We’re at that time of the year that we need to commit the 2024 People strategy to ambitious goals and KPIs, and I find myself reflecting on three significant events that happened to me in 2023: I co-authored a book called How to be a CPO with Jennifer Geary, I met two HR legends, the incredible Amy Edmonson and Dave Ulrich, and I secured what I can only call my dream job. All three experiences further confirmed to me the continued importance of the People function and while 2024 will be challenging , what we will achieve through our work will continue to enable business success and empower our employees to thrive.
In our book, we considered the core areas of focus for Chief People Officers in our Emerging Topics section. These included Ways of Working 2.0, HR digital transformation and work redesign, and finding the tangible value of human capital. Since the start of 2024, many informed research houses and HR gurus have listed the trends they expect to be in the spotlight this year: increasing the use of HR tech to drive improved automation, efficiency and employee experience; more employee-centred HR; and continued focus on creating the future of work. Not far from everyone’s minds are AI, sustainability and building a skills-based organisation. A few of these are particularly top of mind for me in 2024:
- WOW 2.0 and employee-centred HR
Where we work (from home, the office or both), when we work (at the times we are most effective to deliver great outcomes) and how we work (through great interactions, and focusing on performance) rightly remains in the spotlight for the c-suite and senior leaders. Companies who continue to focus on getting this right, testing learning and iterating on what works best, will be rewarded with great company performance and employee loyalty and motivation. There is no one single successful solution – the answer will lie in open dialogue and staying laser focused on getting it right – for the business and for our employees.
- HR digital transformation and work re-design
The HR technology architecture is at the heart of automation, efficiency and improvement of the employee experience. Self-service (completing their own updates), self-solving (finding the answer themselves) and making informed people-related decisions using robust data will become table stakes for organisations. We know we want our people to spend more time doing what they love to do and less admin – the HR tech stack is going to need to enable that. Whether you go with an enterprise-wide solution that does everything, or specialised applications that talk to each other through APIs, or something inbetween, our tech architecture must meet employee requirements to be quick, simple to use, and let them get on with the day job.
- AI
Inextricably linked to the last point, we need to create a pristine HR database and accurate, up-to-date, extensive knowledge management directories in order to fully utilise AI. I look forward to a time when we can pull together a profile of every employee with one click, their skills, knowledge, experience and career aspirations, in order to find the ideal candidate to fill our open roles. Allowing us to fill internal vacancies quickly, where possible from within, will expedite business success and build meaningful careers for employees within our organisations.
- Building a skills-based organisation
We are at full employment in Ireland. We are also sharing a very limited talent pool for particular skills that every single organisation needs for ongoing success. And we have yet to imagine the next skills needed for business survival. So we need to think long and hard, and quickly, about what are the human skills that will elevate and differentiate our organisation, and most importantly, can be used to complete lots of jobs across the organisation. Claire Doody breaks it down for those of us who are new to this, myself included, working out where to start in her article Making Sense of Skills Strategy. She advises to start small and find a business problem that may be solved through a skills-based lens; for example, where a particular role requiring a specific skill can be completed by others not usually in that role but who currently utilise that specific skill somewhere else in the organisation.
Suffice to say, as always there are plenty of existing and emerging topics for the CPO and People Function to consider this year. Personally I’m building my energy and resilience to have a great year, further elevating the absolute imperative of placing employees at the core of enabling business success, and empowering them to thrive and reach their career potential.
