A recent Gartner survey of more than 500 HR Leaders from across 40 countries and all major industries has identified 5 top priorities for HR in 2024:
- Leader and Manager Development
- Organization Culture
- HR Technology
- Change Management
- Career Management and Internal Mobility
In terms of what is driving these priorities, they found four specific areas of concern that I think many of you can relate to:
- ‘Unsettled’ employer-employee relationships due to productivity anxiety, mistrust and issues around lack of flexibility
- Persistent and systemic skills and talent shortages
- The Rising Impact of technology transformation, including AI, on the organization and workforce
- A refocus on operational productivity, efficiency and profitability (in some cases, re-prioritized over the health and wellness of employees)
Also shared in this survey were some stark and sobering statistics:
75% of HR Leaders say that their managers are overwhelmed by the growth of their job responsibilities and 73% confirmed that these managers are not equipped with the skills to lead change. In fact, it’s estimated that 1 in 5 managers would prefer not to be people leaders if given the choice to change roles.
YIKES! So what do we do now?
When you look at each of the five priorities listed above, they all directly relate to the ability of our people leaders to effectively lead and meet the demands of our workforce today. Executive leadership can create the strategic vision for your organization, but without a cohesive plan to successfully communicate that to your people leaders AND provide them with the tools to motive and engage their teams, you’ll fall well short of reaching your optimum organizational performance. In order to create the change we need with our people leaders, it will be necessary to redefine and reset the roles and expectations for our managers and prioritize coaching and 1:1 professional development time with their direct reports. We will also need to rewire manager habits (fun, I know!) through sustained education and training campaigns that outline expectations and deliver the ‘why’ message about how this will ultimately improve their people leading experience. Finally, we need to evaluate our process for identify and onboarding new people leaders in our organizations and refine the competency requirements and learning pathways so that we can begin to build a strong leadership framework that will sustain us going forward.
This is not an easy road, by any means! But our team here at EANE is here to assist you in creating your people leader strategy! Reach out for a conversation with us about developing your own plan forward – we are always happy to help! And if you’d like a copy of the Gartner report that I reference here (it’s really awesome!) send me an email and I’m happy to share it with you!
Allison