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The Top 5 HR Challenges Today

<span>The Top 5 HR Challenges Today</span>

The top 5 HR challenges according to HR leaders today are:  

  1. attracting and recruiting talent,
  2. retaining talent,
  3. creating effective learning programs,
  4. reskilling employees, and
  5. strategic business partnering

These are the findings of a recent APQC Open Standards Benchmarking® survey of 275 HR leaders. In this blog, I describe each HR challenge and share APQC resources to support busy HR professionals in tackling it (*indicates item is open to the public).

#1: Attracting and Recruiting Talent

When it comes to recruiting, many HR functions are dealing with budget and staffing cuts. They are tasked with hiring cutting-edge talent—quickly, or risk losing out to faster moving competitors. 

To stay competitive, HR must adopt and adapt to advancing recruiting technologies. This can be a “full-time job,” requiring HR to navigate a complex vendor landscape and ever-changing technology features. To reap the benefits that the latest technologies promise, HR must standardize recruiting processes, train recruiters, and manage change among recruiting stakeholders.  

At the same time, HR faces a learning curve in understanding what it takes to attract candidates today. As new generations enter the workforce, they are bringing with them new views on working time and work location as well as jobs and careers. 

APQC Resources on Attracting and Recruiting Talent

#2: Retaining Talent

All of the investments that HR makes to overcome today’s recruiting challenges will be for naught unless critical-skill candidates become contributing and tenured employees. Similar to the challenge it faces with recruiting, HR is tasked with understanding, and delivering on, an updated value proposition—one that will engage and retain a new generation of employees in addition to more tenured employees. 

When it comes to retention, HR is also dealing with monetary challenges as compensation budgets in many regions fall short of inflation. The good news is that retention today takes more than money. The not so good news is that delivering non-monetary aspects of the employee value proposition is not free and is often a complex, ongoing undertaking. Next to compensation, employees today seek career development. Establishing and maintaining engaging and effective career paths will require foresight and insight from HR as well as coordination within and outside of HR.

APQC Resources on Retaining Talent 

#3: Creating Effective Learning Programs

With career development a top motivator for employees today and fast-paced change the norm in organizations, HR is seeing increasing demand for learning. Adding to this demand is the challenge of recruiting critical-skilled talent at the requisite time and price point, necessitating that HR find ways to develop some critical skills in house. 

The scale with which data, analytics, and AI are anticipated to impact what and how work is performed will keep demand for learning high. Every employee will need upskilling. Yet, there is a limit to how much business leaders will invest in learning—and a limit to how much time employees have to learn. As such, understanding and prioritizing learning needs across the organization will be a crucial undertaking for HR. 

Learning and development is also being transformed by technology. New learning technologies will help HR find new approaches to developing and delivering learning—approaches that take into account the time and attention burdens faced by employees today. But in order to reap these benefits, HR must adopt and adapt to these new tools and support employees in doing the same.

APQC Resources on Learning & Development

#4: Reskilling Employees

The scale at which AI and automation are transforming business models and work processes means many jobs will decline in demand and many employees will need reskilling. The challenge for HR is anticipating which skills will be needed and doing so with enough lead time to develop them in existing employees. This will necessitate that HR have regular conversations with the business about the skills and jobs of the future. It will also require that HR adopt new skills, roles, processes, and timelines in order to keep pace.

In addition, HR will need to find ways to pinpoint which workers are best suited for learning new roles. Technology promises to make it easier to keep track of workforce skills and even employee interest in and aptitude for learning new roles. The challenge will be securing the funding for these technologies and then getting employees and leaders to use them regularly.

APQC Resources on Skills Gaps and Reskilling 

#5: Transforming HR into a Strategic Business Partner

HR is not be immune to the reskilling trend. Just as technology is changing how businesses and employees operate, it is also changing how HR operates. HR work is being automated and HR is increasingly required to demonstrate that its decisions are being guided by data. As the need for some administrative HR roles diminishes, the possibility for HR to take on more strategic work will become more practical than ever before.

To make the transition to doing more strategic work, HR will need to adopt new technologies and develop analytics capabilities. HR will also need to hone its ability to manage change, not just within HR, but also with employees and managers who will see their interactions with HR take a different form. 

APQC Resources on Strategic HR

While these top 5 HR challenges may sound familiar, each is being dramatically shaped by current and evolving trends. A lot of effort and change will be required from HR to adapt. Those HR functions that excel in evolving with these changes will be at a distinct competitive advantage when it comes to attracting, engaging, and retaining the talent that their businesses require.