7 HR Software Trends for 2024 Explained: Top Predictions According To Experts

An onslaught of HR software trends and industry-wide developments in the past year is keeping HR professionals on their toes as they witness recent political, sociological, technological, not the least pandemic-induced developments disrupt their way of business.

Foremost, remote work is now a thing, and with it, training, engagement, workflows, etc. have to be re-evaluated to keep up with the times. More employees are demanding mental health wellness, too, and one cannot discount the fact that job automation is both a foe and friend, depending on one’s work.

In this guide, we collated the most important shifts in human resources including HR software trends for 2022. Abetted by HCM systems, HR professionals, managers, or business owners are ready this year to attract, keep, engage employees, and ensure growth isn’t stalled for lack of talent.

If 2021 is to be remembered, it will go down in the HR playbook as the Great Resignation year. In July 2021 alone, four million people quit their jobs, which totaled 10.4 million since the beginning of the year, an all-time high. In leisure and hospitality, a sector greatly impacted by the pandemic, 971,000 resigned in August 2021, another record-breaking rate for any industry (BLS, 2021).

Behind the historic quit rate are patterns pointed out by anecdotal analyses, namely, employee burnout, the COVID-19 scare, and remote work offering new options. Whatever the case, tectonic shifts are happening in the human resource landscape and the wise HR manager must keep up with the HR trends to prepare the organization for a post-pandemic era.

1. Remote Work Trends

If 2020 saw companies opening their workforce to remote work under the circumstance of the pandemic, 2021 was the crossroad for many employers to decide whether to bring their employees back to the office or keep the remote work setup. If last year was any indication, a hybrid workforce will be the norm in the coming years.

In a PwC study, the shift in positive attitude towards remote work increased to 83% for employers in 2021 versus 73% in 2020 (PwC, 2021).

But not everyone agreed to go full-time remote as the pandemic subsided middle to end of last year and establishments started reopening.

Conversely, employees are returning to the workplace slower than what employers would have wanted, the PwC study revealed. While 75% of executives expected that half of their staff would report back to the office by July 2021, 61% of employees expected only to spend half of their time at the office by the same period. Additionally, a significant number of employers were prepared to give up the office post-pandemic, 13% in the PwC study (PwC, 2021).

However, the workplace isn’t going anywhere with many employers seeing it as important to build team collaboration and nurture company culture. In fact, collaborating with colleagues or clients is the second top challenge to remote work, according to a GitLab study, with 35% of respondents agreeing (GitLab, 2021).

A Hybrid Workplace

A hybrid workplace is a more likely scenario for many companies moving forward past the pandemic. We saw this starting to happen around the second quarter of 2021 and expect it to continue and become the norm in the future. How fast the hybrid adoption may depend on how fast we can tame the COVID-19 pandemic. The hybrid workplace could indeed among the HR trends post COVID.

That said, HR managers must prepare for a more integrated virtual-office workflow. If they haven’t yet, they need to think of integrating virtual training and virtual team-building activities with their traditional programs.

Similarly, HR managers must manage employee expectations of remote work. For one, a Capgemini report showed that 72% of employees look forward to companies providing tech devices, such as laptops and mobile phones in a remote work setup. A significant number of them (68%) also expect financial support to set up home workstations (Capgemini, 2021).

The HR team should also take the lead in building healthy employer-employee relationships in the context of remote work. For example, some employer monitoring methods are more or less accepted by employees. A Unisys 2021 study showed that a majority of employees (40%) are okay with login/logout monitoring, while microphone monitoring is the least liked method (12%) (Unisys, 2021).

2. eLearning Adoption Accelerates

Remote work has accelerated elearning adoption among companies since the onset of the pandemic. More organizations have turned to elearning technologies since then, compared to the pre-COVID-19 world. Training Industry found that 42% of organizations invested more in elearning technologies and 35% in courses in the last two years (Training Industry, 2021).

Already, more organizations have training in place than otherwise. For instance, a 2020 Deloitte study showed that 74% of employers have privacy/HIPPA training in place versus 12%. Likewise, 70% of companies have tech training compared to 18% (Deloitte, 2020).

HR managers must leverage elearning tools to upskill or reskill their workforces fast, from leadership to safety training, to product orientation. The “Great Resignation of 2021” spurred by the virus scare of going back to the office or simply people being burnt out by the pandemic will only hasten the need to train new employees or retrain old employees to fill in the skills gap.

On another note, recent aggressive investments in elearning providers imply an industry that looks brighter than ever going into the next few years. To cite a few, Skillshare announced a $71 million funding, Udacity received a $75 million debt facility and Udemy raised $50 million in the last two years.

Presented with a rich source of learning tools and content, forward-looking HR managers must understand which platforms and topics work best. If 2020 and 2021 are a gauge, HR managers will do well focusing on bite-sized content or microlearning, in video format, preferably, as these are found to be the most popular among employees. Last year, we’ve also seen an uptick in courses for technical topics, lifestyle and health, as well as soft skills for leadership, communication and collaboration.

3. Digitization of Workplace

The Equinix 2020-21 Global Tech Trends Survey showed that 8 in 10 IT decision-makers considered digitizing their IT infrastructures a top priority, with nearly half of them accelerating their plans because of the pandemic (Equinix, 2021).

About half of the respondents have decided to restructure their IT architecture to accommodate the transition to remote or hybrid work environments. They believe these changes are for the long term and not just to address the pandemic (Equinix, 2021).

The organizational-wide digitization in mind, the HR department is sure to be impacted by this trend, if it hasn’t been yet. However, the impact will be staggered for different organizations.

Digitization has been ongoing since a few years back, starting off with companies investing in the latest HR software to streamline their current processes. For some companies, HR digitization means they have already instituted systems to level up key processes, for instance, automating onboarding or performance evaluation. These trends are nothing new, but they’ll accelerate further in the next few years.

If we look at the market revenue growth of workforce management system in North America, we’ll see how the sector has grown substantially across industries since 2014. In retail, where the technology has the largest share, it grew from $274 million to $414 million in 2021. This segment will see revenues hitting $551 million in 2025 (Statista, 2021). By HR process, payroll alone will hit $4.63 billion by 2024 (Apps Run the World, 2020).

What 2021 has shown us though is that internal and big data analytics are becoming integral to business-relevant insights, including to HR decisions. Because HCM systems are in place, data will be more consolidated and widely distributed, lending to HR a strategic tool for greater hiring accuracy, filling in skills gaps, and anticipating turnovers. Case in point, creating more insights into the hiring process, enabling information sharing among employees and employers, or accessing real-time data for on-the-spot decisions will be the norm rather than the trend in the coming years.

Most Popular HR Software

1. ClearCompany. Offers robust talent management features for streamlining the entire employee life cycle. Learn more about it in this ClearCompany review.
2. Workday. This HR software is designed to work with a company’s financial transactions. Our Workday review discusses its core functions, including predictive analytics and real-time insights.
3. When I Work. An HR solution and time clock tool in one. Know how it simplifies HR management in this When I Work review.
4. Freshteam. Integrates various core HR processes in a single, easy-to-use interface. For more details about this newest addition to the Freshworks suite, read this Freshteam review.
5. Homebase. A cloud-based HR software with robust time clock and timesheet features. This Homebase review presents its benefits, pricing, and other features.

4. Job Automation Trends

Jobs are being automated, if not today, soon. Three prevailing studies dominate the job automation forecast, from the OECD, PwC, and Frey and Osborne (Statista, 2021). While their automation rate predictions vary, they all agreed that several job roles would, indeed, be lost to humans in the next few years. In the US, Frey and Osborne (2013) reported that 47% of jobs would be automated by 2030, compared to 38% for PwC and 9% for OECD.

By sector, transport and logistics will be hardest hit with a forecast of 70.5% jobs lost to automation by 2030 in North America (PwC, 2018). Other industries that will be impacted by automation include energy, utilities, and mining (46.5%), consumer goods, accommodation and food services (42.5%), manufacturing and construction (42%), and financial and professional services (40%). Clearly, the latter is among the HR trends in banking industry.

HR managers must understand how this trend impacts their organizations in both positive and negative ways. On the one hand, automation means greater cost-efficiency and productivity. On the other hand, employee morale might take a hit and the company’s best talents may be rendered irrelevant if they fail to upskill or reskill.

The privy HR manager sees to it that, amid the automation sweeping industries, people remain at the core of the organization’s assets. He or she understands that job automation doesn’t necessarily equate to job loss, but to job transformation. But retraining and retooling will be needed.

Critically, HR must develop the right training strategy to prevent valuable employees from being lost to automation. Business is all about social connection, and emotional intelligence, social skills, and creative thinking will be high-value skills in an automated workforce. They will take precedence over technical skills, which an AI can do a thousand times better and faster.

In the future, the work will be cut out for HR to find talented people (or train them) who excel in emotional intelligence, as a digitized world becomes hyper-personalized and globally interdependent. A business that can harmonize human traits with AI efficiency will have a huge competitive advantage.

5. HR as Business Strategy

From its traditional role as an administrative expert and employee champion, HR is now seen as a strategic partner and change agent by highly competitive organizations, the better to meet ROI goals, skills gaps and compete for the best talents.

An integrated HR function means the HR manager can use people tactics and performance consulting tools to help the company mitigate talent turnover, which is disruptive to business.

Randstad, a global leader in the HR services industry, is a proponent of one of these people tactics in the form of employer branding. “Embodying your values, culture and workplace environment, your employer brand offers a promise, which, if fulfilled, can bring high returns on investment,” so premised the Randstad Employer Brand Research 2021. HR utilizing a marketing strategy is now a thing.

Similarly, the innovative HR manager must now borrow from supply chain management concepts to bridge the workforce siloes caused by disconnected talent channels. Allegis Global Solutions, the biggest staffing firm in the US in 2020 by revenue with $10.4 billion in earnings (Statista, 2022), reflects this trend. It offers a universal managed service solution that ensures worker supply and demand remain aligned with spend and savings and compliant with regulations and delivered in a timely manner.

In short, a just-in-time talent supply will be a norm in the future. We will see more of these services as businesses deal with an extended workforce (contractors, freelancers, remote workers).

Skills Development and Data-Driven Decisions

The progressive HR manager sees to it that key employees remain competitive with continuous education, so the business remains in tip-top shape. This case is especially critical to the technology, science, healthcare, and creative sectors.

Further, as a business partner, the HR manager is now data-driven; he or she utilizes analytics for evidence-based decisions while sharing insights with business leaders.

No longer confined to simply providing employee support, the HR manager must lend talent management expertise to managers, vice-presidents, and executives to help the organization meet the challenges of job automation, new technologies and the skills required, remote work and, in general, a globalized human resource landscape.

We’ve seen HR professionals accelerate skill development worldwide as a business strategy, primarily identifying new skills/capabilities needed for post-COVID-19 operations (53%), as shown in aggregated studies (Statista, 2021).

HR professionals are likewise focused on developing remote working skills, especially on virtual collaboration (48%) and exploring ways to move or develop talent based on skills (45%) (Statista, 2021).

These are no administrative tasks but proactive steps to help companies cope with a business landscape brought to their knees by the pandemic or leverage the silver linings new technologies like AI, big data, and IoT are bringing to the table.

If you don’t have your HR team onboarded with your strategic plans, you’re missing a cog in the wheel to move the business forward into the next decade.

6. Demand for Wellness Programs Surges

The pandemic-induced shift to a remote workforce brings with it new factors that contribute to a positive employee experience. The option to work remotely in and by itself is, to many employees, a major influence in their decision to stick with a company.

In fact, one of the benefits of remote work is improved employee loyalty and retention, with a 30% share of respondents agreeing, according to The Remote Work Report 2021 study (GitLab, 2021). Another 31% said remote work increased employee morale and 42% mentioned increased productivity.

Intertwined with remote work are benefits that promote wellness for employees. Stressed out by the pandemic, employees are demanding more wellness initiatives from their employers.

The leading corporate wellness programs in the US in 2020 were wellness platforms at 58%, mental well-being at 40%, and behavioral health at 21% (Shortlister, 2021).

Employers seem to take heed of employees’ need for wellness. We’ve seen significant changes in corporate wellness priorities since the onset of the pandemic. The starkest was in behavioral health and mental well-being, where 82.31%  of respondents in the Wellness Trends 2021 (Shortlister, 2021) “strongly increased” their focus on, while another 46.15% also “strongly increased” their employee assistance programs.

In the same study, 57.25% of businesses in the US said they are prioritizing wellness as a business objective with only 12.98% opting for a wellness third-party vendor (Shortlister, 2021). More businesses are taking a direct initiative for employee wellness today.

7. Mental Health in Focus

The Shortlister study pointed to mental well-being as the second fastest-growing wellness solution in the US in 2020 (32% of the respondents). It was topped only by financial wellness at 40% and tied with caregiving services (Shortlister, 2021).

As the pandemic raged on in 2020, 55.81% of HR leaders in the US said they had bought or implemented a behavioral health/mental well-being program. Another 42.64% had thought about it.

In another study of 300 HR leaders, 86% said they are giving mental health a higher priority (Lyra, 2021). This, in the last two years as employees faced increased anxiety, loneliness, and depression, if not from the threat of COVID-19, from remote work. Conversely,  54% of employees now expect more mental health support from their employers.

Where do these wellness and mental health trends leave HR managers? They are expanding employee assistance programs and health plans to include the entire mental health spectrum. They seek innovative tech tools that enable organizations to measure symptom improvement, improve access to care, tailor mental health programs and, overall, guarantee a positive employee experience.

Keep Up with the Times or Be Left Out

If these industry developments and HR software trends are any indication, they point to the fact that HR professionals should be strategic thinkers. They are business partners who sit in the war room, helping executives plot the blueprint for growth. In most cases, talents will be key to achieving this strategic goal. The ready HR manager has his work cut out for him in the coming years.

He knows what to do. Embrace remote work, keep up with the best HR software and, generally, be in the know of the latest HR trends this year and beyond.

References:

1. Capgemini Research Institute. (2020, October). The Future of Work: From Remote to Hybrid. Capgemini.Com. Retrieved January 17, 2022, from Capgemini.
2. Cook, I. (2021, September 15). Who Is Driving the Great Resignation? HBR.Org. Retrieved January 17, 2022, from HBR
3. DeLong, T. O. (2021, February). Remote Work Accelerates eLearning Trends and Funding. TrainingIndustry.Com. Retrieved January 17, 2022, from Training Industry
4. Drenik, G. (2022, January 11). ‘The Great Resignation’ Defined 2021: Here’s How To Attract, Retain And Engage Employees In 2022. Forbes.Com. Retrieved January 17, 2022, from Forbes
5. Equinix. (2021, March 11). Global Tech Trends Survey Shows Digitization Accelerating Worldwide. Equinix.Com. Retrieved January 17, 2022, from Equinix
6. GitLab. (2020, March). The Remote Work Report by GitLab: The Future of Work is Remote. GitLab.Com. Retrieved January 17, 2022, from GitLab
7. PwC. (2021, January 12). It’s time to reimagine where and how work will get done. PwC.Com. Retrieved January 17, 2022, from PwC
8. The Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. (2021). Virtual Health Accelerated: DeLoitte.Com. Retrieved January 17, 2022, from Deloitte
9. UNISYS. (2021). 2021 UNISYS Security Index^TM Global Report. UNISYS.Com. Retrieved January 17, 2022, from UNISYS
10. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2022, January 4). Quits levels and rates by industry and region, seasonally adjusted. BLS.Gov. Retrieved January 17, 2022, from BLS

By Jenny Chang

Jenny Chang is a senior writer specializing in SaaS and B2B software solutions. Her decision to focus on these two industries was spurred by their explosive growth in the last decade, much of it she attributes to the emergence of disruptive technologies and the quick adoption by businesses that were quick to recognize their values to their organizations. She has covered all the major developments in SaaS and B2B software solutions, from the introduction of massive ERPs to small business platforms to help startups on their way to success.