8 Human Resources Trends to Keep in Mind and Use in 2018

by OverHeadWatch Team | Jan 19, 2018 | Blog | 0 comments

Last year, in 2017, there have been plenty of analysis in the HR world about the companies’ culture and performances. In 2018 though, people forecast a shift in the topic of interest. More precisely, the entire industry is focusing on the evolution of technology and how it is going to help employers and employees alike. Today we are going to have a look at some interesting human resources trends you should keep in mind for 2018.

Human Resourced Trends to Pay Attention to This Year

1. Transitions in the Future

Technology was devised to help and replace human workforce, and if you look around you, it’s already happening. So what’s going to happen from now on? Well, one of the human resourced trends predicted by the specialists consists of the employers shifting their employees around. As they will employ more and more robots to do repetitive work, the employers who want to keep their productive employees need to find the staff who wants to embrace other jobs as well. It’s essential for companies to plan these steps as they switch to computer-driven labor.

2. Passive Candidates

Since the dawn of the HR industry, hunting for passive candidates has been an integrated part of the process. However, these days the process changed a lot. Instead of going through resumes on various career websites, now the recruiters can find them immediately on social media. Moreover, they can identify a talent pool by searching for hashtags, sub-forums or other forms of online communication. In this way, the recruiters can find out a lot of things about a potential candidate.

3. Gamification

Though gamification has already made its way in the business environment, in 2018 it will be one of the major human resources trends. For those of you who don’t know exactly what this is, it refers to a technique of turning employee engagement into a competitive game format. Whether people apply this for hiring, teaching, or marketing, it’s a good strategy. In business, most recruiters use it as a candidate screener. Thus, the cognitive abilities and critical skill sets tests become a fun thing to do.

Moreover, if you have in mind the evolution of smartphones and apps as well, you can even make users play recruitment games and answer interactive questions. This might completely change the human resources trends and industries, but it remains to be seen how exactly.

4. Remote Workforce

Along with the entrance of the millennials in the work field, we have more and more employees willing to have flexibility in their company. This leads to a huge amount of remote workforce. Whether they are working from their homes, in a coffee shop or anywhere in the world where they have an Internet connection, more and more people start adopting this lifestyle.

From the employer’s perspective, it’s a great option because it gives them the freedom to choose from a pool of candidates found everywhere in the world. On the other hand, it boosts job satisfaction and it helps retain current employees. There are plenty of tools that support this trend, such as video conferencing, which will boost it all through 2018.

5. Blind Screening and Hiring

It has been proved repeatedly that there is plenty of bias present in the hiring process for lots of big companies out there. As such, specialists reach the conclusion that the easiest way of eliminating this is to use blind screening and hiring. It may sound weird, but stripping away any demographic information from a person’s resume (such as gender, age, race, college, etc.) leads to a more objective process. As such, we have the first wave of screening that relies solely on the abilities and achievements of the candidate. Moreover, you can even use recruiting software that anonymizes candidates and automates the screening.

6. Focus on Employee Experience

Up until now, most employers were focused on the employee engagement. They tried to find out what was the best way to engage the employees to the fullest. However, along with the introduction of millennials and the transparency offered by technology, the equation shifts more toward the employee experience. This is a concept that relies on three main components:

Engagement;
Culture;
Performance management.

This will determine employers focus on the employee journey map and optimize it. This also means that HR will need to experiment with various feedback tools, modern communication, productivity tools and employee wellness apps, for example.

7. The ‘Gig Economy’

BBC defines the Gig Economy as being one focused on short-term jobs instead of long-term one like it was until now. The traditional workers’ career paths begin to be phased out by the temporary jobs that focus on skill. Indeed, the on-demand hiring offers lower costs, but more and more young people prefer this kind of jobs. This translates to an extra stress for the talent sourcing agents, who need to identify the projects that need attention, look for employees who have the required skills, and then staff project teams to get over with the task quickly.

8. Digitalizing HR

Finally, one of the most prevalent human resources trends in 2018 will be the digitalizing of the HR industry itself. There are plenty of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools that have been interfering with the traditional recruitment practices. This leads to a process of lowering costs and obtaining better candidates for a certain position.

A good example is that of some Asian countries where the HR is a relatively new concept. There, people jump directly to the digitalized version of the HR, instead of going through all the traditional steps. This is a clear sign that the future consists of a type of HR dependent on the Internet.

Here you can watch a short clip showing the 2018 HR

https://youtube.com/watch?v=HdpUD9V81vY%3Ffeature%3Doembed

Conclusion

The HR practices in 2018 seem to rely almost completely on the evolution of technology and digital aids. They aim to have a recruiting process that is as objective as possible, removing all bias from the hiring decision. Furthermore, there are apps and quizzes that help employees prove their skills and see if they would fit in the position they applied for.