Back to the future.
The biggest HR trend for 2022.
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Hi friends 👋🏻,
It's the most wonderful time of the year.
That does not just mean buying an overpriced tree, eating too much, and giving gifts. It also means it's the time of year where aspiring HR influencers like myself comment on what they think will be the most important trends of the coming year.
It's not uncommon for specific motivations behind the push for a particular trend. To put it bluntly, we all anticipate our particular field, product, or thing will be the next big trend. It's not uncommon for us to be wrong about that.
That said, I am still going to take a look ahead. What will be the HR trends in 2022?
It will not be a fancy list; I'll leave that to others. Instead, I'll summarize my general thoughts in one, long article. After all, the future of work is almost everything I do here, one way or another.
So it will not surprise you when I say that in 2022 we will still be talking about how to solve this whole distributed way of working thing. And I think this will still be the backdrop for almost everything in 2022.
Yes, the metaverse is incredible, and most avant-garde companies will continue to explore it further.
Sure, Web 3.0 and DAOs will gain traction, but they will not take over the world in 2022.
But we still have to figure out remote work.
2021 has taken us a bit down the road, but we are far from done in this area.
Heck, I have even had discussions with companies about whether or not they should even allow it. I admit to being a bit torn on the subject myself. I have talked to large, global companies and small startups about how to do this. My advice has always been to take a firm stance and communicate that stance clearly, so employees know what their employer expects. That still holds true, but more recently, I have added that if you have knowledge workers in your company, you need to offer flexibility.
I'll say it again for those of you sitting in the back. If you have employees who can work remotely, you need to let them work remotely. People want flexibility, and it does not make sense to delay that decision.
And by that decision, I mean that you should set your business up for remote working first. Pretend that all employees work remotely all the time, and you'll have a good solution for everyone by default.
Do not dwell on "2 days in the office and then 3 days at home" - offer employees and the teams they work in the opportunity to develop a solution that meets their needs.
I am an optimist by nature, and I see more upside than downside in this evolution. Ever since Meta (then Facebook) launched its first beta test of permanent remote work in May 2020, I have been positive about the shift to a more remote workplace. (So optimistic, in fact, that a few disgruntled listeners to my podcast came forward and told me to "take it down a notch and stop nagging about remote work" - a few months later, literally the whole HR world was talking about remote work...)
But optimistic or not, there is still a lot of work to be done to get our organizations ready for this new way of working. And I think that's where we will be spending most of our time in 2022. Finding our ways.
In an environment where work is distributed and largely done remotely, we need to get better at setting clear goals and creating alignment. Results-oriented organizations are more likely to thrive in the future. And we need to help our organizations achieve that goal.
We need to help our leaders get there. The role of a manager has always been complex, and in an environment where employees work remotely, it is even more so. A reasonably good manager could go unnoticed in the office; she could give her employees a high-five, and get a quick sense of how employees are doing even if they were skipping 1:1 conversations, and so on. But in a remote work environment, that's not possible.
More than ever, managers need to dive in. And that's hard. But we can and should help.
The last two years have been chaotic, and HR is probably one of the functions that has been under the most pressure. As everything seems to be spinning faster and faster, it's more important than ever that we take time to assess where our organizations are and provide strategic direction.
I think it's going to be a fun year, but as I said, I am an optimist, so you might not want to listen to me too much.
But if you want to (which I guess since you are reading this) then you are in the right place, I’ll continue to explore the frontiers of new ways of working and helping you stay up to date about the very latest. Do you know someone that should benefit from learning more about the future of work? Make sure to hit the share button!