At the end of each year, a flurry of articles across every industry, topic and continent are published focusing on trends for the coming year. In HR, we enjoyed a number of thought-provoking perspectives on what the field has faced in 2021 and what this might mean for 2022. Certain themes crop up time and time again, such is their importance. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a prime example, as is developing HR into a more data driven function.

The myriad of 2022 predictions are supremely useful for giving HR leaders a sense check, to ensure that their investments are targeting the most important elements for their function to thrive in the digital age. Similarly, HR professionals can use predictions to target their learning and development goals for the coming year, enabling them to keep a pulse on “what’s hot” in the field.

In this blog, we take a look at a handful of HR’s 2022 prediction blogs and convert these insights into action, by guiding HR leaders to insights and models that can help inform their strategy in 2022, and HR professionals to resources to upskill in these areas.

Key themes in HR’s 2022 predictions

Below, you’ll see a selection of predictions from organisations and thinkers around the world. Many of these predictions are based on data, research in the HR field, conversations with HR leaders, and consultants’ work with HR clients.

There are a number of themes that stand out across the board:

1. A skills-based view of the organisation

2. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

3. Data driven HR

4. Improving employee experience

5. Upskilling HR

Examples of 2022 predictions for HR

How do these themes translate into HR strategy? What should HR professionals focus on in terms of their own personal development? We’ve condensed the insights provided across 2022 predictions into six areas for HR leaders to focus on in 2022, to turn these predictions into action:

1. Develop the productisation capability in your people analytics team to democratise access to people data across the organisation.

2. Develop a data driven culture in three steps, in order for HR professionals and managers across the organisation to confidently use people data

3. Tie HR activities inextricably to business strategy and showcase success using business metrics. This goes for employee experience, DE&I and other areas of social responsibility too

4. To become more employee-centric, focus on human centred design to inform experiences across the employee lifecycle

5. To take a skills-based view of the organisation, focus on building a skills taxonomy using internal and external skills data and adopt a skills-based view of workforce planning

6. Underpinning all of this, upskill HR professionals to become more data driven, experience led and business focused

Develop the productisation capability in your people analytics team to democratise access to people data across the organisation

A number of predictions (beyond the obvious data-based ones) require a robust data foundation in HR to be successful, for example ‘future of work trend analytics’ and ‘experimenting with radical flexibility’. It’s no surprise that the growth of people analytics functions accelerates into 2022, based on Insight222’s 2021 People Analytics trends study.

By segmenting our research by ‘Leading Companies in people analytics’ for the first time this year, organisations are able to use insights from their work to guide their strategy. One of the areas of the People Analytics Operating Model where we see the greatest difference in the investment by Leading companies compared to non-leading companies is in the Product Engine.

The Insight222 Operating Model for People Analytics

Leading Companies focus on building capability in consulting and influencing, product management and change management to a much greater extent. This shows their desire to make their solutions and predictions effective by making “analytical products” for employees, managers and executives as necessary, through embedding analytics into the people processes and democratising access to people data across the company.

Upskilling opportunities for HR professionals

·      An Introduction to People Analytics

·      Becoming a Data Driven HR Business Partner

·      How to Have Effective Data Based Conversations

Develop a data driven culture in three steps, in order for HR professionals and managers across the organisation to confidently use people data

Productising people analytics solutions and democratising people data across the organisation is only one element to successfully embed a data driven approach to HR.

Insight222’s Model of a Data Driven Culture for HR shows that investing in the people analytics function, in particular in productisation, is only one of three critical elements. Just as a three-legged stool will topple over if one leg is removed, a data driven culture is unlikely to exist if one element is not present.

It is also critical to connect HR activities with business strategy and demonstrate the business value delivered. We will explore how to do this more in the next section. To embed data driven decision making across the organisation, it is vital to upskill HR professionals (see the final section for more) and managers, as well as support the change management process with clear and consistent communication from the CHRO and incentivising career journeys that take a data driven approach.

Download our whitepaper, ‘Accelerating People Analytics: A Data Driven Culture for HR’ now to read the recommendations for developing this culture in. more detail.

Tie HR activities inextricably to business strategy and showcase success using business metrics. This goes for employee experience, DE&I and other areas of social responsibility too

A number of 2022 predictions emphasise the business impact or the action from efforts such as DE&I, for example David Green and Visier. This is currently a challenge for many DE&I leaders, who have been given a role and a task to achieve in an organisation but often very little resource or support to do so.

Joan Williams is the distinguished Law Professor at the University of California, Hastings College of Law, and Director for the Centre of WorkLife Law, and author of, Bias Interrupted: Creating Inclusion for Real and for Good. When she joined David Green on the Digital HR Leaders podcast this year, she gave voice to this challenge:

“I have heads of DEI telling me a lot I have influence, not power. One of my strong messages to CEOs is that if you are serious about this, as a business goal, you have to set someone up for success and give them the authority and the power they need, to address the problem.

Now, whether that is going to be the head of DEI has power in conjunction with the people who own performance evaluations to interrupt bias in them. Or whether it is going to be the head of HR, or whether it is going to be the Head of Operations, that is going to vary from company to company.

But the strong message to CEOs is just hiring a head of D&I and giving her money for programming, that is not going to be effective,”

To achieve this, the organisation’s leadership needs to understand the business value of these initiatives in order to continue to invest. Understanding and demonstrating the business value of HR activities, Employee Experience initiatives and people analytics work is fundamental.

In our 2020 People Analytics Trends study we presented a robust approach to ensuring that the work of people analytics is connected to the business, and that value is demonstrated. Here’s a look at some of the quick-fire dos and don’ts. Download the full whitepaper to explore the recommendations in detail. (We’ve also addressed the questions of demonstrating business value of two topics in particular: Employee Experience and Workforce Planning.)

The opportunity for HR and people analytics to impact broad societal challenges is too great to risk falling short by not adequately connecting the dots to business value.

Upskilling opportunities for HR professionals

·      Framing Business Questions and Developing Hypotheses for People Analytics

·      Creating the Right Methodology for People Analytics Projects

·      How to Manage Stakeholders in People Analytics

To become more employee-centric, focus on human centred design to inform experiences across the employee lifecycle

Let’s turn to look at a few specific topics that have cropped up in the 2022 predictions. First of all, employee experience.

In line with many predictions, our research shows that becoming more employee-centric is a priority for most organisations. 70% of survey respondents in our recently published research, conducted in collaboration with TI People, agree that there has been increasing interest in employee experience (EX) among business leaders since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. The importance of frictionless and frustration-free employee experience is attracting more attention than ever before. What’s more, 71% of respondents in our research survey agree or strongly agree that their organisation has become more people-focused since the start of the pandemic.

Human Centred Design is a key skill to help the work of HR be more employee-centric. Human Centred Design is all about…

• Reducing the complexity and friction that real people experience in their day-to-day lives

• Caring not just about whether something is generally easy to use, but about a user’s interests, motivations and needs

• …in other words, considering your audience not just as users, but as humans with emotions and feelings

• Understanding that the “experience” itself is the product

It is well worth training the HR professionals in your organisation in Human Centred Design.  A common approach to a human centred design process is in six phases. The below clip from our latest course, Using Human Centred Design Principles in HR, takes a look at how HCD is used in HR and these six phases in detail:

Upskilling opportunities for HR professionals

·      An Introduction to Employee Experience

·      Using Human Centred Design Principles in HR 

To take a skills-based view of the organisation, focus on building a skills taxonomy using internal and external skills data and adopt a skills-based view of workforce planning

According to our research looking at data driven workforce planning, the majority of companies (90%) have a desire to build a skills-based workforce planning process. However, only a quarter of companies (26%) are actively doing so.

Throughout 2021 we have spoken to a number of experts about how to build a skills taxonomy, on which skills based workforce planning, internal mobility initiatives, learning and development and many other HR process can benefit from. These skill taxonomies are emerging from the use of Big Data, AI and machine learning to elicit information from existing sources of data. Libraries of clearly defined and discrete skills can then be built.

Along the way, we’ve learnt two crucial points that are critical to get right from the start. Firstly, it is critical to agree on a lexicon upfront and understand the difference between skills and competencies. Skills are tangible due to their categorisation in a taxonomy.

Secondly, it’s important to use internal and external skills data to build the skills ontology. The validity of an employee’s skill profile depends entirely on quality data that is regularly refreshed. Several disparate sources are scattered across the HR/IT landscape (both internally and externally to organisations) that contain a wealth of valuable information on skills.

Upskilling opportunities for HR professionals

• Read this case study from IBM, where they used AI to infer skills across the organisation

• Building a Skills Based Approach to Workforce Planning

Underpinning all of this, upskill HR professionals to become more data driven, experience led and business focused

It is unsurprising that 2022 HR predictions focus on upskilling HR. 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.  

Throughout this blog, we’ve pointed HR professionals in the direction of a number of learning resources that will help them develop the skills to excel in the digital age. To succeed, HR professionals need to become more data driven, business focused and experience led – to acquire the skills necessary to process, produce and leverage digital information. To do this we’ve identified nine core skills HR professionals should focus on building to do this. You can read about these HR skills in detail here. The myHRfuture Academy supports thousands of HR professionals in building the skills that they need to succeed in the future. Our expertly curated, bitesized learning content allows you to build your knowledge and get certified in skills such as People Analytics, Digital HR and HR Technology, Design Thinking and Workforce Planning.

Final thoughts

We hope this blog provides some useful guidance for putting HR’s 2022 predictions into practice. It’s a very exciting time to be part of the field, as HR’s influence and strategic importance continues to increase rapidly.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Caroline Styr is the Research Director at Insight222. She is a thought-leader, researcher and writer on people analytics and the future of HR. Prior to joining Insight222, she worked at the Center for the Future of Work where she was an advisor and in-demand speaker on topics related to the future of work. She has also held roles in digital services and transformation consulting at Cognizant.