HR Trends Report 2021

© Top Employers Institute – HR Trends Report 2021

Priorities and practices of the world’s Top Employers

HR TrendsReport 2021

02 HR Trends Report 2021

Contents


Reinventing the role of HR

Dealing with disruption

Navigating the new world of work

Based on our global data covering 1 691 Top Employers worldwide, the results of our research are a true reflection of where high-performing, advanced organisations stand right now. With global social movements, such as Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, having had far-reaching impacts on the public consciousness, we see HR teams investing more heavily in Diversity and Inclusion programmes. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the path of HR digital transformation for many businesses. With these strategic imperatives as a backdrop, the data shows that Top Employers are and will continue to address three main needs.

Firstly, after being side-swept by the global health crisis, people and business will need to charter new ways of working together in an uncertain future. Secondly, as nothing is fixed, or certain, people will have to adapt and learn to deal with (constant) disruption.

Finally, both aspects are impacting the role and scope of HR itself. When we look back just 10 years, HR had already begun moving away from an administrative focus to becoming more of a business partner. HR professionals began adding communication and marketing responsibilities to their skill set. Now though, new areas of expertise are becoming essential, such as digital abilities and data analysis.

With this in mind, this year’s report explores trends in areas such as change management, the need for transparency, organisational culture, digital working, employee well-being, leadership development, performance management, compensation and benefits, and much more. Read the full report, and if you’re interested, discover the value of participating in the Top Employers Institute Certification Programme here.

Top Employers Institute presents the latest trends in HR strategies and people practices emerging from leading organisations across the world. Now in its fourth edition, the annual HR Trends Report gives business leaders insight into how the past year’s global developments are likely to impact their workforces.

Executive summary Three main HR themes in 2021

https://bit.ly/3nRNe6F


Top Employers rank change management as one of their highest strategic priorities for the year ahead. Senior leaders will play a key role in driving change. They will be expected to communicate openly with employees about the future skills that will be needed in their organisations, so that employees can better manage their own professional development.

With multiple crises to manage, HR professionals will need to go beyond ‘functional excellence’ in 2021 and shift their mindsets from being business partners to being business makers. The greatest challenge will be to ensure leaders and teams remain resilient and results-oriented while they go through the change curve. HR will be expected to take on some of the responsibilities of other job functions – for example, many HR professionals will play a bigger role in employee communications and will want to use marketing-style metrics to measure the impact.

While HR teams will certainly ramp up the use of technology to automate and simplify processes, Top Employers will never forget the ‘H’ in HR.

The HR Trends Report 2021 presents the latest in HR strategies and people practices from leading organisations around the globe. The insights obtained for this report are extracted and analysed from the annual Top Employers Institute HR Best Practices Survey, which covers leading employers from all over the world, most of them being large multinational enterprises operating across a wide range of industries.

The report examines the most compelling trends under three main themes at the heart of outstanding people strategies for 2021 and beyond. These are: navigating the new world of work, dealing with disruption, and reinventing the role of HR.

Leading organisations shifted entire workforces to remote working within days of lockdowns being put in motion. Employee well-being leapt from being the cherry on top to being an essential HR practice, with the added challenge of rolling such programmes out digitally.

Amid the tragedy and uncertainty of the pandemic, Top Employers stepped up to find new ways of working. Yet while we have seen many shining examples of ‘next’ practices come to light, the sustainability of those initiatives as best practices is yet to be seen. As 2021 unfolds, we will surely discover how meaningful, impactful, and lasting these changes will be.

Organisations will face the choice between slipping back into comfortable routines that once served them well but that have quickly become antiquated, or forging the way forward with a sense of purpose and sustainability.

As the pandemic continues to impact the world of work, employee well-being will be a key area of attention over the year ahead for nine in every ten Top Employers, clearly demonstrating the link between employee engagement and organisational performance.

The challenge for many organisations will be to create a culture of connection, collaboration and trust in a digital work environment – while making sure employees feel inspired to perform at their best. A volatile trading environment, the ongoing health crisis and new developments in technology mean the pace of change will accelerate in 2021.

The COVID-19 pandemic catapulted organisations into the future of

work in ways that unexpectedly brought the strength of their people

practices into the spotlight. Top Employers responded and adapted with

such speed that they proved their ability to blend people and technology

in the most dynamic of ways.

Introduction

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Reinventing the role of HR

Dealing with disruption

Navigating the new world of work

Three main HR themes in 2021


Provide flexible job models such as job sharing, part-time hours, compressed hours, flexitime options, work from home, contingent working, etc.

Offer employees the flexibility to manage their own working hours.

Ensure managers do not micromanage their teams.

Gather and respond to feedback from employees to make sure you are properly protecting their well-being.

Encourage the use of advanced communication tools and networks.

Adapt to the needs of the employee

Across Europe and North America, the consequences of the weak economy may not be as bad as feared because of two factors. The first is government furlough schemes, which have supported businesses in hard-hit sectors such as hospitality, tourism, and mass transportation. As and when recovery happens, leading organisations will be poised to rehire quickly, leading to spinoff benefits for the wider economy.

The second is the accelerated shift to online commerce, which means that more organisations will seek to recruit talent in the likes of technology, digital marketing, and data science. As a result, everyone will have to fight hard to attract and retain the best people. Nobody can afford to rest on their laurels in the war for talent.

Data from Eurostat shows that across the EU’s 27 countries, the share of people aged 15-74 facing a potential need for employment in the second quarter of 2020 amounted to 14.6% of the extended labour force, 1.7 percentage points higher than the last quarter of 2019.

Labour market slack in Europe

The year ahead is expected to be a year of economic recovery despite the ongoing health crisis, but output in many countries will remain below 2019 levels, according to the OECD predictions, which is a radically different forecast to what was predicted before the start of the pandemic.

From the perspective of the labour market, a return to 2019 levels of employment is unlikely to happen before 2022. Indeed, the playing field in attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent has been dramatically altered. Leading organisations may have larger talent pools to choose from, but they are also faced with changing employee expectations as a result of the major shifts in working conditions.

The world of work today has changed in ways that few could have imagined just a year ago. Top Employers will rely on all their strengths to keep their teams happy, healthy, and hungry to perform better. HR leaders have the opportunity to build on the sharp lessons learned in order to redesign the new world of work in a way that brings closer alignment between business goals and healthy people practices.

1. Navigating the new world of work

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Train employees in how to use the available tools.

Tactfully remind employees about the need for professional presentation (camera, lighting,

etc) and good personal presentation (clothes, grooming) during video meetings. This

is especially vital for meetings with clients, to present the organisation in a professional

manner despite home settings.

Train leaders on how to manage their teams remotely.

Encourage employees to ‘unplug’ and set personal boundaries so their home does not

become a 24/7 office.

Actively discourage the use of email outside office hours.

Have a vacation embargo policy: colleagues should not be disturbed during their vacation

time, even if they are not travelling anywhere.

Practices to consider

Guiding remote teams to work effectively

When employees have access to the right tools and supports, remote working has the potential to boost retention and engagement in roles that traditionally showed high levels of turnover.

As with any type of relationship, however, the bond between employers and employees relies on mutual respect, trust, professionalism, and open communication.

No face-to-face contact

Back-to-back video meetings

Managers not respecting free

time, sending emails outside

of working hours

Distractions in the home

Poor home office design

Slow internet speeds

The pain

No time wasted on commuting

More time with family

Ability to seek information

autonomously without having

to ask others

Fewer distractions, ability to be

more productive

Reliable technology to connect

and collaborate with teams

The gain

What we hear from employees:

The gain and pain of home working

Remote working has become commonplace for a variety of roles, which used to require a physical presence at the office. Anecdotally, Top Employers reveal that by-and-large their teams have been coping well with the change to remote working, but a significant minority have struggled to adjust.

Analysis of data insights obtained from the Top Employers Institute HR Best Practices Survey does not reflect a growth in formal, global remote working policies. At the outset of 2021, it seems to be too early for organisations to know what kind of global standards they should implement. While 2020 was all about improvising, the year ahead will be one in which organisations will want to take stock of lessons learned, measure what worked well and what did not before implementing long term policy changes.

Large growth in remote working practices

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4 percentage point rise

in the past year.

evaluate performance against organisational values as part of performance review.

84%

88%


in the past year.

of Top Employers train their employees on ‘how to live’ company values.

89%

93%

The need for agility (a trend that was already underway before the onset of the pandemic) looks set to accelerate in 2021. This will require organisations to evolve their behaviours, values, and mindsets.

Company values, as always, mark the gold standard for employees to follow. But values are irrelevant unless they are understood and well-practised. We see that more Top Employers are starting to systematically train their workforces on their company values and make these values an integral part of their organisations’ performance management practices.

A greater focus on values and behaviours

want to showcase their diverse and inclusive culture.

71%

Showcase culture

showcase content from existing employees’ to show candidates what they will really experience if they join the organisation.

75%

Employee voices

align their talent-acquisition policies and processes with their EVP to ensure a consistent employee experience.

86%

Consistent policies

want to reflect employees desire to do good in the world.

89%

Sense of purpose

Leading organisations have been reviewing and updating their employee value propositions (EVPs) during the past year.

Here are the key themes that are emerging, according to data insights from the Top Employers Institute HR Best Practices Survey:

Key themes in employer branding for 2021

As the health crisis unfolds, research suggests that job security has become a key concern for job seekers, along with the well-being-related questions such as, “What does this company do for its people?”

Being recognised as a caring employer with a strong sense of purpose is an asset that Top Employers try to leverage. This underscores the importance of social sustainability and the need for organisations to provide meaningful jobs.

New employer branding to reflect a changed world

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TE21TE20 100%80%60%40%20%0%

38%29%LGBT

networks

40%39%Initiatives for

older people

52%43%Initiatives for

disabled employees

60%55%Diverse educational

backgrounds within teams

67%65%Hiring people from disadvantaged

social backgrounds

86%77%Diverse teams

(experiences, skills, people)

95%92%Gender

diversity

TOPICA comparison of the most popular D&I initiatives

With social movements, such as Black Lives Matter, making an impact on the public consciousness, employees are asking for more decisive action from their organisations when it comes to diversity and inclusion. Clearly, organisations will need to go beyond the traditional focus of gender diversity. But some of the changes require multi-year, structural interventions.

While D&I remains a key business imperative for the overwhelming majority of Top Employers, it is important to view diversity from a cultural perspective; it is not just a numbers game (e.g. board quotas). Likewise, simply complying with legal requirements is not enough, leaders should be proactive in making D&I a building block of the organisation’s culture.

As with any culture change effort, managers play a key role in acting like role models for their teams. Meanwhile, the active involvement of employees is crucial. There is still an opportunity for HR departments to improve here as 54% of Top Employers consult their D&I employee networks when developing HR practices on topics such as talent acquisition, leadership, communications, and organisational culture.

Diversity and inclusion (D&I)

The aim is not simply to mitigate risk. There is also a cultural aspect. Organisations that are known to have a strong culture of legal compliance will see a positive correlation with customer trust, profitability, employer branding, and ultimately employee engagement and retention.

During the pandemic, operational workforces resorted to workarounds when normal business processes became impossible to implement.

Might that have exposed their organisations to legal compliance risks?

Our data shows a rising number of Top Employers are evaluating the content of their ethics and compliance programmes.

Compliance is a key area of focus


in the past year.

of Top Employers evaluate the effectiveness of their ethics and integrity programmes.

77%

81%

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Since well-being has multiple dimensions (physical, emotional, social, financial, and career), the most innovative companies perceive it through a preventative lens.

In making employees actors in their own change journey, preventive well-being programmes have a positive impact on the general health, lifestyle, and behaviours of employees. And thus on the productivity and image of the company as a whole.

The new breed of corporate well-being programmes covers topics such as physical health, financial management, mindfulness, fitness, nutrition, stress management, and more.

Organisations that make these kinds of investments can expect to see a reduction in the costs and performance risks of poor productivity, absenteeism, stress, and burnout.

A preventive approach

Employee well-being was traditionally a feel-good topic for organisations. In 2021, 92% of Top Employers believe well-being is a strategic imperative for their businesses, up from 83% one year ago.

Increasingly, Top Employers are allocating a percentage of their total HR budget to programmes related to health and well-being.

It has become commonplace to have at least one full-time employee dedicated to coordinating well-being strategies at global level. Plus, extra resources are allocated to local organisations to drive activities at a regional level.

Large growth in well-being practices

Whatever initiatives they take, leading organisations aim to demonstrate results and share those results transparently to meet employee (and societal) expectations. That explains why we see a growing number of Top Employers running communication campaigns familiarise their employees with the organisation’s D&I programmes.

Separately, 59% of Top Employers now evaluate the impact and effectiveness their D&I programmes, up from 51% one year ago.

Transparency on results

Top Employers are intensifying their D&I activities this year. Besides gender diversity, key global pillars includestrategies to support underrepresented ethnic groups and creating a better work environment for people withdisabilities. Despite being tough to implement in certain countries, initiatives for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) employees continue their upward trend (a growth of 10 percentage points in the past year).

Surprisingly, age diversity remains a relatively low priority for Top Employers. We believe organisations should be giving the topic more attention because of the challenges surrounding the ageing workforce as well as the business opportunities arising from an affluent older generation of consumers.

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Source: Deloitte

Organisations that conduct exit interviews in a consistent manner will be able to gather high-quality insights and can identify the triggers that cause individuals to ‘fall out of love’ with the company.

Of course, every individual will have a different story to tell. Therefore, it is important to look for commonalities and trends in the data. Only by aggregating the feedback from hundreds of exit interviews will organisations be able to address the root causes of staff turnover.

Effective exit interviews

In times when experience is everything, we should not forget that the end of a working relationship is also part of the employee experience. For that reason, more companies are trying to offer a better off-boarding experience to their employees.

It is now widespread practice to let employees choose how, when and with whom they want to have their exit interview, to improve the chance the employee will feel comfortable giving honest feedback.

7 percentage point

rise in the past year.

give employees a range

of options to schedule

their exit interview.

68%

75%

7 percentage point


use feedback from exit

interviews to optimise

their talent offerings.

66%

73%

On-boarding, for its part, has become an ongoing process setting the stage for career growth, rather than a narrow, one-off attempt to make the new hire productive.


in the past year.

give their new hires access to a virtual pre-boarding platform before their first working day.

34%

41%


in the past year.

design their on-boarding programme as a continuous process rather than a one-off event.

88%

92%

In today’s ultra-connected world of work, a new employee’s journey begins before they sign their job contract.

It is therefore essential to provide an engaging experience from the very first to the last step of the employee journey. It begins with pre-boarding, a practice whereby the new employee is treated as a part of the company before they go on the payroll. Around four out of ten Top Employers have set up online platforms for pre-boarding. When designed with an engaging user interface, these platforms ease the employee’s transition into their new work environment and help ensure that important content, such as legal compliance training, is completed on time.

An engaging experience at every stage of the career cycle

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https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/finance/articles/cfo-insights-employee-engagement.html


How do you motivate your employees to perform at their best when they are surrounded by so much

uncertainty? The magic ingredient is for each team member to have a sense of purpose; to extract

meaning from the work they do.

If you can increase employees’ sense of purpose, you will give them long-term goals to reach and it

can become a real driver of performance.

Many studies of organisations with a strong sense of purpose show improved customer satisfaction,

an increase in productivity and profitability, and lower staff turnover. By contrast, when employees

are disengaged, organisations see high staff turnover and a decrease in performance. (Only in niche

industries can organisations use salaries and compensation to balance out disengagement.)

How does one drive a sense of purpose? It can come from the nature and purpose of the organisation,

or the impact made on surrounding the communities. But more often than not, purpose stems from an

organisation’s culture, which is driven by the top.

The quest for a sense of purpose

There is a dire need for organisations to communicate proactively with their employees, explaining the future skills envisaged to equip business for the future. It is vital that employees understand what change means for them personally, to be able to steer their own development in the right direction. Although Top Employers generally aim to communicate honestly about future workforce plans, 74% offer opportunities for employees to provide early feedback on the plans.

We see this as a risk. Unless employees feel a sense of ownership regarding these major transformations, they will see change as something they are unable to control, feeling change is something they must endure instead of feeling they are an active part of the change.

The communications challenge

Top Employers rank change management as one of their highest strategic priorities for the year ahead, knowing that the pace of change looks set to be relentless. Rapid and unanticipated disruptions can shake the foundations of an organisation; thus, HR leaders need to communicate proactively with their people, explaining the future skills needs envisaged for employees to prepare for the future.

2. Dealing with disruptionsAs organisations face a period of extreme volatility, Top Employers tackle the twin challenges of responding to the rapidly evolving business environment while ensuring their teams are ready to work together effectively.

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in the past year.

encourage employees to

share their goals with peers

and direct reports, driving

teamwork and transparency.

51%

58%


in the past year.

use technology to support

different levels offeedback

(upward, downward, peer-

to-peer).

29%

38%

As more employees work on short-term, cross-functional projects, success depends on quick collaboration and each team member having a good understanding of what is required of them.

In an emerging trend, an increasing number of Top Employers are making their performance feedback process more responsive to team dynamics. This means involving more stakeholders in giving feedback for each employee – not only line managers, who often have little visibility over daily behaviours – but also feedback from peers or customers.

Technology helps organisations implement this kind of approach. Platforms pull together information from several sources and make it easier to calibrate feedback and ensure fairness in the process.

Opportunity to involve teams in the performance feedback loop

Given the rapidly evolving business environment, many

organisations are letting employees be more flexible with

their performance objectives. It has become commonplace

to let employees recalibrate the timing or content of their

targets and receive fast feedback from their managers, to

take the corrective measures that help them stay on track.

Flexible target-setting

4 percentage point rise in the past year.

of Top Employers now allow flexible time-horizons when setting objectives.

85%

89%

Increasingly, Top Employers want to see their employees become more proactive in setting up performance and development conversations with their managers. Some 76% of Top Employers now try to ensure their employees take the lead in scheduling regular ‘check-ins’, up from 67% last year. The fact that responsibility shifts to employees is a way to engage employees in taking ownership of a process that has historically been imposed top-down.

Encouraging employees to connect with their managers

In 2021, it will be interesting to see how new team configurations influence the trends already underway in performance management and career development.

In our survey data, we see a significant rise in the number of organisations introducing a rhythm of continuous (monthly) conversations between managers and employees, which are focused on performance as well as career development. To maintain a certain degree of agility in this process and lighten the bureaucracy, the outputs do not always have to be formally registered in a system.

This approach is grounded in the belief that feedback is best delivered in a timely fashion, helping employees to look forward and make improvements rather than spend too much time dwelling on past failures that may have occurred months ago.

A more flexible approach to performance and development

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6 percentage point


have communities of

practice to support

social learning.

59%

65%

6 percentage point


have online learning

communities to facilitate

agile learning.

69%

75%

A decade ago, eLearning was an emerging trend, now it is for many organisations an essential means of engaging and upskilling their people. With classroom learning difficult to put into practice during the global pandemic, there has been a rise in the use of digital platforms to facilitate social learning, which is one of the most effective ways to develop and increase organisational knowledge. Top Employers are increasingly encouraging teams to learn from each other and exchange knowledge faster through formal and informal social networks.

The way forward will be for employees to embrace new methods such as learning from the learner, learning how to learn, learning how to teach, and sharing their own knowledge. Tools and channels will need to be adapted to new needs and preferences from employees, for example, on-demand podcasts. Importantly, content should be bite-sized and provided ‘just in time’ to ensure greater knowledge retention and application.

More social learning in the digital space

Are business leaders trying to preserve their right to control who can really apply to join their ranks? We often hear that ‘talent tracks’ such as 360 feedback, coaching, mentoring, and elite networks are still only being made available to a selected few. This is certainly an area for Top Employers to improve in 2021 and beyond.

Overcoming the gatekeepers

14 percentage point descrease

in the past year.

of Top Employers make leadership self-assessment freely available to all employees.

84%

72%

However, leadership development remains

a black box in many organisations. While our

survey data shows that 83% of Top Employers

worldwide give general information about their

leadership development offering to all employees,

only 71% allow ordinary employees to apply

based on merit or self-assessment, which is

actually a decline on last year.

Given that leaders are foundational to business strategy, it is important to offer opportunities for people at

all stages of the career ladder to develop themselves.

Leadership development is still not inclusive enough

Source: The Enterprise AI Company

Execution

Agility

Cost management

Communication

Empowerment

Risk mitigation

Prioritisation

Truthfulness

Empathy

Clarity

10 traits for good leaders in 2021

The importance of good leadership in navigating organisations through volatility cannot be overstated. As role models for teams, leaders should be demonstrating the behaviours and mindsets they expect everyone else to follow.

Key qualities for leaders in 2021 include empathy, empowerment, communication, and agility – characteristics that are part of the competency frameworks at many Top Employers.

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https://2021.ai/top-10-critical-leadership-skills/


When, and if, travel recovers to normal levels, which is not projected to happen until 2022, the function of offices will undoubtedly have to evolve, accelerating trends that emphasise the importance of fast collaboration and innovation.

Real-estate experts such as Coen van Oostrom believe companies will redesign their offices to feel like clubhouses. Employees will probably spend two or three days a week at the office and the rest of their time working remotely, at home or at co-working hubs located close to their homes.

Offices will remain attractive because of the social interaction they offer. Working from home permanently may result in losing out on lucrative networking opportunities. A lack of visibility to higher management would also increase the risk of roles being replaced by artificial intelligence or outsourced to cheaper locations – because if there is no reason to visit the office, why not broaden employment opportunities to locations previously overlooked?

The office as a clubhouse

For some, one of the more pleasant memories of 2020 will be how remote working became a reality for millions of employees around the world. Of course, not everyone enjoyed the change. Many found it hard to work from home in spaces not designed for long hours of work. Some struggled with their mental health, being stuck inside their homes for long periods. And as video conferencing became the number one communications tool, the internet came alive with funny stories of employees lacking basic training on how to use their cameras and microphones.

Now, as 2021 dawns, Top Employers will want to take remote working to the next level: more professional, more productive, more human. In fact, 93% of Top Employers are already using social tools such as Microsoft Teams or Slack to collaborate internally.

While Top Employers indicate that these tools have proven useful for quick catch-ups and project communication, they still see a need for better tools to facilitate idea generation – such as workshops and conferences – without the key people being physically present in the room.

Any new technology that can replicate the human experience of brainstorming at the office will find an eager audience in 2021 and beyond.

Enabling a social work environment despite increasing digitalisation

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of Top Employers

have a platform in

place to support

peer-to-peer

recognition.

62%Fosters a positive, agile work environment.Encourages managers to recognise good work.Gives real-life examples of company behaviours and values in action.Simplifies processes – recognition can be shared through mobile or social channels.Does not necessarily require cash; a ‘thank you’ can often be enough.

Benefits of a recognition programme

In the past, managers were the ones in charge of giving recognition at key moments in the year, such as after a good set of quarterly results. Now, the majority of Top Employers have started to introduce platforms and programmes to support real-time, peer-to-peer recognition, an important ingredient in keeping teams motivated and engaged.

8 percentage

point rise

in the past year.

define standards for employee networks to support a business purpose.

50%

58%

11 percentage

point rise

in the past year.

of Top Employers provide incentives for employees to develop formal networks.

34%

45%

Amid new ways of working, Top Employers are taking a fresh look at the purpose of their employee networks.The benefits of employee networks are twofold.

First, the personal relationships cultivated through social interaction can result in career development opportunities for employees.

Second, from an innovation standpoint, it is beneficial to bring together diverse groups of employees from different functions and locations.

A fast-growing number of Top Employers are professionalising the management of their employee groups. They are implementing standards to ensure a stronger sense of purpose, good governance, and policies to make networks more inclusive. Network organisers are also likely to see the quality of their work being formally evaluated as a condition for the provision of funds.

Facilitating quality networking relationships

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3. Reinventing the role of HRWith several crises to manage – health, economic, and social – HR professionals need to go beyond ‘functional excellence’ and find new ways to add value to their organisations.

Amid new ways of working, organisations will want to take a fresh look at the purpose of their employee networks over the year ahead. Top Employers are professionalising the management of employee social groups. They are implementing standards to ensure a stronger sense of purpose, good governance, and policies to make networks become more inclusive. The leaders of networks are also likely to see the quality of their work being formally evaluated as a condition for the provision of funds.

HR leaders HR business partners

The biggest challenge is to remain resilient and results-oriented while supporting organisations to cope with change, including the impact change is having on employees’ welfare and well-being.

A change of mentality is needed to move away from the search for functional excellence to solving the human problems that slow down the organisation, while being a moral guardian that looks after the well-being of employees. HR is evolving from business partner to business maker.

HR operational teams

The latest technological applications are changing behaviours and realities at work. Operational HR teams should take advantage of automation opportunities to free up time and get closer to their clients; for example, by moving from data reporting to data analysis, and by making extensive use of chatbots to interact on administrative aspects.

The challenges

Rei

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the

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f H

R


Source: Merryck & Co

View an excellent HR function as table

stakes, rather than the endgame of your

role. You earn respect and credibility by

modelling the leadership behaviours

that you’re asking other C-suite leaders

to embrace.

Model leadership excellence

05

Translate the values and cultural

expectations of your company into

crisp, specific, and memorable

messaging – ensuring the strategy

is as clear to everyone in the

organisation as it is to the CEO.

View culture as a business driver

04

Boards want to know more than trending

directions on annual employee engagement

scores. Providing regular reporting on

cultural health – including insights about why

people are leaving and progress on D&I

initiatives – will build trust at the top.

Bring a viewpoint to the boardroom

03

Make the whole enterprise greater than the sum of its parts

by spotting where different elements are meshing well and

building on one another, and where there are gaps and seams.

Optimise the organisation, not just processes

02

Understand your organisation’s strategy, not as a passive

observer, but as a contributor who can envision how the

strategy will be executed – and the talents and skills required

to accomplish the work.

Put strategy first, function second

01

Five priorities of exceptional human resources leaders:

Merryck & Co defined five priorities for maximising a CHRO’s contributions to their organisations in 2021.

New mindset for HR leaders

Communication: It is vitally important to be transparent to employees about aspects like career paths, succession planning and compensation. Tone of voice and the style of communication count just as much as the message itself. It works best to use simple language, directly addressed to the reader, and present complex information in a user-friendly, visual way.

HR IT strategy: Technology can support HR teams to increase data accuracy and enable employees to take ownership over administrative matters. Organisations have the power to upgrade their IT solutions to make them easier to experience, using the insights from marketing to make sure they deliver a high-quality user experience. Let’s never forget that the H in HR must always stay human!

Change management: HR professionals need to develop their EQ (emotional intelligence) skills to help teams navigate their way along the change curve. In restructuring programmes, for example, we see it as best practice to involve employees from the outset by incorporating their feedback to improve programmes as they move from planning to execution. Further along the curve, it is also best practice to ask for employee feedback to identify improvements that will keep people engaged.

Talent acquisition: It is imperative to create an engaging candidate experience. As we all know, the experience of going through the selection process tells a lot more about the reality of the organisation than the brand messaging. Other key priorities for recruitment teams in 2021 include making sure their marketing campaigns are social-media savvy, making greater use of employee referral programmes, arranging new initiatives with external partners, and providing guidance to managers in making the right hiring decisions. Even for organisations that may be putting a brake on their hiring activity, maintaining investment in a strong employer brand is key.

Career management: Providing sufficient human support, together with tools for self-managing development plans, is the optimal way for employees to grow their careers in line with their individual aspirations and business requirements.

Opportunities for HR

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https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Superhuman-resources-How-HR-leaders-have-redefined-their-C-suite-role?gko=8be06

https://www.merryck.com/emea/articles/superhuman-resources-how-hr-leaders-have-redefined-their-c-suite-role/


Explaining the rationale behind decisions, which should be anchored to the organisation’s

core strategy, mission, and vision.

Contacting employees as early as possible to communicate the impact of change on their

daily work.

Giving employees opportunities to share feedback, and to incorporate it where possible.

Making sure teams are mentally prepared to adopt new skills needed.

Engaging leaders in a peer-to-peer dialogue (e.g. through online leadership communities)

to make sure they are willing to role-model the change.

Keeping informal ‘water cooler’ channels open (e.g. internal social media) to facilitate

awareness and understanding.

Supporting teams and organisations through change requires:

HR professionals face an urgent need to develop their skills in emotional intelligence and change management to help teams navigate the change curve.

While the vast majority of Top Employers are confident in their organisations’ change management capabilities, our data seems to indicate the opposite. HR professionals’ ability to measure progress after executing the primary steps within a change process appears to be lagging a bit. For example, only 52% of Top Employers say they monitor the follow-up impact of change to ensure adoption.

How to improve this practice? In restructuring programmes, for example, it is best practice to involve employees from the outset; incorporating their feedback as programmes move from planning into execution (this ensures programmes are not run from ‘ivory towers’). Further along the curve, it is also a good idea to ask for employee feedback to identify improvements and keep teams engaged in making it all happen.

The change manager: supporting organisations through transformation

Source: David Ulrich

Personal effectiveness: being a credible activist, be able to hold leaders accountable.

Stakeholder value: being a strategic positioner.

Business results: being a paradox navigator.

HR leaders who become successful business partners exemplify these qualities:

Becoming an exceptional HR business partner

Every HR business partner understands that their work will not hit the spot unless they have a forensic knowledge of the needs of their organisation’s customers while also being able to provide operational support and performance measurements.

In this, it is vital for HR business partners to shift their mindset away from driving functional excellence. The goal should be to drive excellent business outcomes by solving the talent issues that are putting a brake on performance – while simultaneously playing the role of a moral guardian safeguarding people’s welfare and well-being.

This is an especially important mission for organisations in 2021 as business leaders will likely be asking more from their HR counterparts than ever before.

The business partner: becoming a business ‘value creator’

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https://strategicleaders.com/evolution-hr-business-partner/


85% of Top Employers coach managers involved in candidate selection to help them make good hiring decisions, prioritising team fit and soft skills over a narrow focus on technical skills alone. We strongly recommend continuing these efforts in 2021, as managers will want to be empowered to make the right judgements with speed and transparency, based on objective criteria.

Guiding managers to make the best hiring choices

04

77% of Top Employers already operate an employeereferral programme. By placing a cash value on the referrer’s choice, employees feel that their recommendations are worth something, which is engaging. In 2021, recruiters may want to make sure their programmes connect with a broader, more diverse talent pool and feature simple processes to influence Gen Z candidates.

Taking referral programmes to the next level

03

Occasional recruitment campaigns at key universities used to be the preferred way to connect with upcoming talent. Now, more than half of Top Employers seek to expand their networks of trusted partners by sponsoring initiatives such as innovation labs, hackathons, and apprenticeship prgrammes. This is a trend we expect to see grow further in 2021 as it will enable organisations to gain access to future Gen Z leaders.

Building deeper relationships with industry partners

02

In a bid to provide targeted information to key audiences, 31% of Top Employers are deploying ‘microsites’ with interactive content to make information quick and easy to access. The content includes dedicated information for candidates, graduates or interns.

Improving strategic competencies in social media

01

Four key areas for recruitment teams

Urgent challenges for recruitment professionals in 2021

In a bid to provide targeted information to key audiences, 29% of Top Employers are deploying ‘microsites’ with interactive content to make information quick and easy to access. The content includes dedicated information for candidates, graduates or interns.

Targeted content


of Top Employers try to optimise the candidate journey to ensure the experience is streamlined and engaging.

63%

69%

Growing focus on candidate experience

Increasingly, employees wish to work for organisations with a sense of purpose. Top Employers enjoy a brand advantage in this space, but the recruitment tactics of the past need to be augmented by new approaches to connect with a broader, more diverse talent pool.

With Millennials and Generation Z making up over half of the workforce, it is imperative to create an engaging candidate experience. The experience of going through the selection process tells a lot more about the reality of the organisation than the brand messaging being communicated.

By speeding up recruitment processes and relying on advanced technology, HR professionals can boost the candidate experience and increase the quality of applications received. Ongoing measurement is also important to identify possible improvements.

The talent curator: marketing-led approaches to provide the best candidate experience

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use feedback from exit interviews to improve or optimise their talent practices/offerings.

73%

do an annual well-being assessment to identify employee interests, likes and dislikes.

52%

measure employees’ perception of the quality of internal communication.80%

consider and follow up on ideas/suggestions submitted by employees.82%

measure how new hires’ employer-brand impressions align with their experience after joining.

39%systematically measure employees’ satisfaction with their performance review.

48%

augment existing employee engagement surveys with more frequent, pulse surveys.69%

systematically capture the career aspirations of employees.85%

New insight in the Top Employers Institute HR Best Practices Survey.

are supporting their business with data sets (quantitative and qualitative) related to the workforce.

88%are adjusting their performance management approach based on employee feedback.

90%

Here are the most popular feedback topics from Top Employers in 2021:

What to measure

Revealing a sharp 10 percentage point increase on last year, 85% of Top Employers aim to provide their business leaders with HR data for fact-based decisions about the workforce. But even though excellent progress has been made on the analytics side of things, the challenge remains in making the data business-aligned. HR is moving from reporting HRIS data to gathering, analysing, and presenting solutions based on an analysis of that data.

Recruiters may, for example, be measuring operational aspects like the number of CVs processed, whereas business leaders want to focus on raising the quality of candidates hired, improving candidate experience, and boosting diversity. Source data might not be the desired quality needed to win stakeholder trust. For all these reasons, it is well worth investing time in developing your capabilities in data analysis over the year ahead.

The need to improve HR data capabilities

A key priority for Top Employers is to gather timely feedback to address the cultural health of their organisations and to respond promptly to teams’ concerns.

Given the need for speed, many organisations are moving away from bureaucratic company-wide engagement surveys and instead relying on agile pulse surveys or ‘net promoter score’ questions such as, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how highly would you recommend your company to your family and friends?”

It is important to have a mix of top-down and bottom-up tactics. The goal is to react quickly and spot emerging workforce and engagement issues before they become urgent. When done well, HR teams appear more proactive and responsive to business needs.

The listener:a user-led approach to employee feedback

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Self-actualisation

Esteem

Love/Belonging

Safety

Physiological

While it is good to be transparent about compensation, it is also important to recognise that compensation is not a primary driver in keeping people engaged.

Motivation theory, based on observations made in the 1940s by the psychologist Abraham Maslow, shows a pyramid-shaped presentation of the hierarchy of needs. Note: a pay-rise does not meet employees’ need for self-fulfilment, which is located at the very top of the pyramid.

Daniel H Pink researched the same topic using scientific experiments and discovered that the effect of a pay increase on motivation only lasts two to three weeks. A pay increase seems to only affect extrinsic motivation and thus has a limited effect on people’s long-term commitment.

Understanding the effect ofcompensation on motivation

As evidence of this trend, 83% of Top Employers now regularly communicate consolidated rewards information to their employees, up from 79% last year, and 75% make sure they use a positive tone of voice, up from 64% one year ago. It appears the concept of the user-friendly ‘total rewards statement’ is here to stay.

When employees are well informed, they will better appreciate the totality of their rewards package and know exactly how much they stand to lose (or gain) if they switch jobs.

Technology gives organisations the tools needed to provide this transparency and help people grasp the true value of benefits such as lease cars, stock options, bonuses, and pensions. Of utmost importance is the tone of voice and the style of communication: it works best to use simple language, directly addressed to the reader, and present complex information in a user-friendly, visual way.

With HR increasingly taking the lead in employee communications, organisations have an opportunity to improve communication around compensation, which is often cited by employees as a reason for low engagement or for leaving the organisation.

Improving communications on compensation

Employees may be expected to take the initiative in their own development, but they should not be required to do it all themselves.

Over recent years, leading organisations have discovered that asking employees to ‘own’ their careers without proper human support leads to career stagnation. With so many managers having multiple direct reports, leaders just do not have enough time to act as career coaches. This explains why 35% of Top Employers now offer dedicated career counsellors to their people.

Providing sufficient human support, together with tools for managing career and development plans, is the optimal way for your employees to grow their careers in line with individual aspirations and business requirements.

Putting human support back into career management

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Many Top Employers are starting to exploit mobile apps for general HR administration purposes. This is especially interesting for blue-collar populations to be able to make basic changes and requests.

Mobile HR services

04

As 83% of Top Employers have learning portals that are optimised for mobile devices, programmes facilitating autonomous learning are popping up everywhere.

Mobile learning

03

Pulse surveys and the like can be easily completed on mobile devices, ideal for employees to complete during their downtime or while commuting to work.

Employee surveys

02

A fast-growing number of Top Employers are investing in mobile functionalities to make the employee experience easier – enabling a faster tracking of exchanges on 1-2-1 check-ins, and to have a richer and more reliable database for predictive analysis.

Performance management

Here are some examples:

01

Nowadays, almost every employee has a powerful computer in their pocket: their smartphone. This is an opportunity for blue-collar employees and frontline staff as it means they can download company apps to their personal mobile devices – driving efficiency, automation, and consistency in the service provided. Mobile technology also supports white-collar HR teams to make people practices more engaging and enables employees to take some administrative matters into their own hands.

Mobile-friendly solutions: the opportunities for HR

This is especially true at the most innovative white-collar organisations, that frequently upgrade their HR technology to ensure the finest user experience, following best-practice approaches from marketing and web design when rolling out their platforms and sites.

Meanwhile, technology can support HR teams to increase data accuracy and enable employees to take some administrative matters into their own hands.

But even with these advancements, human support from operational staff remains essential, because every employees’ needs are different.


of Top Employers

provide all-employee

access to an integrated

HR services platform.

80%

87%

Yet the complexity of organisations and the limits of poor technology may be making these ambitions difficult to realise.

Now, finally, the latest HR technology applications promise to be game changers, which means HR teams have the power to upgrade their IT solutions for an easier and more friendly user experience. This is a vital need considering today’s fragmented workforce.

With all these developments, operational HR teams can finally reach their potential to become more automated, integrated, and customer-driven.

Most Top Employers have an HR IT strategy that aims to provide employees with a single sign-on platform containing access to whatever piece of information the person might need, letting HR teams concentrate on the strategic side of things.

Enabling a consumer-like experience of HR

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The trends covered in this report lead us to conclude that the functional frontiers of HR responsibility

are blurring rapidly.

Wherever we look, we see that the organisational demands of the modern HR professional will

only be solved by HR taking on new challenges, picking up responsibilities of other functional areas

including internal communications (engagement), marketing (talent acquisition) and IT (systems,

tools and data).

It will not be easy and the change will not happen overnight, but it will definitely happen.

So, are you ready to reinvent your role in HR?

A final remark

Last year was a memorable year for reasons good and bad. At heart, it has been a year of heightened change and risk. Therefore, 2021 is the year to have serious conversations about whether enough organisational safeguards are in place.

The aim? To encourage a culture where people understand the pivotal importance of responsible business behaviours and can feel free to report incidents of wrongdoing before they become a major compliance risk.Currently, 65% of Top Employers ask employees to share their perceptions on the ethical standards of the organisation. Although this is an improvement of 12 percentage points on one year ago, the practice is still not as widespread as we would have expected. Perhaps this is because the topic of ethics and compliance usually falls under the responsibility of the legal department.

No matter who organises the feedback or survey channel, asking employees for their feedback could be a strong tool in keeping them engaged with the organisation’s compliance effort. It could be an opportunity for HR professionals to burnish their credentials in environmental, social, and governance practices.

HR as guardian of business ethics

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1. Values2. Ethics & Integrity3. Diversity &Inclusion4. Sustainability

UNITE

1. Well-being2. Engagement3. Rewards &

Recognition4. Off-boarding

ENGAGE

1. Performance2. Career3. Learning

DEVELOP

1. EmployerBranding

2. Talent Acquisition3. On-boarding

ATTRACT

1. Organisation & Change2. Digital HR3. Work Environment

SHAPE

1. Business Strategy2. People Strategy3. Leadership

STEER

The six survey domains

Our research has a global scope: the data covers leading employers across Europe, Middle East, Latin America, APAC and Africa. Our digital survey, allow us to identify not only growth per practice but also to define trends based on imperatives such as transparency, agility, ownership and others, as shared in this report.

Global

We measure many of the same variables every year so our data analysts can identify and benchmark emerging trends and see which practices are losing popularity. The best practices that we collect create a natural continuous improvement process to update and maintain the relevance of the Top Employers Institute HR Best Practices Survey.

Fact-based

Before an organisation can be certified as a Top Employer, HR auditors validate the answers provided by the organisation in the HR Best Practices Survey. This validation is a necessary step to ensure that the data is accurate, reflects the standards required by Top Employers Institute, and provides additional clarity to the participating organisation.

Objective

Discover what makes the annual Top Employers Institute HR Trends Report unique.

The data shown in this report has been extracted from the anonymised responses of 1 691 global participants of the Top Employers Institute’s HR Best Practices Survey.

Relying on internally and externally audited data covering six key domains of HR ensures that our analysis is objective and fact-based. Therefore, our data stands the test of time.

Methodology


Additional contributors:Malvina de Corbier, HR Auditor

Britta Fischer, HR Auditor

Gabor Majdan, Application support engineer

Michelle Marchi, HR Auditor

Federica Marucci, HR Auditor

Nathalie Médard, Senior HR Auditor

Fabiane Panaro, HR Auditor

Editorial team:

Bronwyn Wainwright, Global Content Manager, Top Employers Institute

Benoit Montet, International HR Expert, Top Employers Institute

Anthony Chute, Graphic Designer, Odyssey Studio

Enda Murphy, Copywriter, Greenline Communications

Lisa WangHR Auditor

Janneke RoelofsGlobal HR Auditor

Ammara NaeemGlobal HR Auditor

Eric MorelloGlobal Certification Manager

Benoit MontetInternational HR Expert

Doreen LiuGlobal HR Auditor

Laura de MoriRegional Certification Manager

Bronwen DaviesGlobal HR Auditor

Contributors

Research team:

Irene MartinezHR Auditor


1 691Certified organisations

+ 7 000 000Employee lives positively impactedCountries/regions

120

Years in industry

30

About Top Employers InstituteTop Employers Institute is the global authority on recognising excellence in people practices. We help organisations accelerate their people practices to enrich the work of work. The Top Employers Certification Programme provides participating organisations with branding, benchmarking, alignment and connection tools to further enhance and solidify their position as an employer of choice.

Identifying Top Employers across the globe for 30 years.

Top Employers Institute has certified 1 691 organisations in 120 countries/regions, impacting the lives of more than seven million employees. We are dedicated to helping organisations with world-class employee conditions become recognised for the great employers they are. Discover the benefits of getting certified by downloading our latest report on the value of participation.

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© Top Employers Institute – HR Trends Report 2021

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HR Trends Report 2021