An overview of the future of HR industry

Amelia Jackson
4 min readOct 20, 2021

The HR Industry had a very difficult time due to the pandemic. Globally, the coronavirus pandemic has created a lot of havoc. People were more concerned about health and safety. This pandemic has redefined the fundamentals of the HR Process in several ways and has given rise to new realities like:

  1. Social distancing
  2. Online (virtual) work
  3. Self-isolation
  4. Lockdowns
  5. Shutdowns
  6. Quarantine
  7. Shelter-in-place
  8. Essential businesses

These concepts reinvent where and how to work by exploring the demand to work remotely (called working at home, working virtually, telecommuting, and others). Now, it has become a dominant reality for nearly every firm.

In this article, let’s understand how HR leaders manage these uncertain times and build the future of HR and the challenges HR professionals they are facing by working virtually.

The HR leaders are facing the following challenges with remote workers, especially during the pandemic. Once they understand and know how to deal with these challenges, they can help the employees who are working from home to feel less isolated, enhance productivity, experience better connection, and their well-being.

Compensate for the lack of face-to-face communication

Cognitive and emotional trust usually comes from face-to-face interactions. These aspects are really difficult while working at home. To compensate for this it is highly recommended to do video calls. Employees can show their personalities by setting backgrounds, or by sharing personal moments.

Finding the right work-life balance

Working at home reduces traditional boundaries of going to and from work, creates pressures of doing work while managing kids (especially when kids face school closings) and needs the discipline to avoid other distractions (e.g., television, internet, food, and family matters). HR professionals encourage employees to set work norms and routines (e.g., respond to calls within a certain time frame, seek a private space to work) and to prioritize work that has to be done.

Compensating the lack of visibility

Employees want to know about their performance and also want their contributions to be recognized. HR leaders can be conscious of celebrating success in remote settings by sharing the success stories, providing personal comments to remote employees, sharing best practices, and offering credit to employees who deliver results. Positive performance conversations can also occur remotely to help employees.

By hiring HR professionals who have good experience working from home, will help employees to work with more enthusiasm, those leaders can share their experiences like the talent management certification they have done and how they have successfully balanced their work and personal life.

Tackle workplace isolation

Social isolation is a leading cause of mortality, and working at home often distances employees from one another. The future of HR is based on how the HR Process can be handled and who can promote interactions among team members with frequent contacts via email, video calls one can offer to coach and mentoring by personal “check-ins” on how the employees are doing, and encourage employees to connect more.

Have a vision

Be clear on what the HR Industry wants to do and why they want to do it. This will solve major concerns at work. Should have a clear vision of what they want to achieve as a professional offer a direction to approach the job and tasks accordingly. If one wants to fix the prevailing office politics, refine the process into parts and work from the grass-root level. Talk to employees, schedule one on one, and understand to know the people better. Having a vision also offers to classify and to prioritize the work for optimum efficiency.

Communicate better

Not just an important aspect for success but also most essential that the professionals must have is the talent management certification. Be clear in the communications and always remain confident of them. Give clear-cut responses to those coming in need of assistance and be firm on tasks and responsibilities with the management.

Communicate clearly and often, this must be the foundation for HR professionals. Communicate the thoughts better for clear understanding and to establish trust as well as to build a stronger professional relationship.

Leverage the ability of technology

The role of technology is to simplify life. As an HR professional, one is required to be efficient at whatever tasks they perform. One must set an example of all sorts at the workplace. For this, one must adapt to newer technologies and find a quicker way of doing things. If one feels some of the tasks are repeating, try automating it.

With the help of collaborative software and doing a talent management certification, one can become more efficient at managing tech concerns and also tech-savvy too. These aspects will help to achieve more in less time period.

Learn HR Analytics

To stand out from the crowd, one of the essential things HR leaders must do is to become good at something others are not aware of. HR analytics is the best option to do it. While the competition is still catching up, learn quickly HR analytics and held data drive the decisions at a workplace.

It is time to take charge of attrition and recruitment with HR analytics and come up with insights that can take the talent management certification by astonish. When they point out aspects that the top-level managers never knew were present, one can expect their authority to go up at a workplace as well as to become an inevitable part of the firm.

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Amelia Jackson

Human Resource Professional. Passionate about Human Resources. Writing has always been a passion with strong interest in talent management & HR Industry.