Employment trends and changes to look out for in 2020

If you work in HR you’ll know that there are constant changes in the industry that you need to keep up with! When it comes to things like employment trends, legislation wellbeing initiatives, and everything else that comes with it, we’re expected to know it all.

2020 will be no different, so I’ve decided to share some of the things I think will be big for HR teams this year.

Changing roles and agile working

Technology changes all the time so job roles have been, and will continue to, change and evolve with tech.

Remote working is already common and I think there’s also going to be an even bigger rise in people wanting the option to work flexibly. Whatever flexible or agile working ends up looking like for your business, the most important thing is to make it clear what that actually means for your people.

Quick tips:

Advertise your company’s flexibility when you’re hiring. The Timewise Flexible Jobs Index 2019 recently revealed that an estimated87% of employees want to work flexibly.
If your company is new to flexible working, managers may need training on how to manage a team working flexibly. Take a look at this Fast Company article for some more pointers.

Wellbeing

Mental and physical wellbeing is very much in the public eye. People expect their employers to take wellbeing into consideration – and so they should.

Happy and healthy people do their best work, and there are literally so many other reasons to look after your people’s wellbeing too. So if you’ve already got a wellbeing programme on the go, have you assessed if it’s actually what people want, and if it’s working for them?

And if you don’t, start asking colleagues what they’d like to see the business offering in terms of wellbeing initiatives to get the ball rolling.

Learn more about workplace wellbeing:

The charity Mind have created an amazing resource on ‘How to promote wellbeing and tackle issues of work-related mental health problems’. It includes lots of practical tips for promoting workplace wellbeing so it’s well worth a read.

Transparency

A recent Korn Ferry survey said that 75% of HR professionals felt that pay transparency and rewards will become more prominent in 2020. How will you equip your HR team to deal with a more open approach? Clarity of message is definitely key here!

Workplace culture

A strong, positive workplace culture is essential if you’re going to attract and keep top talent. A toxic culture can cause real problems, not just internally in terms of the way your staff act and feel, but for your organisation’s external reputation too.

This can discourage people from applying for jobs with your company – and you’re likely to be advertising more often if your culture is bad. And we won’t even go into the implications of that!

Personalisation

Personalisation when it comes to things like goal-setting and development planning, rather than forcing everyone through the same programme, can really help with motivation and achievement.

One style of training or development that works for one person might not be right for someone else. And no two people have exactly the same goals. So if you haven’t already, how are you going to offer more personal development programmes?

Top tip:

Know the preferences of employees. If you haven’t already, ask people how they prefer to learn. You may have a fantastic L&D programme but it may not suit everyone.
Match personal preferences with the requirements of the job role and level of experience each employee has, and you can start to identify the specific courses that would be most suitable for each person.

Employee engagement

All of these are great to focus on, but it all comes down to engaging with your staff. It’s all about finding out what works and what doesn’t, and this is where a fantastic business like Hive HR comes in.

Hive specialises in ‘smarter employee surveying’ with a focus on improving employee engagement and reducing employee turnover. Hive’s Director of People Science, Ryan, talks about achieving higher levels of employee engagement in this blog.

Is your organisation ready for change?

To implement engagement initiatives, your organisation needs to be ready for change. Hive offers a free Organisational Readiness Assessment Quiz to find out how ready your organisation is – do it now.

Keeping on top of legislation

This is nothing new (!) but for obvious reasons, HR teams are always expected to be clued up on the latest legislation. So it’s important to keep on top of the any changes.

A good example for this one is employment law. There’s a lot of legislation with no set date for implementation, but a couple that we know will definitely be coming into effect from April this year are:

Changes to the right to a written statement of particulars of employment
An increase in the length of time over which holiday pay is calculated
More protection for agency workers

Citation has a great summary of these changes, and upcoming ones too.

There are so many more things that will be happening for HR teams in 2020, but hopefully, this has given you a little motivational starter to get you geared up for success in the year ahead.

If you’d like to chat through anything we’ve talked about in this blog, just get in touch!