The Word 2022: Changes in ethical practice and management (a Ius Laboris report)

In a recently released report The Word 2022, experts from Ius Laboris alliance answer some key human resource (HR) issues, covering the proliferation of changes in the workplace and how employers can face them.
The addressed topic are talent and attraction, the uncertain economic outlook, HR technology, and HR’s increasing role in engaging with and recognising ethical issues that are important to employees.

The starting point of the report, based on a poll of legal and HR professionals’ opinion, is that the business landscape is going through not only constant, but also rapid changes which employers have to address as best they can to make them opportunities.

Covid-19 pandemic, hybrid work arrangments, great resignation, inflation and digital transformation are only some of them.

The 51 percent felt HR’s role had changed significantly in the last three years, but the research and interviewees also suggest that now is the time for HR to take ownership of the change.

The main topics covered by the report are:

Changes in the economy: an enabler or barrier to workplace transformation? The questions is if global economic problems can be a catalyst for change or will they bog businesses down and put more on their plates. Answers are different, depending on the countries surveyd, but 50% claim HR practitioners said thay will simply return to tried-and-tested emergency or crisis-mode policies, such as boosting wages, rather than taking more difficult offsetting steps, such as investing more in company cultures (30% globally) and in health and wellbeing (9 % globally).
Changes in talent and retention: the biggest business challenge. The war for talent is pushing attraction and retention right to the top of the corporate agenda. But what options are businesses left with? Organisations, particularly global ones, are encountering different cultural norms in different places, dealing with how to apply their worldview consistently across their operations
Changes in technology: respondents in the research agreed that the future of work is digital and technology has an important role in helping transform the HR function:
Changes status from administrative to transformational: is now the time for HR Directors to be more strategic? Globally a mixed picture emerges, with 49 per cent of HRDs and legal experts thinking HR’s role has not changed significantly in the post-pandemic. HR’s priorities should be to develop better people analytics, which polled top among 44 per cent of respondents, people management skills (42 per cent), and process and systems streaming (36 per cent).