The best changes are often implemented at the start of the brand new year.
While 2020 has whizzed past us, there's is never a cut-off date for HR teams to implement new of changes to create a better workplace culture and environment for your employees.
Are you ready to improve this new year?
Keep reading to find out which 5 changes forward looking organisations are looking to make going forward:
1) Improving current diversity training (or lack thereof) and policies
As the world watches #BLM protests unfold with all stories of injustice that Black Americans have faced over years - it looks to be that corporations are sitting up and taking steps to drive change within their organisations with diversity advocacy and training.
Diversity, has become a hot term that every company love to use when describing their ideal workplace environment to the public and potential employees. Employers know that in terms of business, diversity is great for the workplace.
In fact, many employers are noticing that a more diverse workplace leads to the cultivation of creativity, leads businesses to a larger pool of clients, and access to more diverse talents.
Unfortunately, employers tend to forget that a more diverse workplace calls for in-depth diversity training. Consider this scenario that could be relevant in Singapore: Faris and Shafeeq are two top performing Muslim employees in a global Japanese conglomerate. The company chooses to hold an important meeting every Friday afternoon to find out the progress of their employees, the deals they’ve closed, and more. Unfortunately for the Muslim men, the meeting clashes with their Friday prayers, which results in constant absenteeism. This makes members of the group angry, and they consider penalizing the duo for their lack of attendance - a problem which can be resolved by educating the rest of the men’s colleagues and rescheduling the meeting.
By providing consistent diversity training and lectures, employees will be able to resolve problems such as the ones without demotivating their minority colleagues. However, diversity is not limited to only race and religion. Other less commonly talked about diversity topics include gender, sexuality, personality types (introverts and extroverts), and family backgrounds.
Training can be held in the form of lectures, accessible slideshows, or through interactive games. Always remember that the goal of diversity training is to make employees understand that even if problems due to differences occur, minor adjustments can be made to resolve it.
2) Social recruiting to ready ideal candidates in the future pipeline
And no, we don’t mean posting random job ads on your company’s social media networks. Social recruiting is a term used when hiring managers and recruiters use social media to headhunt, attract and convert some of the best talents available out there. Great sites to start searching for your next talent include Linkedin, Instagram, and Facebook. You can expand and broaden your search by browsing through forums and blogs.
But social recruiting goes beyond social media stalking. Hiring managers, the HR team, and recruiters should also engage with outstanding talents on social media. Find a way to break the ice and introduce them to your company. This will encourage the talents to apply for a job with the company when a position becomes available.
3) Trusting technology is here improve HR systems and make life better for all
Artificial intelligence is a catch phrase that marketers especially like to use. However, we do know that having AI and automation in your HR system would allow you to better personalise and enhance your employee experience during recruitment.
Unfortunately, many HRs, like many others are quick to distrust technology to take over the burden of their time consuming tasks. Let’s do a quick 10-year challenge now. Before Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant, many of us were hesitant to accept this technology in our lives. Imagine everything we will miss out on if we’ve never accepted these tools in our lives.
Companies need to readily embrace newer forms of technology in our lives. HR does need to step up and educate its employees on the benefits of automation and AI to improve existing systems and processes.
Encourage open dialogue with your employees, get them to understand and upgrade themselves with digital skills as best as they can.
Robots are a new and novel concept - perhaps too novel for some of us. Educating your employees on the latest technology in your sector and beyond, helps foster trust, as well as the intellect to differentiate good artificial intelligence from mediocre ones.
4) Awareness regarding sexual harassment and gender discrimination
Remember the #MeToo movement? Not only did the movement take up much of our Twitter feed in 2017 and 2018, CEOs now predict that we will feel the impact in the years ahead. For those unaware, the #MeToo movement is a viral social media movement aiming to bring cases of sexual assault to light. The #MeToo movement that unravels gender discrimination that would have otherwise gone unnoticed
So why is this seemingly random movement a change companies will need to make in 2021? Well, many speculate that with the increase of women in positions of power, many will aim to make big changes to the professional world so that the next generation of working women will finally be able to enter the workplace as equals from day one, in the near future.
For the movement to succeed, there needs to be an awareness of its impact as well as what constitutes sexual harassment.
5) Candidate experience, and not job ads, will sell your company
We’ve written about it before, the next generation is desensitized to advertisements. If you want to broaden your audience and appeal to them, consider selling premium experiences instead. Industries which will experience this the most? Retail.
Unlike Millennials, the next generation (Generation Z) want quality over ads. Smart retailers will combat this by introducing ways to turn everyday transactions into a novelty. Enough ads! Let people find ways to discover, learn, and explore instead.
It's always useful to remember that as the years go by, it is increasingly common to find millennials working in temporary jobs in Singapore, as compared to full-time positions. To learn more about this, read our latest blog post, "5 Reasons to Consider a Job with a Flexible Work Schedule (and Where to Find Them)".
Ready to embrace these changes and take on the new year? Here are some useful articles below:
Last updated by BGC Group on 1 January 2021.