Earlier this year, People Matters published an article entitled:«What we want most from HR in 2022: The business leaders speak » in which they presented expectations from business leaders about their HR function in the current era. The article summarizes the responses they got from leaders into 5 key areas of expectations from HR:

According to their inquiries, Business leaders expect HR to:

1. Create the best kind of working culture
2. Help create consistency and predictability
3. Champion the voices of employees
4. Be a business-centric, strategic function
5. Most of all, keep bringing employee voices to the leaders’ ears

Points 3 and 5 are essentially the same and presented as the biggest expectations from Business Leaders. It is not surprising to see that in a pandemic era, that changed completely the way everybody works (employers as well employees), one of the biggest expectations from Leaders from HR is to ensure they are made aware of what their workforce concerns are. Leaders want to anticipate, they want to know challenges faced by their employees ahead, they want to be prepared for what is coming ahead from their people, they do not want to be surprised. And the only way they can get their workforce pulse is with the HR function stepping further into a zone that Covid enhanced, a zone that I like to call the (new) People zone, and learning what I call the (new) People language in addition to the Business Language. Why new? Because employees today are not who they used to be before Covid hit.

This month, Forbes reported how Microsoft conducted a survey of 31,000 of their people in 31 countries to get a vibe check of their workforce. One of the conclusions they drew from the survey is that:

“…one thing is clear: the people who went home to work in 2020 are not the same people returning to the office in 2022.”

The workforce has changed, People working in organizations have changed. They now speak a different language, and that language is one that demands more respect, more fulfillment in their jobs, more appreciation of their efforts, more consideration of their concerns than before. And with Covid, the workforce has realized today more than ever that their voice matters, that their contribution and engagement matter and that their wellbeing matters even more.

This means that the HR function is at a crossroads, a very sensitive one, one that requires HR leaders to be acute to employees needs and concerns, and to find the connection between those needs and the business goals of the organization. This is a fine line that HR leaders can not miss, to the risk of missing out completely on keeping the workforce committed and engaged.

Channeling people voices to management has now become part of being a strategic partner simply because employee expectations are higher than they have ever been.

To succeed, the HR function needs to adapt, change and position itself as a strategic partner to the business as well as a strategic partner to the people making the business, like they were during the pandemic. This a new era for HR, an era that requires a new HR mindset that was born or reinforced during Covid. Let’s do all we can to keep that mindset.

D. Manou-Assoko