Most of us might be planning for the holiday season, but for HR professionals, it is time to start planning ahead in anticipation of the HR trends for 2024. Gartner surveyed and released its annual report for the “Top 5 Priorities for HR Leaders in 2024” and it provides a very detailed glimpse into 2024 HR trends that will shape companies across borders and industries. Leader and manager development and organizational culture are featured on the top of the Gartner list with HR technology, change management, and career management/internal mobility following closely. Evaluating what these trends mean for HR in 2024 can be a game-changer for a company’s prospects.
Gartner surveyed more than 500 HR leaders from 40 countries for the study, getting a reliable cross-section of the global population and their insights into the future of HR.
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HR Trends for 2024: How We Got Here
This year has been a swing year for the debate on the online vs. offline work benefits and pitfalls. Going into 2023, People Matters stated that hybrid work would gain momentum and would be among the top priorities for HR professionals to plan for and they were largely correct. Even Gartner had predicted that 39 percent of global knowledge workers would work hybrid jobs by the end of the year, a two percent increase from the previous year. The two sources also emphasized DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) as well as the employee experience and well-being for 2023, and Capterra reported that the DEI budget was in fact increased in 2023.
In a similar sense, new HR trends in 2024 can help companies decide what to prioritize so they can match up to their competitors and provide top talent with the best version of the culture and benefits they are looking for while job hunting. It also helps HR professionals avoid any major mistakes in how they approach hot-button issues. Gartner’s top 5 HR trends for 2024 are a good place to start, although ultimately, companies have to make a decision based on their own company culture and priorities.
Leadership and Manager Development—HR in 2024
HR trends for 2024 are likely to be shaped by the limitations and problems experienced in 2023. 73 percent of the surveyed HR leaders reported that their organizational decision-makers were not equipped to lead change. According to these experts, not only are managers unprepared to deal with the pressures of their role but they are unlikely to improve with training as it will not address core problems like reducing workloads and or finding motivation or commitment to the job role. Organizations are instead set to evolve the job role, reframing the expectations and structures that cause such disbalance in managerial positions in the first place.
As such, HR in 2024 is set to reset the role expectations to reduce the unnecessary burdens placed on managers and allow them to focus on the tasks they are equipped to execute. Companies also intend to reshape the manager pipeline that currently allows those unprepared for the role to take charge. Both moves together can essentially reshape who takes on a managerial role next. HR professionals also intend to invest in reestablishing manager habits and removing process hurdles that get in the way of qualified professionals doing their jobs. A survey by RedThread by the end of 2022 found that the effectiveness of managers in assisting employees to get their work done had declined by 12 percent since 2020 so the focus on manager development is a necessary one for employee performance to increase overall.
Organizational Culture
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again—the culture of an organization is critical to its success. “In 2023, your workplace culture priorities will determine whether your company thrives or falls behind” was a simple but poignant point made by Great Places to Work, and that factor continues to feature among HR trends for 2024. 41 percent of Gartner’s respondents believe that the hybrid work format is to blame for the weakening connection between employees and work and many other companies seem to feel the same. CNBC reported on a Resume Builder report, stating that 90 percent of companies intend to push for return-to-work policies by the end of 2024. More than 27 percent of companies have already made the move in 2023 according to Forbes.
“For culture to succeed in a hybrid world, leaders must work intentionally to align and connect employees to it,” the Top 5 Priorities for HR Leaders in 2024 report states. Breaking down how the employee’s cultural connectedness can be boosted by 43 percent when it is diffused through the work itself, the report adds connection through emotional proximity and a focus on micro-based group experiences to the list of things to account for among the 2024 HR trends.
HR Technology Marking Itself as a Priority
We are firmly in the midst of the digital era and companies are fast realizing the benefits and challenges of keeping up with technological advancements. AI is everywhere you look and 76 percent of HR leaders seem to be in agreement that organizational success will be greatly impacted if they fail to adopt generative AI into their structures and systems in the next 12-24 months.
Two noteworthy areas to consider here, with the assistance of the report, are the workforce readiness to handle HR technology and the risks and ethics that are paired with the adoption of tech and AI. BW People wrote about some of the struggles and risks in this line of engagement, highlighting incompatible HR technology, missed strategic insights, wasted resources, scaling struggles, security breaches, and an assortment of other issues with rushing into technological adoption without being prepared. If companies are serious about this new HR trend in 2024, they need to make informed and well-thought-out moves towards HR tech and AI.
Change Management—Preparing For Change Before Adopting Changes
“Change fatigue” is the word for the day as employees are faced with large volumes of change regularly with insufficient resources to keep up with them. Reportedly, those experiencing such change fatigue show 42 percent of a decreased intent to stay and 30 percent lower levels of trust. Their performance appears to also become less responsive and sustainable.
Gartner recommends that organizations build change fatigue management into their plans for transformation if they want their initiatives to be successful. They suggest that organizations should not only identify and fix problems but build on strategies that prevent change fatigue from setting in to begin with.
Career Management and Internal Mobility To Reshape HR in 2024
If businesses aim to grow, so do employees. Most job seekers also seek to grow in their respective career paths and while the metrics of growth may vary for them, having a clear path within an organization can build their loyalty to the company itself. “89% of HR leaders believe career paths at their organizations are unclear for many employees” according to the Gartner database, making it evident that a majority of organizations have not spared their employees a thought in their own march towards growth and expansion.
They recommend the inclusion of adaptive career paths in HR trends for 2024, that acknowledge that traditional paths to a specific job role are no longer commonplace. Many job seekers now land their careers in a variety of different ways without complete preparedness for what step to take next. Often, moving to a new company offers them the only form of clarity or measure of growth and that is what employees resort to. Having clear conversations about how an employee can hope to grow within the organization can be an encouraging contributor to building their loyalty and commitment to the company itself.
Trends can be fleeting but following HR trends and predictions can be a way for organizations to keep pace with what is going on in the market. Independent analysis and data reviews of internal numbers and figures are a way to assess whether predictions can be matched up to those provided by knowledgeable sources like Gartner. To keep up with the restless market we’re faced with today, it might be time to consider these new HR trends for 2024.