As 2021 draws to a close, we take a look back at some of the most popular HR and People Analytics resources that the myHRfuture readers and the Digital HR Leaders podcast listeners have engaged with this year. There have certainly been some trending topics:

1. Focusing on employee mental health, wellbeing and psychological safety

2. Preparing the organisation for the future of work with skills-based workforce planning

3. Upskilling HR professionals with the capabilities they need for the digital age

4. Developing a data driven culture for HR to embed evidence-based decision making across the organisation

Read on to explore each topic in more detail and use the further reading lists at the end of each section to dive even deeper into these themes.

Focusing on the employee’s mental health, wellbeing and psychological safety

In 2020, the leading headline for the workforce response to the pandemic was a surprising uptick in productivity. In 2021, the headline, more concerningly, is the mental health impact of the pandemic on workers around the world.

The pandemic has affected workforce wellbeing, how can focusing on psychological safety help organisations to respond?

Today, mentions of psychological safety in organisations have become extremely important, and the concept has become recognised across industries from financial services to healthcare organisations. Moreover, with the pandemic, the term has become even more popular due to its significance to remote working, wellbeing, diversity and inclusion, and agility.

In an article written by Amy Edmondson and Per Hugander, they identified four techniques to create psychological safety within organisations, which are the following:

1. Focus on Performance

2. Train both individuals and team

3. Incorporate visualisation

4. Normalise venerability to work

Focusing on performance, training the individual as well as the team, using visualisation, normalising vulnerability, and using practical problems to mature as well as making progress on issues compromise a powerful approach to altering the capabilities and climate within any team. “Building competencies in psychological safety and perspective taking cannot be considered “basic” but is increasingly a vital part of achieving excellence in challenging business contexts”.

If employees feels that their organisation, as well as their leaders are cautious about their wellbeing at home and at work, they will be more likely to trust the decisions the company makes. If a company has earned the trust of its employees, it’s more likely to earn the trust of all stakeholders – customer, investors, suppliers, and regulators.

In this blog, we share a few of the lessons learned from Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School, and author of The Fearless Organisation. This includes the relationship between psychological safety and performance standards.

Ethan has conducted research during the pandemic to understand the implications of working without an office, which sought to answer a number of questions. Paramount amongst them was what impact has working from home had on productivity and creativity?

Further reading

• The Role of Psychological Safety in Creating High Performing Teams

• How to Create Psychological Safety at Work with Amy Edmondson

• How can HR Prepare Organisations for Hybrid Working?

Preparing the organisation for the future of work with skills-based workforce planning

As well as focusing on employee wellbeing, expectations for supporting employee careers have evolved. Organisations are tackling the great resignation and employee disengagement with new approaches to career development, such as talent marketplace. At the centre of this approach is a new understanding of employees through their skillsets.

A skills-based approach to talent management also enables the organisation to respond more effectively to changing workforce supply and demand – an ability that the pandemic has highlighted as critical for companies to master.

How does effective workforce planning deliver business value?

At its best, workforce planning delivers millions of dollars to the enterprise through predicting where skills and workforce costs will be in the future and how to plan for them in the right locations, while managing existing costs.

In research conducted by Insight222 across almost 50 global organisations, including in-depth studies of twelve Fortune 500 companies, we concluded that there are significant factors that leading companies perform when they “do workforce planning well.” These include:

1. They link their workforce planning activities directly and completely to the business strategy.

2. They focus on skills as well as cost and use new sources of external data to explore not just what skills and people they have got, but also what they need to find in the marketplace to succeed.

3. They measure the value of workforce planning and quantify the results in financial terms.

Our research also showed a widespread desire to adopt a skills-based approach to workforce planning:

Workforce planning is a business activity. It is not an HR activity. As the COVID-19 pandemic continuous to disrupt work and workforce models, the opportunity for workforce planning to support the business has never been greater.

In this article, we look at the surging interest in a skills-based approach to workforce planning and how the Insight222 Nine Dimensions for Workforce Planning expands on the traditional, well-known model of workforce planning.

How do you understand changing organisation activities and objectives, and what they mean for the workforce? The answer is with a data-driven approach to workforce planning.

When the CEO cites the internal talent marketplace you have helped to create, as a major contributor to revenue during the company's quarterly earnings call, you know you have achieved something pretty special. That is what happened to this guest of The Digital HR Leaders Podcast.

Karen emphasises that talent marketplace goes far beyond being a technology solution, instead it is a far broader cultural shift that permeates across the organisation and enables a whole new way of thinking about talent.

Further reading

• 3 Skills Needed to Deliver Business Value with Workforce Planning

• Increasing Workforce Agility with Talent Marketplace

• How to Use Skills Data for Workforce Planning

• How to Get Started with Workforce Planning

Upskilling HR professionals with the capabilities they need for the digital age

For the HR department to effectively respond to the challenges arising as a result of the pandemic, as well as meet evolving expectations for a skills-based, data driven approach to talent management, it is unsurprising that the adoption of new skills by HR professionals is of paramount importance.

In a survey of 500 global HR and People leaders, 86% said HR skillsets need to change. According to research from IBM, talent executives are rising to the challenge by planning to double their efforts in the next two years to skill their HR teams in new capabilities, such as design thinking.

Unsurprisingly then, resources from myHRfuture on the future of HR professionals and their skillsets have remained amongst the most popular year on year.

What are the skills that HR professionals need for the future?

At myHRfuture, we believe there are nine key skills that are vital for the HR professional to succeed in the Digital Age by becoming data driven, experience led and business focused.

In this article, we explain why the time is now for HR functions and professionals alike to upskill. We look at the impact of automation and augmentation on HR, as well as HR’s role in supporting digital transformation.

In this blog, we’re going to look at four stages that you can work through to help future proof your career in HR

As Toon explains to me in our conversation, data provides HR professionals with countless opportunities. And this is certainly proving to be the case with the innovative work he is leading at AB InBev.

To build sustainable success in people analytics, you need to be intentional about building analytical capability across the wider HR function.

Further reading

• What does it mean to be an HR Business Partner today

• How to use statistics in HR to drive actionable outcomes

• What skills do HR professionals need to support business transformation?

 Developing a data driven culture for HR to embed evidence-based decision making across the organisation

In 2021, Insight222 Research launched a new model to help organisations develop a data driven culture for HR. A key part of this model is evolving HR professionals’ skillsets, as we discuss above. 

The Insight222 People Analytics Trends 2021 research, based on in-depth structured interviews and surveys responses from people analytics leaders in over 100 global companies was conducted in 2021. Most these companies are household names, which are collectively responsible for over 12 million employees operating in over 180 countries.

Our research showed that CHROs unanimously conclude that data and analytics is important. 90% of CHROs make it clear that data and analytics are an essential part of the HR strategy. They have stated the expectation that HR professionals of the future will need to have data driven skills.

It also revealed that a data driven culture for HR delivers business value. When people analytics leaders are asked about the effect of having a data driven culture, 90% of them state that it delivers business value and 81% state that it enables managers to make “in-the-moment” decisions.

Investment in people analytics has accelerated in 2021, as the function continues to deliver value to the business and support the C-Suite in managing ultra-complex topics catalysed by Covid-19.

Data storytelling is a key part of developing a data driven culture, ensuring that conversations are data driven and result in actionable insights.

Microsoft is one of the best examples of scaling people analytics to provide value for employees and the business

Further Reading

• How to Build a Data-Driven Culture in HR?

• The Role of the People Analytics Leader in Developing a Data Driven Culture

• 4 Steps to Develop Data-Driven HR and People Teams

Build the HR skills you need for success in 2022 with myHRfuture

The myHRfuture academy empowers HR professionals, like you, to become more digital, data-driven and experience led and get certified in the skills you need for the future, to stay relevant, get hired and get ahead. Whether you’re looking for support building the HR skills of the future or just to say up to date on People Analytics Digital HR and the future of Work, myHRfuture has you covered.

All of our online HR certifications reflect the core HR skills you need to develop for the future, giving you a professional edge while providing evidence of the skills you’ve mastered, helping you get ahead and Press PLAY on your Career® for only £25 per month. With over 30+ HR certifications, 600+ pieces of expertly curated content and 200+ hours of learning the opportunities are endless. Sign-up and start building the skills you need to get ahead today.