January 2024 – Talent Trends & Insights

I was recently invited on to the HR Superstars podcast by Adam Weber of 15Five. He called our podcast chat “Keeping the Humanity in a Humanless HR World” which chimed with the parallels I drew between the much discussed AI driven concept from 2023 of ‘Recruiterless Recruiting’ and why the increasing use of AI in our day to day HR operations would create the need for much more humanity in our organisations, rather than usher in an era of ‘Humanless Human Resources’.

We talked about the emerging HR trends shaping the employee lifecycle in 2024. Our discussion covered a range of topics, and I think we shared some valuable insights into the evolving landscape of HR practices. I was certainly keen to share some of the latest research I’d been involved with and particularly summarise the key trends and conversations that I’d had during last Autumn’s busy conference and expo season.

For me, there are 4 key areas for HR to focus on in 2024 and beyond. Over the last couple of years we’ve been overwhelmed by conversations around remote, flexible, hybrid and asynchronous working, not to mention the relentless progress of AI into our daily interactions, so the adoption of a more human, compassionate and supportive approach to work should be very much on the corporate agenda.

The four key points we discussed were:

From Management and Direction to Support and Enablement

Our historic approach to our workforce has been what I often refer to as management and direction. We manage processes, people, their careers, their performance and day to day involvement. We direct people. In fact, we have directors of most parts of their career lifecycle. It’s all a bit autocratic. Yet our digital talent are keen to learn and figure things out for themselves. A phrase I often use is ‘Digital talent has intellectual curiosity’.

They know their roles are evolving and changing and want the opportunity to discover and explore the opportunities. They don’t want training courses, but access to self-directed learning. Our role is to support them, to create an environment where our people feel empowered to perform, learn, develop and achieve their best results.

Multifaceted Nature of Engagement

Engagement is a much used term for a myriad of things. Engagement isn’t something we can create. It isn’t a management directive. It’s the outcome of treating people well and with respect, recognising them, giving them opportunities to learn, grow and reach their full potential. Creating positive work experiences.

Key to this is recognising the importance of our workforce’s wellbeing. All of it. Mental, physical, intellectual, emotional, physical, digital, and in particular right now – financial. Is ours a culture where people can ask for help? Without being judged? Do we have managers and leaders trained to help and understand when they might be needed? Can people raise a concern in private and know that it will remain private?

Flexibility and Recognition

Our people want agency in how, when and where they work. For many, whose job is location specific, this will manifest itself in flexibility of hours and communication. For the others, it will centre on the flexible, remote, hybrid and asynchronous working debate. Flexibility itself is a crucial aspect of supporting employees in the modern workplace.

Managers need to perfect a number of different approaches that can give their people access to what they need and input to the way they work. Not least when it comes to support and recognition – the latter playing a key role in creating a positive, diverse, engaged, happy and productive workforce. Personalised recognition, at an individual level, fosters a positive work environment for everyone.

Evolution of the Employee Lifecycle

We had a good conversation on the evolving nature of the employee lifecycle, which is now accelerated by technological advancement. Anyone familiar with my co-authored books – Digital Talent and Exceptional Talent – will know I believe in the growing concept of a seamless talent journey. This journey emphasises the need for positive experiences all the way through the key touchpoints – from recruitment, through onboarding, development and right throughout the employee journey. The emergence of career experience managers and talent experience managers within organisations highlights a growing focus on overseeing the holistic career experience for all employees.

As all HR professionals embrace 2024, I hope the podcast conversation and the insights I’ve shared can provide a compass for navigating the evolving landscape. I believe that by prioritising a human-centric approach, embracing technological advancements, and ensuring continuous support and enablement throughout the employee lifecycle, we can foster a thriving, profitable workplace for years to come.

Hope you enjoy the chat!

In today’s rapidly evolving job landscape, the interview process remains a crucial element in the hiring cycle. However, traditional interviews are often riddled with challenges, leading to mismatches between candidate performance and actual job capabilities.

In a recent HR Means Business podcast I had a conversation with Stephane Rivard, CEO of Hiring Branch, a company offering skills based hiring assessments, and our discussion centred on the need to overhaul the way we approach the interview process to enable a shift towards more practical evaluation methods.

We covered 4 key points:

Shift Towards Work-Simulated Assessments: This represents a move away from traditional Q&A style interviews towards work-simulated assessments. This approach allows candidates to actively perform tasks related to the job they’re applying for, helping to provide a more accurate evaluation of their abilities. Leveraging AI to gauge how candidates express themselves, especially focusing on essential soft and robot-proof skills, is at the core of this framework for job success.

Identification of ‘Soft’ Skills: ‘Soft’ skills – which I prefer to call ‘Robot-proof’ skills as soft implies they are easy to master when, in fact, they are quite hard to perfect – are increasingly recognised as pivotal for job success, especially in customer-facing roles. These skills encompass fluency, building rapport, active listening, empathy, and probing abilities, among others. Many organisations are beginning to prioritise these competencies, as they can have a significant impact on employee performance.

Challenges with Traditional Interviews: Our conversation covered the limitations of conventional interviews, which too often rely on structured questions that fail to reveal the real person behind the candidate. Human biases, whether conscious or unconscious, significantly influence interview outcomes. Moreover, candidates can often provide misleading information during interviews, leading to a mismatch between their interview performance and actual job performance.

Customisation and Bias Elimination: The approach advocated by Stephane Rivard in our chat seeks to eliminate biases by focusing solely on candidates’ skills and capabilities. By customising assessments to specific roles, businesses can delve deeper and evaluate candidates on higher-level skills, ensuring a better match for the job requirements.

Work-simulated assessments can be particularly significant as they are able to provide a more accurate overview of a candidate’s potential. This approach, utilising AI to measure crucial soft skills, can address the shortcomings of traditional interviews that often fail to uncover the real attributes of candidates.

Robot-proof (soft) skills such as fluency, empathy, active listening, and probing abilities are key components driving job success, especially in customer-facing roles. For these positions, conventional interviews usually prove less effective, often fall prey to human biases and inaccurate representations or explanations by candidates.

We also touched on the customisation of assessments based on specific job roles, which enables a deeper evaluation of the higher-level skills required. Elimination of biases is key to this so that evaluation is purely done candidates’ skill sets.

Overall, Stephane makes a strong case for needing a paradigm shift in the interview process. By incorporating work-simulated assessments, organisations can better identify candidates whose skills align with job requirements, leading to improved performance and reduced biases in the hiring process.

Here’s the podcast…hope you enjoy the conversation….

https://mervynn.podbean.com/e/rethinking-interviews/