It is rightly known that employees are the foundation of businesses, leading them towards success and growth. But who has the potential to manage the most valuable resource of the organisation? Yes, you guessed it right – the human resource department. This is why the HR department is considered the heart and soul of any organisation.

A majority of the people link human resources with activities like payroll processing and providing employee medical benefits. The HR department is undoubtedly an essential part of managing the administrative duties in an organisation. However, it is responsible for much more than that.

Before delving into the latest trends witnessed in HR, let’s understand some of the tasks and duties performed by the HR department to boost employee engagement. For those planning to pursue a course in human resource management, the following points can help you grasp the importance and role of HR professionals in managing the workforce of an organisation.

Role of the HR Department in an Organisation

• Conducting a Job and Employee Analysis

The HR department identifies the human resource requirement for every project. To appoint the right resource for the right project, HR professionals need to conduct a job analysis.

What is job analysis?

It is a process in which HR managers identify the description & requirements of a job and the employee’s position in the organisation. In addition, they establish a reporting hierarchy for employees and ensure the availability of resources required to perform the task effectively.

Another vital function you need to perform as an HR manager is the analysis of your potential employees. This includes the evaluation of individual data related to work experience, technical skills, and more. Similarly, personal attributes like personality, interests, and values also match the job requirements. Professionals striving to pursue an HR analytics course can be familiar with the importance and techniques of identifying metrics and data sources to effectively achieve the organisation’s strategic goals.

• Recruiting the Workforce

The complete hiring process is planned and executed by the HR department. From posting job requirements on social platforms & job portals like LinkedIn and Indeed to filing open positions, the HR professionals perform numerous tasks in the recruitment process. They are responsible for attracting suitable candidates, screening their profiles, conducting interviews, designing offer letters, and arranging orientations.

Also Read: Essential Skills of Human Resources Management

The most challenging part? A candidate is backing out at the eleventh hour. The HR managers are then required to convince the candidates, and if they fail to do so, the entire process needs to be repeated to fill the positions.

Enrolling in talent management courses helps attract, recruit, and onboard employees and focuses on other facets of HR like influencing, retaining, and motivating employees to become more productive and effective in achieving organisational goals.

• Maintaining a Positive Workplace Culture

The role of an HR professional does not end at recruiting candidates for the job. It is just the beginning of their crucial responsibilities in an organisation. It is your responsibility, as an HR manager, to maintain a positive culture within the organisation. Why?

Because the environment largely influences employees’ performance, they are working in. Therefore, it becomes vital for HR managers to ensure a comfortable and stress-free environment for the employees to work in.

Positive work culture has endless benefits ranging from a boost in creativity & productivity, a decrease in employee turnover to an increase in the company’s profits. The most effective way to maintain a positive environment is by protecting employees’ mental health, creating strong communication flows, promoting diversity, and hosting  events in the organisation.

Online courses in human resource management can help you understand how organisations work and how to maintain a positive workplace culture for employees and superiors. Till you decide to enrol in one, continue reading……….

• Resolving Workplace Conflicts

Workplace conflicts are a common occurrence in every organisation. Although some amount of conflict is considered healthy, it can lead to adverse effects on the company’s productivity if not handled properly. The increasing anxieties due to the political divide and racial discrimination have resulted in a significant rise in workplace conflicts. Whether the conflict is amongst two employees or an employee and management, it is the responsibility of an HR manager to resolve issues and maintain harmony.

How can HR professionals resolve issues?

As an HR manager, the foremost task is to address the conflict. Avoiding or ignoring a row can erode trust, low morale & productivity, and increase stress & absenteeism. Hence, you must take the required steps to prevent it. You must seek to understand the underlying emotions of both sides without any bias or judgement and arrive at a solution before the conflict gets out of hand.

• Ensuring the Well-Being and Safety of Employees

Employees are a critical asset of every organisation. Unless employees are not mentally and physically healthy, they won’t work to the best of their abilities. An unhealthy work environment can impact the employee’s productivity and quality of life and tarnish your business’s reputation. Therefore, HR managers must have a thorough understanding of the workplace safety and mental health of employees.

Also Read: The 9 Essential Skills of Human Resource Management

Today, well-being is not just about physical health but also the mental health of people. Therefore, to ensure the well-being and safety of employees, HR professionals should implement stringent safety and protection policies in place.

For instance, Unilever, which is a multinational consumer goods company, has developed a four-pillar framework to support their team members’ mental, emotional, physical, and purposeful well-being.

As a part of the health initiative, the company introduced thriving workshops that allow employees to build their well-being plans. During the workshop, managers explain the importance of each pillar as a battery of energy and provide information on how the company can support their well-being plans.

The responsibilities mentioned above paint a clear picture of the significant role of HR in organisations. The online courses on human resource management available on platforms such as Talentedge can help professionals refine their skills needed to land HR jobs.

However, an aspirant looking for HR roles should also be familiar with the latest ongoing trends in the HR domain and resultant changes in employee engagement. Find out about the top trends of HR and employee engagement in 2021.

Latest Trends in HR and Employee Engagement to Lookout For

The global pandemic, Covid-19, has impacted everything ranging from people’s way of living to their working styles. The lockdown imposed due to the pandemic created a ripple effect, causing psychological distress to people and enormous losses for the businesses.

The most challenging part is working structures was the changing role of HR in managing various psychological and physical aspects of working remotely. All of these factors have led to the emergence of new HR trends in 2021, some of which include:-

• Witnessed a Remote Working Model

The most visible change of the pandemic was seen in the overnight shift of offices to homes. Although remote working was gaining relevance in some industries even before the pandemic, there weren’t many organisations that had the resources and policies for a work-from-home setup. After becoming the new normal, remote working has witnessed several advantages like saving time and travelling costs and flexible working hours.

Also Read: Executive Development Program In HR Analytics From XLRI

Considering these advantages, it can be seen that this trend is here to stay. With a shift in more people working remotely, companies will have to reframe their strategies on the use of technology, team collaboration, work culture, and work-life balance. The analysis of employee work has shifted from total work hours to work quality and employee productivity.

A lack of physical presence has pushed companies on the edge of adopting HR technology to emphasise more on continuous feedback and development. In addition, companies have shifted their focus on creating a work culture that increases employee engagement and productivity.

• A Rise in Remote Training and Upskilling

Job uncertainties in the past year have made people realise the importance of acquiring new skills and honing the existing ones. Online training and upskilling have become the need of the hour. The HR departments in the companies plan and implement strategies to upskill their workforce for meeting the new, upgraded, and challenging business requirements.

Companies are using HR analytics and tools to identify the skill gaps and provide a work culture of continuous growth and development. How? By delivering virtual training and learning experience to the employees. According to a report by LinkedIn, 59% of L&D professionals in companies consider upskilling as the essential part of training programs in 2021.

How do upskilling and training programs benefit employees in their development?

Training programs refine the efficiency and productivity of employees, allowing them to work on more challenging tasks. Having skilled and knowledgeable employees in an organisation provides you with a competitive edge in the business environment. Moreover, it builds a team of satisfied employees, resulting in a reduced attrition rate and increased morale & engagement.

• The Influx of Artificial Intelligence in HR

The adoption of AI has transformed the working style in almost all industries and domains. In the past few years, HR tools have also been working in tandem with AI technology. From recruitment and engagement to training and development, the integration of AI in HR technology has largely benefitted various activities. And this will only grow in the upcoming years.

Also Read: 6 Qualities of Highly Effective HR Professionals

AI technology has resulted in better HR analytics functions of the organisations. HR departments are now able to make more data-driven, informed decisions. These logical decisions and analytics-driven insights also help managers understand the gaps in employee productivity and implement measures to boost the same. On top of that, AI improves the communication flow in the organisation, having a direct impact on employee engagement.

• The Changing Definition of Employee Experience

Earlier, the complete selection and recruitment process was conducted in person, which meant real-life interactions, meetings, and informal sessions. However, with a shift in remote working and recruitment, the employee experience has transformed from face-to-face interaction to virtual. These changes in employee experience have forced HR managers to rethink the employee journey and satisfaction.

Factors like work-life balance, collaboration, and well-being have come into the spotlight in the past years. As a result, companies are implementing more virtual yet informal ways of collaboration and team-building. For instance, introducing weekly or monthly virtual fun meetings where employees socialise and share creative thoughts and ideas.

Ensuring employee well-being, skill development, and flexible policies for remote working can help enhance the overall employee experience in these new working styles. There are several courses on human resource management available online that can assist you in learning the various methods of improving employee experience in changing times.

• Increasing Role of People Analytics

Before moving on towards the importance of people analytics in HR in recent years, let’s understand what it means. People analytics also referred to as HR analytics, is a data-driven approach to managing the people at a workplace. It gathers, analyses, and reports the HR data to gain meaningful insights into the business performance, making relevant data-driven decisions.

Those days are gone when HR managers had to put in pain-staking effort to conduct surveys for gaining insights about the business processes manually. Today, HR tools and functions like people analytics help make better data-driven decisions regarding hiring, improving performance, and reducing attrition.

Also Read: 7 Reasons Why HR Management Matters

In addition, it also helps forecast the future demand and plan in advance. People analytics is a great tool that will continue to gain importance and soon become essential for all organisations.

• Building Diversity and Inclusion in the Organisation

With an increase in remote working, the sourcing and recruitment of employees have expanded to various backgrounds and cultures. A team of people from different traditions, ethnicities, cultures, and social structures bring unique and creative ideas to the table. However, managing a diverse team can be an arduous task for the manager.

When not properly managed, employees can feel discriminated against and can be looked upon as different from other employees. Result? Decreased productivity and efficiency of employees. This is why diversity without inclusion is of no use. Diversity refers to the human differences in an organisation regarding race, culture, age, gender, and more. However, inclusion is what makes employees feel belong and valued among their colleagues.

Companies that have diverse teams are 70% more likely to capture new markets. Therefore, it’s essential for HR managers to build teams that are not only diverse but also inclusive, ultimately promoting creativity, innovation, and problem-solving.

• Introducing VR Technology in Workplace

Virtual Reality or VR is a computer technology that creates a three-dimensional environment similar to reality. VR has gained enormous relevance in various industries like sports, healthcare, education, fashion, architecture, entertainment, and much more. However, the implementation of VR technology is at an early stage in HR functions.

There are endless opportunities for VR applications in the HR department. To begin with, VR can help HR managers improve the recruitment process. How? In the early stages of the interview, VR can be used to create a simulated environment through which recruiters can assess how candidates react to unfamiliar, stressful situations. This results in a much better assessment of skills than the traditional verbal/written situation exercises.

In addition, VR technologies can be used in the induction process of recruited employees. Rather than the conventional methods used in the onboarding process, VR can enable employees to have a more entertaining induction session, resulting in increased retention of information.

• Rethinking the ‘Human’ in HR

The most evident result of this shift in remote working is the extended use of technology for activities like recruitment, onboarding, and performance management. It has become difficult for managers to check up on employees in this virtual setting. Without informal watercooler sessions and coffee breaks, the creativity and collaboration of employees are negatively impacted. All these factors have made organisations rely more on technology to stay connected.

Also Read: How Human Resource Can Helping Business with Talent Acquisition and Management?

Digital adoption by businesses is growing at an unprecedented rate. However, the fundamentally human nature of wanting recognition, appreciation, and compassion remains the same.

It is therefore essential to realise and embrace the need for interpersonal bonds in this ever-growing digital era.

A perfect blend between technical prowess and emotional intelligence is what companies need to implement in today’s changing business dynamics. Enrolling in online talent management courses can help you acquire the relevant skills to bridge the gap between technology and human connections.

• Increasing Employee Advocacy

Just 2% of employees share their company’s social content, yet they are responsible for almost 20% of overall social engagement.

What does this indicate? Employees today have an essential role in brand building. No one is better familiar with the company and its functions than the employees. There is a lot of scope in the company’s growth if all employees are motivated to increase their social engagement. However, with people working from different parts of the globe, it can become increasingly difficult to make them feel connected and the organisation.

As an HR professional, it is their responsibility to educate and inform the employees about the company’s values to increase engagement and entertainment. When employees feel engaged and connected, they extend the knowledge and feedback in their social circles as well.

The employee advocacy trend has witnessed far-reaching benefits in 2021. This is why it can be seen as a common occurrence in every organisation in the coming years.

• Providing Ample Growth Opportunities for Employees

Today, career growth and progression is the top priority for employees in every organisation. They aim to work in a job that provides them with growth in both personal and professional lives. Employees today do not want to stick to a specific task in a company. They seek to broaden their working horizons.

Organisations have realised the importance of providing a working culture that facilitates growth and learning to hire and retain employees. They have started providing training programs to boost employees’ knowledge and understanding. In addition, the management has implemented a systematic and fair promotion process to ensure growth within an organisation.

Apart from employees, the HR managers are also always on the lookout for career advancement and growth opportunities. Talenedge, a comprehensive education platform, offers various online courses in human resource management in collaboration with renowned institutions. Some of these courses that can help HR managers include:-

Courses	Duration	Fee
Executive Development Program in Leadership & Change Management from XLRI	5 months	For Indian Students: INR 80000+ GST For International Students: USD 1749
Post Graduate Certificate in Human Resource Management from IIM Shillong	12 months	For Indian Students: INR 150000+ GST For International Students: USD 3000
Executive Development Program in Talent Management from XLRI	4.5 months	For Indian Students: INR 80000+ GST For International Students: USD 1750
Executive Certificate Program in Human Resource Management from IIM Raipur	12 months	For Indian Students: INR 150000+ GST For International Students: USD 3000
Executive Development Program in HR Analytics from XLRI	6 months	For Indian Students: INR 85000+ GST For International Students: USD 1800

These courses can help you acquire the skills required to excel in the domain and land high-paying, lucrative HR roles.

• The Shifting Focus on Millennials and GenZ Employees

Did you know, 75% of the workforce is expected to account for the millennial generation by 2025?

Millennials and GenZ still make up the largest workforce section in any organisation and are expected to grow at a good pace. The process of talent acquisition is evolving at an accelerating pace. Employers are now competing to attract millennials and the GenZ workforce.

Also Read: Strategies For Effective Human Resource Management

However, if companies think of attracting candidates with ping-pong tables and a feast in the holiday season, they’re going in the wrong direction. More than workplace perks, the younger generations desire benefits for a better tomorrow. These generations prefer a more personalised and unique job package and related benefits.

How can you acquire this skill? The answer is simple – by enrolling in online talent management courses. These courses can help you gain some essential skills like recruiting, training, and mentoring employees.

Modern employees are better informed, love to research things on their own, and are more driven towards seeking good career opportunities.

Several credible and insightful courses in human resource management have been deployed by leading institutes today to render critical information that constitutes this sector. Doing so will enable modern managers to lead and facilitate changes in their corporate workplaces that millennials and GenZ employees can accept.

The HRM department needs to consider innovative ways that can help them be responsive in their roles by delivering optimal results for the company.

• Work Structure Becoming More Interesting and Challenging

Another aspect that millennials and the GenZ workforce look for in their jobs is more interesting and challenging work. Challenging work acts as a driver for employee engagement in an organisation. Moreover, the absence of challenging work is also one of the top reasons employees leave a job.

Employees today are more challenge-seekers who prefer tasks that require showcasing their problem-solving skills and overcoming some level of difficulty rather than the boredom of an unchallenging job.

As HR managers, you can ensure a more challenging work environment. Assigning short projects to employees can help them expand their potential and let them work on various projects.

You can attract and retain employees by setting goals that bring out the best of their abilities.

The new-age employees are more radical in their work approaches since they love taking challenges head-on and performing their roles diligently. However, challenges can only survive in a working scenario that offers exciting opportunities for workers to display their out-of-the-box thinking skills for practically dealing with issues regularly.

• Setting Result-Oriented Goals for Employee Engagement

Setting goals is the foremost approach of organisations towards achieving the target results. When done correctly, clear and transparent goals can help boost employee engagement and improve the productivity and performance of the organisation as a whole.

Also Read: Six Main Functions of Human Resource Management

However, there are some risks involved as well. Ineffective and unspecific goals can result in a lack of motivation, unethical behaviour, and a huge loss of resources. Therefore, as managers, you must ensure providing clear expectations of the goals regarding time, process, resources, feedback, and more.

Apart from providing clear instructions, you need to align employees’ personal goals with organisational goals. Why? So that there is continuous development and growth in employees’ personal as well as professional lives. Lastly, you should monitor and track the progress to support goal achievement.

The end objective of any corporation is to deliver results that are in cohesion with organisational ethics and morals. One of the many advantages of talent management courses is that they help future managers develop strategies that can lead to desired results. If followed properly, these action plans can help in setting up successful engagement practices.

• Identifying and Preventing the Costs of Employee Turnover

Employee turnover can be an extremely costly affair for organisations. According to studies, every time an employee leaves, it costs approximately 6 to 9 months of their salary for replacement.

This represents a massive loss to the organisation, right? The hard costs like recruitment & onboarding process, relocation, and skill training are easier to estimate. However, soft costs, including reduced morale, increased workload & stress, and the cost of acquiring an unfit person for the job, can be challenging to account for.

It has therefore become essential for managers to prevent the huge turnover costs by retaining their existing employees. There are several online talent management courses that can help you provide solutions to employee concerns. Moreover, you learn to increase employee motivation and take relevant actions for retaining them.

• Management of Employee’s Performance

Employees are the main drivers of growth for an organisation. They form an integral part of any workplace since they are Responsible for looking after different areas of corporational procedures. One of the rising trends in human resource management is to set up performance metrics for overseeing and monitoring employees’ growth and success for a firm.

The key performance indicators that separate high-performing employees from average ones are done on the basis of existing parameters defined by organisations. For companies to remain agile in their functioning, it’s important that they focus on creating robust performance indicators that yield optimal results for organisations.

Human resource managers can play a big part in establishing practical objectives for performance indicators through developing objectives at the beginning of the new year and following it through as the year goes by.

There are several ways to ensure employees’ productivity and performance. These include having regular conversations with employees regarding their individual goals, well-being, and concerns.

As employees mature in their capacities, it’s vital for HR managers to oversee how their staff personnel are achieving those objectives as laid out by organisations. Furthermore, conducting a talent review of the employees after every three months can also help in highlighting top-performing employees.

• Incorporation of Blockchain in HR Driven Environments

Today HR managers are entrusted with looking after a large amount of human capital data, which poses several security threats. The sensitive and fragile employee information rendered to organisations is always critical to their ecosystems that need to be preserved at all costs.

Also Read: Best HR Management Courses for Experienced HR Managers

HRM personnel regularly track employee data for handling out promotions, benefits and for zeroing in on the areas that they might need help with for better outputs. The inception of online courses in human resource management enlists in detail the new technologies that are improving the security of data in HR systems.

With its decentralisation technology, blockchain has shown promise in providing bankable security environments for sensitive employee information, amongst other purposes. Data security has become a pressing issue today since the increase in utilisation of employee-service platforms that are leading the adoption of cloud-based software.

Blockchain technology can revolutionise security practices by building highly secure, well-detailed, and super safe data sources that can automate processes such as tax administration, payroll, etc.

Blockchain also offers smart contracts that come in handy while streamlining contract management for different HR teams. The contractual mechanisms offered by blockchain services make it easier to record and also verify transactions.

• Focusing on Internal Talent Mobility within Organisations

As talent markets get tighter with each passing year, HR teams have been pushed out of their comfort zones. They now need to explore advanced ways for sourcing the talent locally along with ensuring good employee retention levels.

The basis of internal talent mobility lies in developing interactive programs that can help firms oversee the changes that are coming through in markets. As for employees, internal talent mobility means that they can experience different roles that lie outside their own and tackle new challenges that are associated with those.

As per a report generated by Deloitte, internal talent mobility is one the areas that is witnessing more focus from both HR professionals and management today, and nearly 20% of survey respondents have indicated that it’s amongst the top three most urgent issues for their corporations.

Also Read: What does it take to be a Human Resource Manager?

The onus of adopting internal talent mobility helps HR sectors to understand the variance in their employee’s performances and the outputs attained through different roles. Moreover, it can lead to the creation of a pool of employees that can be tapped in further for carrying out leadership roles.

• HR Chatbots will become Commonplace

Apart from blockchain and VR entering the HRM space, chatbots are another technological feature that will significantly improve employee experience and bolster productivity levels.

As per a report compiled by Artificial Solutions last year, there are today nearly 25% of high-impact HR organisations utilise chatbots for interacting with their clients and other staff personnel.

Powered and engineered through AI, chatbots have been instrumental in automating tasks that take ages to complete manually. With Covid-19 revamping work from home settings, most HR businesses have been delivering their services via interactive chatbots.

These intelligent assistants are an extension of physical employees since they can be used to deliver relevant information for employee onboarding and training, thereby, saving time, energy, and other resources.

Moreover, these chatbots can also be leveraged for self-serving portals for conducting high-volume tasks.

• Large-Scale Consumerization in Workplaces

There’s no denying that unemployment rates are at an all-time high with the rise of Coronavirus cases all across the globe.

A study conducted by Congressional Research Service during the earlier parts of 2021 has indicated that unemployment levels in corporations have reached as high as 14.8% as employees expect transparency from their employers regarding career paths.

There needs to be the development of flexible consumerization of human resource management that can respond to employees’ concerns and issues. There will be a repeal of the “one size fits all” approach by organisations and firms will seek alternative paths for making their policies more employee-friendly.

Also Read: Kickstart your Career in Analytics with Data Science Program

Both Generation Y (millennials) and Z, for example, expect more transparent and collaborative managerial practices. HR managers can further utilise survey software for getting deeper insights into their employees and tailored approaches that are required.

• Giving out Modern Benefits for Boosting Retention

The success of any HR company lies in adjusting the compensation and benefits that are offered to employees. In order to be more attractive to their selected workers, organisations are regularly looking to deliver benefits and other perks to employees so that they feel valued and continue with their corporations.

The pandemic has also ringed in changes in how companies perceive benefits; there has been a replacement of tangible benefits with substantial ones such as healthcare, paid time off, parental leaves, support for mental health issues, etc.

Moreover, companies are now looking out for culturally diverse benefits in regards to gender reassignment and transformation assistance to expanded fertility benefits. There are several other non-health-related benefits too such as casual dress at the office and financial wellness programs.

As seen from the different employee engagement trends above, HR departments have been looking out for pathways that lead to employee success and growth within an organisation.

However, before joining these roles, professionals who have doubts regarding their roles can look at some of the most common FAQs.

Summing it Up!

With an increasing role and demand for corporate jobs in the business environment, the recruitment of employees has witnessed a constant rise in organisations.

With the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses worldwide experienced major shifts in the working styles of employees. These drastic changes have significantly impacted the way companies manage their workforce, leading the way to new trends emerging in HR and employee engagement.

Also Read: Could HR Courses be a Valued Addition for Working Professionals

Therefore, courses in human resource management can teach about various trends that have come up in this domain that can lead to successful career opportunities.

FAQs Associated with HR and Employee Engagement

Q. What are the different facets of the HRM department?

Ans: Compensation & benefits, recruitment, and onboarding, employee training, HR analytics, solving internal disputes, etc.

Q. Is HR a well-paying role?

Ans: With companies working remotely, they need able HR managers who can manage their staff from remote locations. Therefore, with increasing demands for HRs, it proves to be a well-paying role.

Q. What are the best courses in HRM?

Ans: Courses in human resources management offered by XLRI and IIM are amongst the best ones.

Q. Does the HR sector offer enough growth opportunities?

Ans: Yes, there are ample growth opportunities available in the field of HR that help in easy transitions from one role to another.

Q. Can the future of HR see more active usage of technologies?

Ans: Yes, HR analytics along with blockchain and VR has been a recent addition to the technological advances existing in this sector.

Q. How does an HR team recruit new joinees?

Ans: The HR team selects joinees based on their skill-sets and educational backgrounds that match with their companies.

Q. What needs to be considered while interviewing candidates?

Ans: Maintaining consistency and fairness in interviews by asking questions that are within corporate norms.

Q. How does an HR team solve internal disputes?

Ans: Conducting an attitude survey along with grievance procedures can help in solving conflicts.

Q. What does an HR director do?

Ans: The HR director is responsible for monitoring its systems, designing training programs, and managing its staff.

Q. What can be achieved by HR analytics software?

Ans: An HR analytics software can help in understanding employees’ performance, their outputs, and other activities.

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