Human resources is a field that’s had to endure significant disruption in 2020, thanks to a combination of global events and technological innovation. In most cases, it’s the latter that’s been deployed in order to mitigate the impact of the former. It’s likely that much of the change will be enduring, and that many of the practices that HR jobs have adopted during this turbulent period will be with us long into the future.
Let’s take a look at four trends that are sure to make an impact on the world of HR in 2021.
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Cloud Workspaces
With so many workers operating at remote locations, it’s become necessary for collaboration to occur via shared data servers which can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Given that streaming platforms, banks and social networks operate in this way, it’s not such a stretch to expect the workplace of the future to be entirely cloud-based.
As well as allowing for remote workers to easily participate, and to collaborate on a single document, cloud workspaces have the advantage of lowering costs and keeping HR managers in the loop.
Remote Leadership
Though the lockdown is in the process of relaxing in the UK, and the government has set out a ‘roadmap’ to recovery, there are a few significant caveats and loopholes which might allow it to reverse course at the slightest whiff of a setback. We should still expect social distancing to remain a fixture in the workplace for the foreseeable future, which suggests that teams will still need to be managed remotely.
Employee Experience
The pandemic will have provided many workers with a new insight into what they want from work, and what they want from life. Working from home, for example, might have persuaded them that their work-life balance wasn’t quite right before, and they may be reluctant to revert to previous practices. It’s therefore incumbent on employers to maintain a dialogue with employees, and to determine how best to retain them.
Employees whose wants and needs aren’t being listened to aren’t likely to be productive, or loyal to the company in the long run. They will jump ship at the first opportunity!
Digital Integration
There are a number of technological trends that go beyond cloud storage and remote management, and into artificial intelligence, big data, and software as a service. We might turn to these methods as a means of quantifying employee performance, and of spotting patterns of behaviour that traditionally would be impossible for human resources managers. This isn’t to say that human HR managers are going to be replaced by machines in the immediate future – but that we should start to see increasing reliance on machine assistance over the coming year.
