

Josh Bersin, a global industry analyst, serves as the CEO of The Josh Bersin Company.