The latest Advanced People Management Trends Report has once again taken a look into the emerging goals and priorities of organisations across all sectors, as well as highlighting some of the key challenges facing businesses and their people.
The highlights of this year’s at a time when more and more households across the UK are feeling the strain on their finances. The cost of living crisis and potential recession is a dominant factor in many of our lives and will demand specific attention and action by businesses to ensure that the wellbeing of their people is being safeguarded throughout these challenging times.
How have these shifts in the wider world impacted businesses and what changes in their priorities have been prompted by emerging challenges? Let’s take a look and find out what challenges HR teams will face to close out 2022 and move into 2023!
The cost of living crisis and constrained growth
It’s an unavoidable fact that right now, much of the UK workforce are having to contend with spiralling costs and stagnating wages. For many employees this can mean being locked into a monthly cycle of worry, with finances being on a knife edge and any unexpected costs carrying the potential to have a devastating long-term effect on their financial wellbeing.
These concerns will have only been compounded over the past year, with a sharp rise in the cost of living crisis making its presence known. A recent ONS report has found that a staggering 89% of adults in the UK have reported a rise in their living costs.
The cost of living crisis presents a unique challenge for businesses who simply cannot afford to ignore the impact that rising costs may have on their people. Financial worries can compound levels of stress, which in turn can impact the physical and mental wellbeing of employees.
This will demand specific action from businesses and will largely fall at the feet of HR teams, particularly when it comes to acting as standard bearers of good financial practice. A predicted shift will be to that of education and awareness, helping to drive conversations with employees who are struggling, removing the stigma around financial discussions and helping guide them to external third parties if necessary.
Worries around the long term impact of economic stagnation is also a concern. Our Trends Survey found that 78% felt that the current economic situation was likely to hamper growth amongst their business.
This presents a unique problem for businesses, particularly when it comes to dealing with the cost of living crisis. Restricted growth means fewer resources available to support employees, particularly in the more traditional means such as pay increases. This will demand creativity and flexibility from organisations and their people teams to ensure that they are able to support their people in meaningful ways.
Hybrid working: ongoing challenges
Hybrid working presents a wonderful opportunity for people to build a working set-up that suits them rather than being dictated by an office location. The boost in employee engagement and wellbeing such flexibility offers is also a factor which cannot be ignored by organisations, particularly in their constant drive for productivity and profitability.
Despite the undoubted successes presented by hybrid working, there is still a suggestion that organisations are failing to embed it properly within their ongoing makeup. Where the willpower may be present to make it a reality, often the framework in place can be lagging behind, with the systems and technology relied upon daily by organisations unable to support their goals of making long term hybrid working a reality.
60% of businesses have found limitations in their current technology with regards to adopting hybrid working models.
From a people management perspective, one of the major requirements to support hybrid working is offering the visibility businesses need to ensure business continuity regardless of where their people choose to work. This is particularly key from a time and attendance perspective. Many of today’s time and attendance solutions will offer a framework for employees to log in and record hours effortlessly from a remote location. However, many organisations may still be utilising out of date or unsuitable solutions, many of which will have been in place pre-pandemic. What was suitable in the past may simply not do the job when it comes to supporting hybrid working.
This visibility is crucial too in helping setting work tasks and evenly distributing responsibilities.
85% are working extra hours, and 38% say it’s because they have too much work to fit into their allocated hours.
Without adequate visibility of the output of employees, organisations run the risk of losing sight of key goals and often leading to an unfair distribution of responsibilities.
The fluidity offered by hybrid working is a wonderful thing but the blurring divide between work and home life can mean it’s all too easy for employees to slip into the habit of working extra hours, heightening the potential for burnout.
Your Employer Value Proposition (EVP) and the ongoing war for talent.
In times of stunted economic growth, businesses across all sectors will be keen to understand what steps they can take to drive forward greater productivity and profitability.
One of the keys to success is undoubtedly ensuring that you have the right talent in place in order to enable that growth. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done and with the jobs market an increasingly scrappy and competitive environment, the challenge for businesses is understanding how to distinguish themselves above their competitors and attract those key candidates.
The EVP or (Employer Value Proposition) is one of the greatest assets available to organisations when they enter the recruitment cycle. Your EVP is a measure of all benefits derived from your employee’s relationship with the business and encompasses a broad range of factors from benefits packages and company cars to more intangible factors such as work-life balance.
Furthermore, your EVP is an advertisement of your brand to the wider market and serves as a banner statement of your company culture and ethos. Businesses who are able to evince a philosophy which aligns with the priorities of the modern workforce are naturally going to find that they have an easier time attracting new talent.
Our Trends Report found that organisations are now increasingly more focused on their perception in the wider market, with 77% stating that Environmental, Social and Governance matters were now a growing priority. This has been seen as many as a reflection of the priorities of the modern workforce and an indication that organisations are now seeing the value in actively reflecting the priorities and ethos evinced by today’s employees. Read some of our helpful resources to find out how Advanced can help you redefine your EVP.
What’s next?
At Advanced, we understand that the modern working world is an ever-evolving space. We value our People Management 2022/23 as a way to keep our finger on the pulse of shifting priorities and emerging patterns in the wider working culture.
You can read our short highlights ebook of the People Management Trends Report here.
We also agree whole heartedly that technology has a huge role to play in helping business meet the demands of today’s workforce. What has been made clear by this survey is that technology has a huge role to play in helping support organisations through these emerging challenges. With talent acquisition plus concerns around employee wellbeing being brought into the light by the cost of living crisis, it is clear that HR teams will play a pivotal role in driving forward meaningful policy and change.
This can only happen if those same people teams have access to the tools and resources they need to leverage their talent in meaningful ways. Without robust and effective systems, too much time is lost each working day to tedious admin tasks and manual inputs.
Our Advanced People Management family of solutions have been designed to help tackle the day to day challenges facing today’s organisation. Our Time and Attendance, HR, Performance Management and Payroll offerings have all been created with the goal of putting your people and their needs at the heart of their organisation and offering you the framework you need to engage with your people and to allow you to achieve more.
