Let’s use our own special ways to ensure we are looked up to as partners of the business, allies of employees, and better versions of ourselves.

Embracing each challenge in life as an opportunity to transform and co-create should be the mantra for every HR professional to weave out impactful initiatives aligned to every situation. As new-age HR professionals, we need to brace ourselves to overcome the challenges in 2022, ensuring that employee experience remains intact and value is added to the business.

It has been more than 1.5 years of uncertainty, stress, and juggling between multiple things, such as working remotely with skeleton teams while ensuring productivity. Still, many of us made it and converted every hurdle into a rolling stone, creating space for us to manoeuvre around it and still obtain the desired results. Be it embracing digital platforms (like Google Meet, Teams, and Zoom) to huddle, brainstorm, interview, and connect with our workforce, or adopting chatbots powered by AI platforms to listen to employee grievances/queries, we found solutions to the finer aspects of making a difference as HR professionals.

However, this isn’t the end – nowhere near it, in fact. It just gets bigger and better from here, so let me share my thoughts on what could possibly be the biggest HR challenges ahead of us this year and how we can channel our efforts to overcome them.

1. Retaining Best Talent

One of the most significant challenges would be to ring-fence our best talent and ensure we continue building careers and contributing to business growth. With remote working and many organisations allowing flexible working hours, a whole gamut of opportunities for talent who can easily switch jobs has opened up. Other aspects like lack of internal movements or organisations failing to meet employees’ career aspirations also play a vital role in the stickiness of talent. It is important to have robust career frameworks and conversations to help talent visualise their growth path and continue to build on in the same organisation. HR professionals can be the binding force between business and individual objectives by removing the obstacles that come in the way and strengthening the internal talent pipeline.

2. Ensuring Sustained Mental and Social Wellness

We all witnessed a surge in the deployment of wellness initiatives covering various offerings across organisations to connect with employees emotionally and care for them during tough times. The benchmark is set, and as HR professionals, we need to raise the bar in the coming year with regard to caring more for our employees, listening to their difficulties and problems, and ensuring we can read between the lines and understand what is not said. It is crucial to have the right culture in place and make the organisation not just certified but truly a great place to work. A few key focus areas should include helping employees strike a better work-life balance, prioritising and planning better so that they are free from unneeded stress and function to the best of their abilities. As offices open up, it is essential to have platforms wherein old employees and newer ones can socialise and get to know each other. There is so much to catch up on, and it is our responsibility as HR professionals to create such opportunities.

3. Managing a Diverse Workforce

The pandemic has taught us that we are capable of doing various kinds of work, and some have also realised their true calling. This has paved the way for gig workers and part-time workers as part of the larger workforce mix who deserve the focus and attention regarding the assignments they work on with various organisations. As HR professionals, we also need to be sensitive towards our female colleagues who may not have access to a support system to help them with their younger children, as daycare centres are still not operational in many states. In cases where offices are fully functional, we still have employees coping with the pre-pandemic routine, and in hybrid/ remote working, the struggle continues to balance work and life. We need to be sensitive towards these fundamental issues and deal with the workforce in a way where being compassionate is more important than being empathetic.

4. Ensuring Engagement Beyond Events

In our endeavour to stay in touch with employees and bring a smile to their faces, we need to ensure we consistently strive to make a difference in their lives in small and big ways. We need not wait for milestone occasions but find opportunities to celebrate small wins too. When we were all working remotely, we rolled out various interventions to collect feedback through different forms, used digital platforms for celebrations till the last mile, and ensured that leadership communication remained intact to keep sharing the vision and mission of the organisation. The same needs to gather momentum i n the coming year till it is a way of life for every HR professional.

We evolve as humans, and as professionals, let’s use our own special ways to ensure we are looked up to as partners of the business, allies of employees, and better versions of ourselves. By adding our own personal touch to looking at employee issues and business opportunities and aligning both, we create value as HR professionals. The years to come will pave the way for new technologies, new platforms to connect with others, and new initiatives to ease employee grievances and ensure we provide holistic development to our internal talent. Let’s gear up for the exciting times ahead!