What’s Top of Mind For Talent Leaders in 2023?

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Top of mind for talent leaders talent trends

Over the past few months, I have been fortunate to participate in every major talent conference in person. I’ve spoken with countless talent and work tech leaders. Based on those conversations, here are the top trends that are shaping the HR function, at least through 2023.

Trend 1: Agility in Workforce Management

As the economic climate seems to change more frequently than ever before, how quickly can talent leaders shift their workforce (hiring, internal mobility, scheduling, and letting go) to remain competitive? Workforce management and productivity software has seen a sharp rise in usage as organizations grapple with how to place people in the right place at the right time and at the right cost structure.

Trend 2: Hiring for Skills, Not Pedigree

Skill-based hiring is a hot area and has deep implications for enabling greater opportunities for candidate pools who simply can’t afford expensive college degrees. However, the pandemic really questioned how jobs are designed and created an opportunity to look at the underpinning skills required for the new way of working.

The shift towards skill-based hiring and development has fueled organizations to deploy technologies that can help with analyzing job descriptions and highlighting the key skills required to perform the job successfully. Any major HRIS platform presently has skills maps and taxonomies that can be leveraged to help you analyze your current job design. In case your current HR platform doesn’t provide a skills taxonomy, Open Skills by Lightcast is a great free resource to help you get started.

Trend 3: Pay Transparency

Several states in the US have enacted salary range pay transparency laws including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Rhode Island, and Washington. This is progress, however, the pay ranges are so wide that they are almost meaningless to a candidate or to an employee.

The challenge is that job grading and banding are so broad, compensation professionals have a difficult time identifying the exact work being performed by the individual to narrow down the ranges. This will continue to be a challenge unless employers move away from banding to more granular job design.

Trend 4: Flex Work & Well-Being

People leaders have gotten slightly more comfortable with trusting employees to work remotely. Worker productivity actually increased during the pandemic and gave rise to the well-being movement, both mental and physical.

The 4-day workweek trial by 61 companies in the UK was relatively successful in terms of generating increased revenues with less stressed employees. This study has employers rethinking the traditional workweek.

However, there is some concern about whether leaders are prepared to handle such a change while building a teaming culture in a distributed or remote environment.

This trend has a significant impact on improving the outcomes for people in underrepresented communities who have challenges with physical mobility.

Trend 5: AI In The Workplace

There is tremendous momentum regarding how AI and GPT will penetrate the workplace. On one hand, it has the potential to drive exponential productivity and efficiency, and on the other hand, there is concern about unintended consequences such as bias or unethical behavior. The real question that is yet to be answered is whether AI is more, less, or as biased as us humans. Skepticism is natural though of any new disruptive technology and it comes with an adoption curve.

Amit Parmar
WRITTEN BY

Amit Parmar

Global HR & Talent leader with P&L experience partnering with C-level executives in multi-billion dollar organizations. Leading teams to develop and execute global talent experience strategies for enterprise-wide business goals. Seventeen plus years of experience in the technology industry across various human capital management disciplines.