From Challenges To Opportunities To Strength

HR’s road ahead for 2021 and beyond

If 2020 taught us anything, it was that the future is unpredictable. We can forecast that some of the shifts from last year are going to stay with us in the next decade and beyond. The good news is that the biggest problems ahead already have proven solutions. If HR practitioners take a proactive approach and tackle these challenges head on they will quickly pivot into their biggest strengths.

Although regulatory mandates are powerful drivers of workplace policies and practices, business pressures play an increasingly prominent role. In the war for top talent, employees are prioritizing a company’s brand as an employer: 86% say they would not apply for or continue to work for an organization that has a bad reputation. From the #MeToo movement, to calls for social justice, and the Business Roundtable’s recent reimagining of the purpose of a corporation, employees, applicants, boards, shareholders, and the public will continue to scrutinize a company’s practices and workplace culture. Successful organizations will assess their values, policies, and practices to ensure they are aligned in support of an inclusive, ethical, and sustainable workplace. They will benchmark their practices against comparable organizations to continue improving and will become a brand that attracts top talent. 

Remote work is here to stay, at least to some degree. It has been a win-win for businesses. Productivity remained steady or even increased in 2020, although managers reported struggling with leading remote teams. Surveys show that 80% percent of employees want to continue working remotely at least occasionally, and 58% hope it will be their primary way of working. It’s no surprise, then, that 74% of CFOs plan to make remote work permanent for some portion of their employees post-Covid. Additionally, the remote work environment [along with dedicated discussions about equity that were spurred by protests over racial injustice] created an unintended, but positive increase in the sense of belonging for employees of color. Forward-looking HR practitioners are already building new skills and implementing new processes and technology solutions to enable team management and collaboration. They are delivering online workplace training, to drive culture and employee engagement and will continue to do so as work becomes more “hybrid”. 

According to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 36% of adults reported symptoms of anxiety or depression in June 2020, compared to just 11% in June 2019. Mental health challenges can impact retention, productivity, and job performance — not to mention healthcare costs. Progressive workplaces recognize the benefits of investing in the mental wellness of their employees — and data supports this. HR practitioners will get ahead of these concerning trends by supporting their employees in a variety of ways. Mental health and wellness support come in many forms: counseling resources for employees, availability of apps or technology tools to promote positive mental health, the allotment of “mental health days”, or the utilization of workplace mental health education programs. In particular, there will be a focus on equitable mental wellbeing services that provides programs and services from culturally competent practitioners. 

Company responses to the protests against racial injustice highlighted the need to make external commitments to equity and also make meaningful progress internally. As the focus on accountability, transparency, and progress on DEI goals continue, you can anticipate a deeper need to align your organizational values to these tenets. Recent research shows that organizations that have a stated value of diversity and inclusion “walk the walk” and have increased gender diversity on their boards and senior management teams. There will also be a call to sophisticate and standardize reporting of demographic and talent data to meet the expectation of accountability and transparency. To be successful, DE&I will extend beyond the talent management capacity and become more central to the operations of your organization. For this to work, DE&I teams will need to grow and scale. Starting the year by focusing on the challenges ahead can be daunting, but with the right training, mindset, and planning these challenges will evolve into progress.