I usually find it interesting to review what’s in trend today and beyond. Therefore, I will listen to and read some business researchers and experts on how they predict the forthcoming years. Looking into trends is like looking into our future as it helps to understand and determine what we should do next.
As I was preparing for my workshop on Gig Economy recently, I came across Tom Haak, a renowned speaker and one of the world’s leading and influential HR thinkers. He is also the founder and associate for HR Trend Institute. I have been listening to Tom Haak’s predictions for the last couple of years, and he usually nailed his views on how HR should drive for the forthcoming years.
On a disclaimer note, although I was educated in Strategic HR Management, I am not an HR practitioner per se. I am more of IT-managed services and Business Outsourcing practitioner, and I am passionate about advocating how digitalization is able to help people (the workers), and technology to work collaboratively thus providing speed and flexibility in their business model today.
So, listening to these People and Technology predictions give me some light on how we should position our solutions and build a new business model for the market.
First, let me share the views of Tom Haak. Thereafter, I will give my thoughts on the great waves, the ongoing trend, and finally, what can we prepare for 2023. This is my personal view; hence, I would urge you to refer to the expert reports for better decision-making for your business.
HR trend for 2023
In 2022, Tom Haak spoke about adaptation to transformation, and his prediction continues as technology is a major transformational driver in 2023. You can browse his site to have more information on his prediction. Having browsed through his megatrend prediction, I like to highlight his points that,
- In 2022, he spoke on recruiting for diversity as he anticipated then that there will be a war of talent and organizations will have challenges in recruitment in 2022. He hopes to have more diversified unbiased recruiting, such as aged workers, disabilities, or even refugees. He also suggested removing fences between organizations to share a talented talent pool.
- And in 2023, he advised organizations to watch out for the Talent Intelligence Agency (TIA). This is about having an organization tap into more diversified pools of talents for specific skills to resolve problems rather than pre-defined or static jobs or functions.
If I read him correctly, he stressed breaking the barriers on recruiting, and don’t just look beyond but looking within too. It’s because the future will be centred around technology, data analytics, and machine learning in their worker’s augmentation process. This will help to bridge the demand and supply of workers, especially in filling the gaps. Therefore, what should you do?
Experiencing the Great or Big Waves
But before that, globally, there were economic changes in the business arena. In 2020, almost everyone or the world experienced the crisis of the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic. As the global headed towards post-pandemic in Q3 2021, the US started experiencing the Great Resignation. The Great Resignation waves spread across other regions such as the UK, Australia, and some parts of Asia.
Thereafter the Great Resignation, the trend moves to Quiet Quitting. Investopedia defined Quiet Quitting as workers only performing the minimum job required. They will not place more effort, and time, where necessary. Quiet Quitting predominantly comprises the entails of Millennials and Gen Z generally.
As we entered 2023, the trend is about the Great Layoffs from Technology companies. We read everywhere that almost 200,000 jobs were layoff since the last quarter of 2022. These large technology companies such as Amazon, Meta, Netflix, Twitter, Microsoft, and the most recent is Google with anticipation on 12,000 employees will be affected.
Quiet Hiring making its wave
Now the trend of “Quiet Hiring” making its waves. Quiet Hiring is nothing new, it is merely a new terminology that is used by many experts today. While this has been making more presence today, I believe many organizations will start making their moves towards Quiet Hiring to overcome today’s economic challenges.
Emily Rose McRae, the senior director of research at Gartner defines “Quiet Hiring” as a strategy for the organization to fill any gaps without hiring permanent or full-time employees. Others use this strategy to help their organization without onboarding new employees.
So, how can this “Quiet Hiring” help you overcome the challenges today? The idea is to expand your talent capabilities from within; and why? It is because.
- It helps with overcoming the potential underemployment as businesses are deploying more digital technologies to overcome some manual tasks.
- Organizations may require new or niche skills for a specific duration without having to hire and onboard a full-time employee.
- Today, many workers are exposed to and acquired newer technological skills to expand their capabilities thus, it makes sense for them to offer their new skills within their organization and at the same time make a side hustle income.
What is the solution then?
Recently, I was having lunch with a few senior leaders. The conversation led us to speak about our local government easing the rules on hiring foreign workers to certain industries. Coincidentally, I just finished an awareness presentation to an organization about Gig Economy. For long while, the issue of hiring foreign workers has not been resolved as there are issues with the middlemen that cause the cost and long process in the engagement of these foreign workers.
These senior leaders were quick as they relate to why don’t our local government ride on the available white-label marketplace gig platform to help with temporary workers’ engagement. Yes, why not? A gig platform is one of the digital solutions to overcome the many hassles of recruitment issues faced by many employers today.
Gig Economy and its digital platform are the solutions to the future of work. Recently, as I was running a gig deployment workshop concurrently with the system provider, I am practically impressed by how they use machine learning to improve data quality on the gig platform. We cannot deny that the Gig platform will eventually ease and eliminates the complex and long hiring process for one to fill in the gap for certain skills or roles.
In fact, the use of a gig platform is the solution to help with underemployment issues. It is a flexible solution to help the organization scale resources based on immediate demand and supply issues. It also helps an internal organization to provide new avenues for workers to extend their niche skills, or for them to learn and gain new skills whilst earning some side-hustle income.
Having a gig platform will also help organizations overcome the never-ending attrition issues, retirees, the aging population, retaining niche skilled, knowledgeable workers, and even any potentially unprecedented social problems and challenges.
At the end of the day, if employee retention and cost saving are your business goal for this year, then this can be one of your solutions that can help you to build an exceptional employee experience strategy for 2023.
