The post-pandemic era has been a reinvention of HR and 2022 has been all about solidifying the new HR trends in the organization. Hybrid work models have been one of the recent and most widespread HR trends.
While the pandemic brought about the urgency for shifting onto remote working and the post-pandemic era turned remote work into the hybrid model to get the best of both worlds, there isn’t always a natural progression or a favorable external environment to leverage new HR trends.
Leveraging Consistent Trend Changes
Gartner, a research and advisory firm, finds that a typical organization undergoes five major changes over three years. Also, nearly 75% of organizations expect to multiply the number of changes they go through in the next three years. This means that change is consistent and is a prerequisite to a firm’s growth.
While this can be an exciting statistic for HR professionals, dealing with implementing new HR trends in the organization can prove to be quite challenging. At times, HR needs to cultivate professional competencies amongst the staff like ethics, leadership, and flexibility, to assure that these new trends are well-received.
For example, since employee well-being is the future of work and not just a part of the benefits offered to the employee, developing empathy amongst leaders is a personal competency that needs to be developed amongst managers and leaders before this trend can be followed.
Since HR is the most pressed in recent times for new changes in the organization, it is crucial that businesses are aware of new HR trends and understand how these can be leveraged to get the most out of new initiatives.
1. Change management training
Before implementing any new HR trend, it is important to train the HR personnel on how to deal with change. While HR professionals might know about change management, it is also important to discuss how to bring about that change.
Therefore, strategizing before the HR trend is implemented can help chart out a step-by-step approach. This method can help in determining any roadblocks that may come in the way and finding solutions to these hindrances. Therefore, a strategic approach to implementing new HR trends in the organization may prove to be more successful rather than taking an unplanned approach.
2. Offering a safe space for discussion
Even though the HR department is responsible for and understands the change process, they are not prone to the issues and frustration that come with new processes.
Abandoning old processes might be very difficult and implementing new ones might prove to be difficult for HR who also need safe spaces to vent out. These discussions can even help in determining the issues when implementing the new trends and resolving them together.
Furthermore, these safe spaces should also be created to assure that people work with a mindset that change is possible. 70% of change efforts fail due to the mindset that change is hard. However, when HR is determined and ready to make it possible, leveraging new HR trends becomes possible, even if it is not easy.
3. Use a change management model
One benefit of training the HR personnel in change management is making them learn about the importance of model-based change. Lewin or Kotter’s change models have been taught in theory to HR professionals, but refresher training can help them to apply these models in the professional setting.
These change management models can also be used to create the strategy to implement the new trends in the organization and a step-by-step approach that might be the key to success.
4. Normalize failure and experimentation
Even though working with a mindset that changes is not hard is not enough at times. Sometimes the organization is not ready for a trend that might be successful in other organizations. There is so much that HR can do to prepare the organization. Sometimes just training the employees is not enough to get them ready for a new trend, and a whole organizational culture needs to change to leverage the new trend.
In this case, allowing HR initiatives to fail successfully is also a good strategy. This can help HR to learn from their mistakes and later when they want to implement the trend again, they can do a litmus test based on the previous learnings which reveal whether the organization is ready for the trend or not.
Also, inculcating the culture of embracing technology and change in the organization can help greatly in making the organization ready for new systems and technologies. Also, when failures and experimentation are celebrated, employees are open to trying out new technologies.
5. Reward efforts towards change management
HR trends do not stick to the organization so easily. Rewarding employees who are accepting the new processes and trends helps encourage other employees to do the same. This reward strategy has been proven successful even if implementing other forms of organizational change.
Summing it Up
HR departments are responsible for a plethora of organizational change aspects. However, when leveraging new HR trends, HR professionals often forget that leveraging these trends needs as much focus as other organizational initiatives.
Training HR personnel to deal with new HR trends and change at an individual level is the first step. HR professionals should also engage in discussions as well as implement a change management process to implement the new trends.
To make these trends “stick”, it is important to prepare the organization for making space for these changes. Abandoning old methods and accepting new trends requires pre-planning efforts, determining possible roadblocks, and rewarding champions of change.
All in all leveraging new HR trends might seem like an impossible task, but it can be made possible through these steps defined. Even if the initiative fails, the organization, the HR, and the staff should be accepting of these failures and count them as a step toward learning rather than failure. It is with this mindset that organizations can become ready for embracing new technologies and trends.
