Each year, professionals, regardless of industry, ask a single question:  what will the New Year bring?  The same can be said for Human Resources professionals.  If anything, those in HR have become accustomed to being disrupted.  For that, we can thank technology.

And in years past, HR Technology has been the focus of many HR trends.    Just take a look at the HR trends and challenges from 2018.

• People Analytics
• Passive Candidates
• Employee Experience
• Going Digital
• The Remote Workforce
• BYOD: Bring Your Own Device

HR Trends

Many of those did turn into actionable tends for HR professionals, but those of us who research and write about the HR space saw a shift in focus.

Many professionals began to move more toward real issues focused on employees. 

Ensuring High Employee Engagement

One of the more interesting ones is ensuring high employee engagement.  HR has almost always seen a thin line of separation between employee engagement and employee experience.  This year, we’re seeing that the employee experience is really a part of the overall employee engagement strategy.

Why? 

“Experience is everything,” Sebastien Girard said.  He’s the Senior Vice President for Workforce Engagement at Atrium Health.  “High engagement through amazing culture and opportunities for your teammates is one of, if not the main drivers, in increasing teammate retention.”

Girard didn’t stop there.

“High retention and high engagement results creates less pressure on the organization and HR.  It also means higher expertise, higher tenure, accelerated growth, and stronger productivity.”

Diversity and Inclusion

Another trend for 2019 focuses on Diversity and Inclusion.  The United States is in an interesting situation right now.  We have more jobs available than we have workers.  As a result, there is a push to look at other groups that could potentially fill those positions.  For instance, retired workers, those formerly incarcerated, and even those with Intellectual or Developmental  Disabilities.

But that doesn’t mean other areas of Diversity and Inclusion are overlooked.  There is still work to be done in race equality, gender equality and pay equity.

Take TransUnion for instance.

TransUnion really focused on this in 2018 and even made key changes in their leaderships.  Instead of positions being held by just men, the company added some women to the ranks.  But it isn’t something that happened overnight and the work continues into 2019.  Debra Wasserman is the Senior Director of Compensation and Benefits at TransUnion.  She said TransUnion used a top-down approach.

“We started with the senior-most leaders and followed it down throughout the organization,” Wasserman said.  “I think to some degree, there needed to be some awareness.  So, we had to get this front and center in front of everyone.”

From there, Wasserman says the company has started looking at pay equity.  She said some states already require this, but they’ve started looking at it as a global issue as well.

“We don’t have all the answers.  We’re just starting to ask questions at this point, but we’re trying to make a move toward a more diverse situation,” Wasserman said.

HR Trends 2019

These are but two of an expanded list of HR trends in the HR Exchange Network’s HR Trends 2019 report.  We also cover trends including HR technology, career pathing, and performance just to name a few.  Our report is available for download now.

Benefits of downloading it include:

• Insight from HR professionals at companies such as Facebook, TransUnion, Elkay Manufacturing, Flex, Atrium Health, Beacon Health Options and Gap, Inc.
• Details on topics including HR Technology, company performance and employee engagement
• Solutions and ways to prepare for the latest trends in the HR Space.