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As 2023 gets into full swing and all things HR and life start becoming hectic again, I was sitting in a “future of HR presentation” and the article I wanted to write came to me. This might not be anything new and more of a reminder of what’s important in HR or should be from my point of view. This might not even be innovative…
The presentation that I was sitting in had a full portion about the new buzzword of “quiet hiring” and why it is so crucial to focus on in HR. During the presentation, I realized I am just tired of the new shiny object we are being sold and told to concentrate on. After being in HR analytics for the last 5 years and seeing so many trends come and go, I wanted to define what might be more important for your business HR team to focus on and opposite of the trendy new things we are being fed.
In 2023, I think a return to simplicity is what everyone in HR needs (or just everyone in general). No more buzzwords, no more marketing words that take time and attention away from you and the results you should be delivering, and finally, as we are on the precipice of a recession, spending any of the budget that could be applied to the employee population seems frivolous.
What does simplicity look like to me from an analytics perspective? I believe we need to return to working on a top down HR strategy from the CHRO down to the lowest HR employee. Starting with agreed upon KPIs or metrics that have a solid benchmark you can compare your numbers against and have a cohesive definition. This approach needs to be applied to as many functions of HR as possible. Everything from your hiring, employee engagement, turnover, and any other employee measures that your company measures. I am sure there are many companies already doing this, but if you are not it is not an easy task. Once you have worked the KPIs into a digestible format and honestly any tool will work(find the one that is the cheapest and that has support.). Start to work on how to improve them versus the benchmark and study the problems you have.
With KPIs and benchmarks built this is a great place to be! But what do you do now? This is where ignoring the mainstream about what to focus on comes into play.( I wish I had saved more of the marketing emails I have received about being told what to concentrate on, it’s honestly insane. Who has that kind of time?) Begin to work to improve on your KPIs and metrics that are aligned with the CHROs plan. It depends on your internal strategy and position. But a great example from my world is evaluating the repetitive tasks that the team does and figuring out how to automate them.
The next thing you should focus your time, once you have a strategy, is honestly your employee population. We are HR are we not? I think in 2023 and into the future people will only be a more crucial aspect to the success of your business. I think this starts with surveying and understanding what you do well and the deficits of your company. Listening to the survey results might be hard to hear but happy employees will end up improving everything. You obviously can’t please everyone, but a focus on the employee in 2023 and improving their experience, as I think everyone is struggling in some aspect right now, will do wonders.
Finally, I just want to reiterate is to ignore the buzz of what the media and HR news is saying because they aren’t usually incentivized to help you. They are incentivized to drive clicks and get your attention to sell you on a service or product. Think about the buzzwords in the last year (and it seems like it’s accelerating) that you have heard from quiet quitting (nothing new), great resignation, quiet hiring, and on and on.
I can’t be the only one who sees and thinks this about these buzzwords. I will absolutely be pushing for simplicity in 2023 in my day to day. Btw quiet hiring is literally just upskilling….