Hope springs from adversity, and this year HR has stepped up as a leader in the new world of work. Marion Robinson, Chief Growth Officer for PageUp, shares 9 things HR cared about in 2020.
2020 has been a challenging year for people around the world, regardless of age, background or geography. HR professionals have had it even harder, supporting teams in times of crisis, while also working through these challenges themselves.
But hope springs from adversity, and this year HR has truly stepped up as a leader in the new world of work. Talent management has become everyone’s business, and talent teams are getting the attention they deserve from C-suite leaders that now fully appreciate their worth.
Old, outdated systems have been digitised, processes streamlined and centralised, virtual hiring and remote work practices accelerated overnight. Armed with the business buy-in and technology solutions to make it work, HR is ready to take a seat at the table as we forge ahead into the new decade.
As we look back at the year that was, we can see how closely HR trends and challenges mirror our society. From a global pandemic and economic downturn, to racial upheaval across the globe, HR is the first responder and the first line of defence organisations have to help their teams make sense of the world around them.
2020 will be remembered as a turbulent, tumultuous year. Let’s not forget how HR responded:
1. Employee communication and care
When the first wave of lockdowns rolled out around the world, many organisations were forced into remote working arrangements overnight. HR teams had to figure out how to make it work, developing policies on the fly and ensuring teams were supported during this tough transition. With so much uncertainty in the air, HR stepped up and showed real leadership, reminding us what the ‘human’ aspect of human resources stands for. Talent teams used different strategies to shift to remote work and support their teams in times of change.
2. Mastering remote hiring and onboarding
As organisations got into the groove of remote work, some hiring teams found themselves faced with a dilemma: how to provide a great, fully virtual recruitment experience. Even the most progressive organisations had probably met candidates in-person at one stage of the hiring process. Now, recruitment teams had to ensure a streamlined, fully tech-enabled experience that left applicants and candidates wanting more. No problem, right? There were 3 key considerations for organisations looking to find great talent in the time of COVID; these included understanding your video interviewing needs, adjusting your approach to screening and prioritising onboarding.
3. Addressing COVID-19 challenges
Our Head of Customer Insights and Market Research Rebecca Skilbeck and SVP Global Talent Deborah Mason tackled how HR could address COVID-19 challenges. They discussed supporting employees, encouraging engagement, redeploying staff, managing remote workers and shared their thoughts for the future.
4. Supporting internal mobility
With the pandemic ramping up and an economic recession looming, many organisations put a freeze on hiring. But that didn’t mean skills gaps went away. Roles still needed to be filled by skilled workers, and organisations started to look within to find this talent. Many organisations are leveraging internal mobility to meet their hiring needs, while also keeping employees engaged and developing in their careers.
5. Scaling up recruiting to meet COVID-19 demands
Not all organisations were halting their hiring. Some were ramping up recruitment to meet demand: many retailers providing essential products were inundated with customer demand as lockdowns dragged on across the globe. Some PageUp customers processed as many as 55,000 applications in one recruitment campaign. To quickly hire the staff they needed at-scale, organisations turned to technology to automate candidate care and process bulk applications. Talent teams needed to establish processes to set up and run effective recruitment campaigns at scale, while remaining agile enough to respond rapidly to change.
6. Proactively rebuilding recruitment strategies after COVID-19
As we adjusted to the new COVID normal, organisations started to look to the future and wonder how they would rebuild. A crucial component of this was their recruitment strategy: what would it look like going forward? As the business landscape shifted, what new skills should they be recruiting for? And what new roles would emerge? Many organisations began rebuilding, starting with their recruitment strategy. This required a step by step approach, examining how COVID has affected the business landscape, identifying emerging skills gaps, and targeting the crucial behavioural traits you should be looking for in a top candidate.
7. Virtual recruiting tools
HR processes have been accelerated years into the future thanks to the overnight shift to remote working. We shared 17 must-know tools to support online recruiting; from voice-based and text-based AI-interviewing and online testing, to online assessments, video interviews and reference checking.
8. Workplace diversity, equity and inclusion
This year will be remembered not just for COVID-19, but also as the year the world stood up, spoke up and took action on racial inclusivity, diversity and demanded equal opportunity for people of all backgrounds. With organisations around the world turning a spotlight to their own DE&I strategies, many began prioritising and establishing the building blocks of a successful DE&I strategy.
9. Data-based recruitment strategies
What recruitment metrics should savvy hiring teams be tracking in 2020 and into the future? A lot has changed in the past year, and many talent teams have started to review and revise the recruitment metrics they track in line with their organisational goals. The best recruitment metrics to track in now, in 2021 and beyond include offer acceptance rate, applicant-to-hire rate, candidate-to-hire rate, sourcing channel effectiveness, and mobile application and time-to-apply rates.
Marion Robinson is responsible for spearheading global growth for PageUp in all its forms. She provides strategic direction across PageUp’s client advocacy, partner alliance, marketing and brand-building programs, ensuring total alignment between them so as to deliver on the PageUp growth strategy. Leveraging a wealth of experience in client management roles across a range of industries including Banking, Human Resources and IT, Marion understands the daily people challenges of our clients first-hand. Her experience ranges from sales and marketing, change management, consulting and people development.