Businesses have faced unimaginable challenges and seen an incredible amount of change over the past two years. That change that is likely to continue as the pandemic along with all its uncertainties continue into 2022. Here is my yearly article where I predict the key HR business trends we might expect to see as we move into 2022 and beyond:
- Mental health – We’ve seen growing discussion around mental health over the last few years, but with a pandemic that is going on 2 years strong, employees are increasingly struggling with covid-fatigue. Mental health support at work is becoming a must have benefit, not a nice to have benefit. We can expect to see more and more employers offering wellbeing benefits that focus on, and include, mental health support. This will include traditional benefits such as private medical schemes and Employee Assistance Programmes. But also new trends such as wellbeing days off, wellness offerings/events including massage, yoga classes and mindfulness/meditation. Smart businesses will be looking to upskill their line managers to enable them to have mental health related discussions and facilitate processes such as wellbeing check ins with their employees.
- Intelligent attraction and retention– we have seen the Great Resignation hitting UK businesses, and huge challenges in many sectors recruiting where there have been the highest recorded job vacancies in 2021 (over 1 million). This means that businesses are having to be more intelligent at how they attract and recruit their candidates. We are seeing an growing number of businesses encapsulating and enhancing their ‘Employee Value Proposition’ (EVP). A company’s EVP is comprised of the unique set of benefits an employee receives, in exchange for the unique skills and experience that employee brings to the company, as well as the outward perception and culture of the company. A strong EVP will run clearly through all these elements, defining the essence of a company. Smart businesses will also be considering non-traditional recruitment options available to them, such as graduate visas, military veterans, apprenticeships etc. Smart businesses will also be acutely aware of recruitment challenges and therefore focusing more efforts on the retention of existing employees through areas such as succession planning, career progression, increased benefits, career webpages etc.
- More sophisticated HR tech – businesses are reviewing their HR systems to ensure they support and strengthen flexible and remote working arrangements. Employers are looking for more sophisticated HR systems, not just ones that have fundamental features such as employee records and holiday management. Smart employers are moving to HR systems that can assist with processes such as time recording, projects, clocking in/out, whereabouts calendar, as well as community functions to help support staff engagement including employee recognition and staff interaction pages.
- Even more flexible working – the case for hybrid working has already been clearly made, thanks to the pandemic. With better work-life balance and less commuting costs for employees, and reduced overheads for employers, it can be a win-win situation if it works for your business infrastructure. However, we are now also seeing a global movement towards a shorter working week. The Scottish government invested £10m this year in pilot schemes for a 4 day working week. The public was unsurprisingly hugely in favour of this scheme and the Government was hopeful it could create up to 500,000 new jobs in the public sector alone. With other successful schemes being run across the globe in almost every continent (Iceland, New Zealand, Spain, Japan), its clear the traditional 9-5 job is on its way out. Smart businesses will be embracing this and getting ahead of the competition in terms of the flexibility and work-life balance offered to employees and candidates.
- Transparency and equality – rightly so, UK businesses will have to continue to clearly demonstrate equality and fairness through their values, culture and processes. In 2021 we saw MPs back the introduction of ethnicity pay gap reporting, social media campaign #showthesalary (advocating the advertisement of actual salaries and not ‘competitive salary’ on job adverts in a bid to increase pay fairness), and new board diversity composition targets for FTSE 350 companies. We know that job applicants, and in particularly the millennials, are increasingly researching this type of information ahead of applying and interviewing for jobs with companies. In reaction to this, more and more companies are voluntarily clarifying and disclosing this type of information on their webpages (such as reporting on their ethnicity pay gaps even though these aren’t yet mandatory). Smart businesses will have clear equality, diversity and inclusion policies and processes in place, will monitor and record on diversity, and create inclusive cultures.
If you would like any further advice on implementing a new HR system, mental health initiatives, flexible working, EVP, or E&D policies, then please contact our Nockolds HR team on 0345 646 0406 or fill in our online enquiry form and a member of our Team will be in touch.