2022 is a year for new mindsets and approaches
Alignment: “the arrangement in a straight line or in correct relative positions.”
Over time it’s easy to lose sight of our priorities, which creates misalignment with our practices. This can lead to a lack of bottom-line impact in the long run.
The events of the past two years meant reactivity was key for HR teams. Initially, when the pandemic first broke, there was a need to ensure people were safe. This grew to making sure productivity remained high, collaboration was effective, and communication was clear.
But if this focus on reactivity continues to go unchecked in 2022, misalignment will wreak havoc. Reacting to situations might be an effective way to get through emergencies, but it’s no way to build a long-term vision. 2022 is the year to step back from reactivity and become proactive in responding to what’s going on around you.
But how?
By realigning your HR strategy, processes, and activities with a longer-term view.
What should that look like in practice?
To find out, we interviewed Rebecca Wettemann, Principal at Valoir.
Watch the full interview and read on for four distinct areas to realign in your HR strategy.
So, what should you realign?
Purpose and meaning at work are once again a top priority. We’re humans, not robots, after all. 70% of employees in a 2021 McKinsey study said that their sense of purpose is defined by their work. No surprises there – with the majority of our time spent at work, our jobs often make up a large part of our identity, for better or for worse.
Studies over the years have shown that doing purposeful and meaningful work is key to individual wellbeing and flourishing. Not only that – employees who feel their job has a purpose (over and above being a set of tasks to complete) regularly demonstrate higher levels of engagement, reduced absence, and better job performance.
The Covid-19 pandemic has shed light on the misalignment in this area within many organizations today. Fundamentally, it comes down to a misunderstanding of what work can be.
Is work a series of tasks to be completed, or a creative and constructive part of daily life? Nearly two-thirds of US-based employees surveyed by McKinsey said that COVID-19 has caused them to reflect on their purpose in life.
It’s time for organizations to help their employees find purpose at work, realigning the day-to-day tasks that a role might require for something deeper.
Nearly two-thirds of US-based employees surveyed by McKinsey said that COVID-19 has caused them to reflect on their purpose in life.
Studies have shown there are three major factors that contribute to making work meaningful:
Added to these major factors, the experience of meaningfulness at work is facilitated by building a strong organizational culture, and through transformational and visionary leadership.
Take time to seek feedback from your employees and engage with the ‘why’ behind work. What would make for a more meaningful and purposeful work experience for them? Then, build processes and actions around those points to help you keep management and communication aligned.
Align business, team, and personal goals.
With the Cegid Talentsoft Continuous Conversation module, foster a 360-degree feedback culture, discover what motivates your people, and build strong teams.
Can you define your culture as it is today? Culture is a key facilitator in meaningful work. When it’s well defined it can be a signal for employees and candidates who share those values to commit and engage further with your company. And when it’s aligned to the day-to-day reality of working at your organization, it can create loyalty. Understand where the gaps are between where you are now and where you want to be, and create a plan for improvement.
What would it take for your people to ‘own’ their roles instead of simply passively executing? Much of purpose and meaning at work comes down to having a sense of ownership of your job and feeling that you can bring your own expertise and flavor to the work you do. Ensure your managers and leadership are working with this in mind. Think about how you can build autonomy and a sense of ownership into every role at every level and watch your people thrive with a new sense of purpose.
For a long time, HR has had access to a wealth of data. But the savviest HR teams have quickly learned that collecting data is no longer an administrative task or the end goal in itself. They know there’s incredible value hidden within it, just waiting to be unlocked.
The biggest challenge is figuring out how to collect the right data and then determining what to do with it. 2022 is the year to align your HR data to add real value to your people and to the organization.
If you’ve ever felt as though you were collecting data just for the sake of collecting data, rest assured that you’re not alone. This has been an all-too-common business practice for years.
In today’s rapidly evolving business environment—even more so in the lingering shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic—everything a business does must be 100% intentional. Data collection is no exception to the rule. In fact, in the context of data analytics for HR, you have to ask yourself an important question: Are we collecting data to help improve our employees’ lives?
This new era of people analytics requires data analysis to be done with a human touch and even a certain level of empathy. And while the notion of empathy in the context of data analytics may seem strange in theory, it really isn’t.
If your intent when collecting specific data is focused on using it to build a better, stronger, and more productive future for your organization—and its employees—then you’re already bringing empathy to your data analysis. You probably just haven’t looked at it in this way.
In the context of data analytics for HR, you have to ask yourself an important question: Are we collecting data to help improve our employees’ lives?
HR analytics is all about using data to understand how your organization is operating as well as how it can grow. Not only is this a better and more strategically sound way to approach internal data collection, but it also offers the following benefits:
By simply changing your mindset around data, looking at it through the lens of people analytics, you bring that human element back into data analysis and create new opportunities to add real meaning and actionable value to the data at your fingertips.
Better tools have not only made it possible to see data in context—and not just via endless spreadsheets—but also enable non-data scientists to gain rapid insights from the data being collected.
This is a paradigm shift within HR organizations, specifically, because it’s allowing HR teams to take ownership over the data value chain in ways they never could before. And it’s providing them with an insights-driven edge to not simply understand what’s happening or evolving within the organization, but to be able to take real action on it.
Data collection and data analysis is a unique and complex world. Data scientists, for example, spend years at school perfecting the art and science of making sense of data and then being able to put it into action. HR teams are not required to know the ins and outs of data, but it’s not a bad idea to skill up. If you’re interested in learning about data collection best practices or how to create compelling data visualizations, take a course. It’ll open your eyes to all that’s possible with data today.
A lot of tools exist today to amplify the power of data and many of them come with free trials. Don’t be afraid to take advantage of these opportunities to see what’s truly possible with data today. Plus, it’s a great way to bridge any learning or skills development
around data analysis (per the above) with practical, hands-on experience on how to bring it to life.
Cegid Talentsoft Hub
With Cegid Talentsoft Hub, centralize your data in one unified system of record. Adapt and customize your solution to local exceptions and to your HR administrative needs according to each user, role, and organization. Cegid Talentsoft Hub enables you to create a data-driven culture and benefit from automated controls that ensure data quality and track changes in a dedicated traceability table.
Think differently about the data you have as well as the new data you plan to collect. Why are you collecting it? How are you going to use it? How can it improve the employee experience, operational efficiency, or productivity? How do you plan on communicating this to your employees? And the list goes on. By being more intentional in your approach to HR data collection and analytics, HR can take a truly proactive role in shaping an organization’s future.
On a very practical note, physical office spaces also need to be realigned for a new purpose in 2022. As hybrid work has risen as the dominant work model around the world, at least for knowledge workers, keeping office spaces as they are simply doesn’t make sense anymore.
Accenture findings show that 63% of high-growth businesses now work hybrid, allowing their employees the flexibility to mix remote work with in-office work. Added to that,
73%of employees surveyed in the PwC Remote Work Survey indicated they want to work remotely at least two days a week, even once COVID-19 is no longer a concern.
So, what should this in-office experience look like today? It should be designed to cater to collaboration and social interaction! It’s time to say goodbye to individual cubicles and the notion that coming to the office is for a day of uninterrupted solo work.
What is emerging is a hybrid office, one that combines a corporate headquarters, with home and satellite offices so workers can decide where to work based on the activity they are doing: focused work, online collaboration, team brainstorming, or in-person employee briefings.
Salesforce has been thoughtful in how it has approached a return to the office for its 60,000 plus employees. This has included being very clear that the office is now a place of collaboration and human connection, first and foremost.
Their initial testing of this approach in their office in Sydney, Australia led to very positive results. In that office, 64% of the newly designed collaboration spaces like lounges and conference rooms were utilized in the first month, whereas only 24% of desk space was used.
And with a focus placed on the social side of being together, employees working in the office were 19% more likely to have connected socially with a colleague compared to those working from home, leading to a stronger sense of belonging.
We interviewed Marie Ramsing Gudman, HR Manager Nordics/ EMEA at Salesforce, on our podcast to find out more. Listen to the full Ins & Outs of Work podcast episode by clicking the play button below.
Boston-based tech company Drift went even further, shifting to become a ‘digital-first’ company during the pandemic.
That means that Drift is essentially now a remote-first company, but with a vision for the physical office and its unique purpose.
They note, “When the team does come together, we’ll do so in “Conversation Spaces,” or our repurposed offices. Everywhere we currently have a physical space...we’re creating collaboration outposts for group work.”
We interviewed Dena Upton, Chief People Officer at Drift, on our podcast to find out more. Listen to the full audio version of the Ins & Outs of Work podcast episode or watch the video interview below.
Demographic shifts in the workforce mean it’s time for some realigning of procedures, processes, and policies to suit. For 2022, we feel the arrival of Gen Z en masse in the white-collar workforce is a trend organizations should plan for. With the oldest Gen-Z individuals reaching 25 years old in 2022 (born in 1997 and onwards), they will now make up a clear majority of new university graduates.
And as they arrive in higher numbers in full-time roles at companies, HR departments will soon discover that Gen Z workers have a different set of ideas and priorities for their professional careers, even compared to millennials.
So how might Gen-Z be different?
Gen Z has never known a world without the internet, and the first iPhone was unveiled when the oldest Gen-Zers were just 10 years old. That means that for Gen-Z these digital technologies the rest of us have taken time to adopt are simply second nature.
Gen-Z expects technology to work, be fast and seamless, and they look to technology to solve problems. At the same time, this generation doesn’t expect all of life’s answers to come from technology.
While they may earn the reputation of being glued to their phones, Gen-Z workers seem to highly value relationships and in-person communication in the workplace. A study found that in fact, 90% of Gen-Z workers desire and value a human connection when it comes to their at-work communication.
When it comes to finances and benefits, many Gen-Z individuals want the traditional security most associated with older generations. Growing up in the midst of a Global Financial Crisis, and witnessing their millennial counterparts taking on crippling student debt, many members of Gen-Z express financial views that favor security and savings.
Added to that, when it comes to their job description, 60% of Gen-Z employees expressed the desire to have clarity on the expectations and parameters of their jobs. When it comes to feedback, 60% of Gen-Z workers want direct, frequent communications and check-ins with their supervisors for performance evaluation.
There’s an expectation among members of Gen-Z that their workplaces should be aligned to their personal values as well as being made up of people of diverse backgrounds.
According to a recent study, 67% of Gen-Z workers reported having witnessed discrimination or bias based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity in a workplace setting.
Additionally, 44% report having personally experienced such discrimination. With so many having personally experienced bias at work, members of Gen-Z bring higher standards in their own expectations to the job market.
Among Gen-Z workers surveyed, 69% stated that they would “absolutely” be more likely to apply to a job at a company that emphasized a racially and ethnically diverse workplace in recruitment materials. Important to note as well is that diversity matters to Gen-Z through many dimensions. Companies should keep in mind that ‘diversity’ for Gen-Z is not limited to race and gender but also can be related to identity and orientation.
Being aware of the above differences when it comes to the youngest members of your workforce, and realigning your HR to suit, will be crucial to success in 2022 and beyond.
69% of Gen Z stated that they would “absolutely” be more likely to apply to a job at a company that emphasized a racially and ethnically diverse workplace in recruitment materials.
