Every new year brings new opportunities and new challenges for employers. For 2020, the key human resources issues on everyone’s mind include attracting quality candidates, talent retention and balancing employee needs with your organization’s bottom line. We’ve taken a look at the most compelling projections being made by experts and news sources regarding what big HR challenges are front and center for small and mid-sized businesses in the coming year. And we ask: is your company prepared?
1. Getting Heard: Marketing Your Recruiting Effectively—and Affordably
According to Forbes, making sure that your online recruitment marketing is both effective and affordable is going to be a key concern for organizations everywhere. With record low unemployment rates and a thin pool of top quality candidates, implementing smart marketing tactics to cut through the noise and get your recruiting messages heard is going to be a challenge, especially for small and mid-sized companies. The repercussions of not having your jobs and employer brand stand out goes beyond attracting talent, too. It can impede your efforts to engage and hold on to the employees you have. Simply put: brand marketing strategies and recruiting strategies now go hand-in-hand.
From the magazine:
Today’s worker has many choices for where and how they want to work, so recruitment marketing is a crucial skill for human resources. Our department deals with two types of employees: potential employees that we’d like to join our company and current employees that we must engage and retain. In either case, the HR team is the most effective conduit to deliver the organization’s values, culture and mission.
In fact, recruiters without recruitment marketing skills will not only be less effective in 2020, but they may soon become obsolete. Those who fall behind in using digital and social strategies will not only be left behind, but they also will put their employers at a disadvantage when competing for talent.
Keeping recruitment marketing expenses under control is also an issue coming to light in 2020. Experienced recruiting specialists offer a solution to hiring a full- or part-time in-house professional.
2. Navigating Workplace Relations in the Employee Rights Age
Healthy, productive employer-employee relations will also be a top issue for HR and management alike. Employee rights is a trending issue that will play a role in this relationship more and more. Employees are starting to have a choice, and they are increasingly choosing companies that show commitment to fair and ethical practices, as well as organizations with core values that align with their own morals and beliefs. According to Fortune, some progressive companies will change their policies regarding things like dispute resolution and promotion guidelines in order to mitigate legal action and to protect the organization’s reputation.
Supporting this notion, Deloitte’s “2019 Global Human Capital Trends” reported that more than 84% of the nearly 10,000 respondents surveyed said that after nearly 10 years of economic growth their organizations need to rethink their workforce experience to improve productivity, keeping things like economic, social and political issues in mind. Services such as discrimination and harassment prevention training and employee lifecycle support offer employers a chance to adapt to these HR issues and improve employee satisfaction.
3. Managing Remote Workers as More Key Talent Demand to Work From Home
Once upon a time, employers largely frowned upon having more than a couple of work-from-home employees, and those were often special circumstances. But times have changed, and today allowing great workers to do their jobs remotely is something we see trending up across many industries. With the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reporting that just 3.5% of workers in the US currently classified as unemployed, it is easy to see why.
According to the QuickBooks blog TSheets, employers also benefit from a well-designed remote workforce in these key ways:
- Managers rate remote workers as more productive
- Employers better attract hard-to-get talent when they offer remote work
- Retention is better when there are remote opportunities for workers
- Diversity improves where there are more remote opportunities for teams
- Many remote workers find working from home is less distracting, and therefore work more productively
4. Hiring Talent with Needed Soft Skills in an Increasingly AI-Driven Recruiting Process
According to HR Dive, soft skills are the new currency, no matter how much technology and artificial intelligence have become part of our recruiting processes. That’s because the ability to interact positively with others, show an authentic emotional intelligence and lead others in a positive way will always be important skills. These are also skills that can be the most difficult to uncover in the digital recruiting process. Other key soft skills that will be in demand in 2020 include:
- A willingness to learn
- A collaborative sense of teamwork
- A positive concept of leadership’s role
- Strong communication skills
5. Finding Affordable Health Care Options to Retain Talent
According to Human Resource Executive, the continued rise of healthcare costs is a huge challenge for organizations. While the rate is slightly less than in 2019, the problem of figuring out how to pay for healthcare plans, as cost increases continue to outpace inflation. Affordability is a challenge for employers and employees alike. Companies that do not invest time and energy into developing a compensation package that reflects this new reality are risking a lot, both in their hiring and retention strategies.
Is It Time to Consider HR Consulting in 2020?
RAI Resources offers organizations the human resources support their existing HR departments and/or management teams need. Our seasoned professionals offer a very cost-effective way to handle your workforce needs, and we have extensive experience working with many industries, including manufacturing, distribution, engineering, construction and professional services. We offer practical solutions and a relevant perspective on your unique HR challenges. Contact us today to learn more about RAI, or to schedule a free consultation.