Top Priorities Of HR Leaders in 2022

This article outlines the top priorities of HR leaders in 2022. It also provides the latest insights, best practices, and recommendations for HR leaders for the coming year.

What should HR leaders be focusing on in 2022?

• The development of critical skills and competencies
• Change management and organizational design 
• Future and current leadership
• Future of work
• DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion)

These priorities are crucial to the success of the entire business. HR leaders agree that 2022 will see improvement in operational excellence. They also believe that business transformation will be a key focus.

Every HR professional will need to transform their workplace to create a truly hybrid environment. This means employees can work remotely, split their time, and be more flexible about when they work.

What are the top HR trends in 2022?

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated our work practices and has prompted many HR trends that the entire human resources function must address.

These HR trends are forcing organizations to adapt their workplace strategies and workforce to meet the top priorities of HR for 2022. This means that HR leaders must adapt their methods to identify, attract, and retain key skills and redesign work to improve the employee value proposition and drive business results.

This moment offers HR leaders an opportunity to influence the future of work in ways that have not been possible earlier. Here are a few trends that will be of particular interest to HR professionals in 2022.

Trend No. 1: Hybrid work will continue to drive business transformation
95% of HR leaders expect at least part of their workforce to work remotely following the pandemic. This transition to hybrid work will drive massive transformation. HR leaders need to be ready to support it.

Trend No. 2: The demand for new skills will continue to skyrocket
The number of skills needed for a single job is growing at 6.3% per year, and new skills are replacing the old ones. By 2022, 29 percent of the skills listed out in a job posting from 2018 will be obsolete.
 
Trend No. 3: The health of the workforce is declining
While employee performance was high during the pandemic, disruptions had long-term, difficult-to-reverse effects on workforce Health. The state and health of employees, trust between individuals, teams, leadership, and the environment at work (e.g., feelings of inclusion) has also taken damage. Ineffective hybrid work approaches will only exacerbate these impacts.
 

Trend No. 4: Employees want to feel valued and understood
To meet the demands of employees, HR leaders must build a better employer-employee relationship. All HR leaders from all sub-functions can ensure that the EVP holistically centers employees as people.
 

Trend No. 5: Increasing pressure on diversity, equity, and inclusion
In addition to the expectation of more empathy and a more human workplace. There is increasing pressure from HR stakeholders, both internal and external, to make progress in diversifying leadership.

What are the top actions for CHROs 2022?

Gartner's survey of HR leaders highlights the initiatives that the HR team must take on, but CHROs and other leaders in sub functions need to focus their time and attention to make their HR teams successful.

The top HR priorities in 2022 will require that CHROs be able to focus on:

• Assuming greater responsibility for driving innovation and executing the business change in a hybrid work model.
• Help develop a hybrid model of work by using human-centric design. This will allow for flexible experiences, encourage collaboration, and foster empathy-based management.
• To manage changing skills, use a more dynamic approach.
• To foster long-term workforce resilience, it is important to reevaluate workforce support options to improve workforce health and not only performance.
• Establishing consequence accountability for DEI within your leaders will help you accelerate progress towards your DEI goals.
• Enhance your personal and board influence by focusing on CHRO-driven differentiators for board success.
• To achieve the HR function's goals of agility and customer-centricity, organize it.