HR Trends in 2020 - The Future of Human Resource Management

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As technology is booming, HR trends are also changing and reshaping the way we work. The year 2019 has brought a lot of diverse changes to the HR industry and HR software in particular.

As we are in 2020, this is the right time to watch for in the HR industry. As an HR manager, you must keep up with the changes and leverage technology to drive real value to the business.

What are those changes that shape the future of human resource management?

We have summarized the HR trends in 2020, if the managers and leaders closely follow these trends, the organization can experience a revolutionary change in the coming year.

Here are the HR Trends in 2020: The Future of Human Resources Management

1. Gig Economy

The survey conducted by Times Jobs in 2018 states that companies will experience an increased economy if more jobs are shifted to freelancing.

The gig economy will see a major shift from full-time jobs to freelancing. The companies will be benefited by hiring freelancers as they will only pay if the work is done. Whereas in the case of the traditional work environment, the company is liable to pay even when an employee is not delivering the work.

Freelancers will allow companies to hire top talents without the geographic limitations, cost and time of hiring another employee.

As per Intuit estimates 40% of American workers will be independent contractors by 2020.

2. Flexible ways of working

Flexibility in working hours and location will lead to an increasingly diverse workforce. The best part of flexibility in working is there is no restriction on the workplace and timing schedules.

Adopting a new way of working with a positive approach will bring a revolutionary change in the workspace. This will bring a lot of returns for the company.

This new working model will reduce costs, drive employee engagement and remain competitive. HR should take the lead and be aware of how to manage and motivate remote teams.

3. Remote work

There is growing popularity and acceptance of remote work. Companies already started accepting employees working remotely and realizing the benefit. Therefore the productivity graph shows an upward spike.

Remote work is not feasible for a few positions and companies, however offering remote works options comes with many benefits, including higher productivity and increased employee satisfaction.

The main purpose of the companies is to complete the work on time regardless of whether work is done from home or office.

Going further, India will experience a dynamic increase in remote work.

4. AI in human resource

The recruitment journey is more digitized with Artificial Intelligence. AI has outperformed humans at making hiring decisions in certain areas, such as evaluating hard skills.

With the development of AI, it’s getting easier to find skilled people who are a great fit for your company. Another advantage of using AI is no bias or error in the candidate evaluation process.

AI can help HR to gain accurate analysis of employees from application submission to continuing performance reviews. Experts believe that the majority of companies will be adopting Artificial Intelligence.

Note: Wherever AI has replaced humans, Eubanks believes AI-enabled workplaces will still require human skills. Even though AI is making advances, humans still have a critical role to pay.

5. Automation

Automation has automated most of the HR tasks in the hiring process, allowing them to focus on more complex tasks like decision making and strategizing.

Automation can also help HR by automating joining formalities, tracking timesheets, approving leaves, analyzing employee’s performance, exit interviews and payments.

By 2020, almost more than half of the Indian companies will acquire automation in HR so that HR can completely invest time in other complex tasks.

Thus automation has improved productivity, reduced the cost, time and the chances of human or manual errors.

6. Chatbots

Looking at the future trends in human resource management, chatbots are at the frontrunner. Chatbots have taken over the process of the HR team which can respond to customer queries any number of times. Bots can also interact with customers at odd hours easily and hassle-free.

Chatbots news daily predicts that HR chatbots will be implemented at more than 50% of companies by 2022. HR can use bots to improve communication and resolve issues faster. In fact, employees can apply for leaves through bots or ask queries regarding certain company procedures.

Thus chatbots reduce the burden of HR departments and enable them to focus on responding to more complex and urgent questions that warrant their attention. Chatbots also helps in learning initiatives.

7. Gamification

Games are in use to achieve serious goals like screening candidates and having fun when HR conducts tests like personality tests, IQ tests, etc. to measure personality and skill. The same test, when conducted in an ordinary or traditional method, makes it tedious for the employees. But when questions are gamified, more employees will be interested in answering the questions.

Data gamification promises can help HR departments build job families, which helps in the reskilling of jobs. Many other HR processes can be gamified to offer opportunities to employees to increase their level of collaboration, employee engagement, and recognition.

Many industries are using a well-designed gamification model to engage the top talent and highly creative workforce.

8. Reskilling of jobs

New technology has disrupted multiple jobs across industries. This has already started and will escalate exponentially. HR should be proactively prepared for this eventuality, predicting the impact and beginning a reskilling program for those who will be affected.

Reskilling will make them ready for re-employment on time. In case of failure, we will be faced with serious social issues, financial crises, and risk to the livelihood and future of many families. Few industries will face this more than others.

Big companies reskilled their employees by giving them certain tasks or a class for learning the new software. This will ensure that they have acquired new skills that can benefit the company in the long run. This way of reskilling has the advantage of boosting a company’s economy as you need not hire new talent.

9. HR analytics

The HR departments will now have a vast amount of information available at their fingertips. HR should be ready to use more data and analytics to showcase their value to the management.

HR will have endless possibilities to use analytics in identifying trends and patterns on employee absenteeism, leave frequency, employ turn-over rate, engagement level, etc.

HR has to deal with more analysis and data tracking and needs to have skills to analyze, predict and work with data and tools.

10. On the job training becomes standard

When new employees join they take the first week to learn about the company before they actually perform the job.

But now in 2020, companies will adopt on the job training as a procedure to train the employees from the second or first day itself, while the employees will work simultaneously.

Though this will put additional pressure on HR to get new hires on-boarded as fast as possible but this will help in the delivery of work schedules and save the company’s time.

Organizations will invest in virtual and augmented reality. Gamification, geofencing and other techniques to impart on the job training to their workforce.

11. Employee engagement

Employee engagement was one of the most important trends in 2019 and will continue in 2020.

Engaged employees feel their relationship with the company they work for is meaningful. As a result, they will work harder, are less eager to depart the company and understand the impact they make on others.

The new generation of employees needs to be fulfilled by making a meaningful effect. Key items to focus on for a high-quality employee experience are Personal Development plans, Health & Wellbeing programs, Diversity & Inclusion and Recognition & Awards.

12. Employee experience

Employee experience will remain top of mind through 2020 as companies seek ways to drive engagement and foster employ centric cultures.

Whatever tools you used to schedule tasks but the most important is the value of relationship and the respect to your people.

Company culture plays a major role in creating a positive experience for employees. Employees provide ratings to workplace culture and it is the prime criterion of job satisfaction than their salary. Therefore improving the employee experience is the need of the hour.

Thus pushing for enhanced employee experienced has resulted in companies becoming the new brand and employees becoming the new customer.

13. Slack and WhatsApp will take over Outlook

Companies are looking for easy solutions so they can feasibly work and get profit. Mail chains on Outlook and G-mail have become inefficient and impossible to sift through. Many employees prefer to message in the group available through apps like WhatsApp, Slack and Facebook messenger.

Slack and Whatsapp are the feasible solution as you can directly message in the group, share screens, video conference or con call with n number of employees at one time and a lot more.

14. Shrinking HR teams & Outsourced HR

As most of the HR functions are automated by automation and Artificial Intelligence, the number of jobs in HR will decrease.

Most of the organizations especially start-ups have only 1 human resource manager who takes care of every activity in and out.

For example, the work that is being performed by talent sources is now done by search engines and applicant tracking systems – the role has been automated to simple software purchase. Now the need for customized, flexible, by-the-hour, outsourced HR solutions has risen sharply.

15. BYOD (Bring your own devices)

Companies will ask employees to bring their own gadgets at work. Many companies have started this trend which helps the company to get relaxation on the company’s budget and benefits employees.

16. Gadgets shift

Tablets, smartphones, and mobiles will be the go-to computing devices for most of the world. But there are challenges for HR and IT administrators working in sectors like finance and healthcare where piracy and compliance are paramount.

Many firms are comfortable with laptops as it is easy to carry anywhere and have it for work from home. Also, there are many firms that prefer tablets but that is not quite prevalent in our country yet.