Eye on HR: 2022 round-up
Our editor gives us a collection of stories from the year covering the trends, the interviews, the analysis that hit home for him this last few months.
Why You Should Care
Which UNLEASH pieces caught your eye in 2022? From Tiktok's talent pivot, to behavioral science and health tech, via our two live shows, it's been a packed and varied year.
Read on for editor Jon Kennard's favorite stories from the last 12 months.
When you look back to the start of this year, does it now feel like a period of building on new ideas, or missed opportunity, or something else more complex? For everyone, it probably varies depending on industry.
Some felt it worse than others due to the secondary effects of you-know-what, while others have thrived. All that said, trends have appeared, some of which felt like a genuine sea change, while others were clearly jumping on whichever bandwagon rolled into town that month. Through all of this, we’ve published almost 1000 stories across our four main areas of future of work, learning and skills, talent and recruitment, and HR tech and transformation.
Inarguably, the influence of CHROs has grown this year across most industries, as both local and global events and pressures have seen people demand better from their work. I don’t think it’s as much of a seller’s market out there anymore, but employee voice is still louder than ever. And many in business look to CHROs as the company bellwether.
Having said all this, some things never change. And one of these things is Blue Monday. Quite possibly PR constructed, it’s a day in January that is allegedly the most depressing day of the year.
Regardless of its genesis, people do get down in January, and we now have a keener eye on employee mental health than ever. Allie Nawrat wrote a great piece about prioritizing wellbeing with advice that can and should apply all year round, not least that “…since the future of work is not going to see a full-time return to the office for most – and the pandemic is continuing to require fully remote working for millions across the world – now is the time for companies to step up and implement boundaries at work.”
Tiktok was a platform that came to real prominence in 2022, even becoming a primary news source for many Gen Z-ers. And moving into the end of Jauary ByteDance, the parent company, decided to get rid of its talent development team citing internal data pointing to “Many learning events, such as online talks of mediocre quality with over 1000 people or sharings given by [key opinion leaders] which could be easily found on the Internet, did not make very effective use of our employees’ time.” A real stark warning to L&D teams, but ROI is, was, and always will be key. How are you measuring impact?
Themes of 2022
By now in the spring, we were gearing up for our first show of the year, our first face to face event in three years. In the run up we partnered with Nash Squared on a series of video interviews, including this great conversation with Jody Rabinowitz from Zoom. Sadly, Jody had to pull out of UNLEASH America, but it was a timely discussion with a company that had come to prominence in the previous two years.
Another topic on HR’s mind this year was diversity, equity, inclusion (and belonging). And, Ramadan is a religious period celebrated the world over. Allie put together another useful piece on supporting Muslim employees from simple education to prioritizing flexible working, plus some of the other aspects that you may have overlooked.
As our Vegas plans gathered pace, I spoke to economist, professor and keynote speaker Mark Blyth about all manner future of work-related things from prosciutto farms to reframing the workplace. But the TL:DR of it was a very clear message: Resistance is futile, and there is no going back.
In the summer, post-America, I interviewed behavioral scientist and vice chairman of Ogilvy, Rory Sutherland. Like Mark Blyth before him, a great raconteur; forthright, and unafraid of using arcane examples to illustrate larger truths about the future of work and work life. In this case, 19th century turnip farmers in relation to hybrid working. If you haven’t had a listen, don’t miss out, catch it here.
Another regular contributor in 2022 was VaynerMedia’s chief heart officer, Claude Silver. Sure, it’s an HR position, but it’s clear from her modified job title what Claude values most. As I’ve said elsewhere, in a tech-dominated environment hers is a welcome voice and one which focuses on compassion and trust. It was great to publish her work this year, and also to welcome her to speak in Paris in October.
No sooner had we wrapped in Las Vegas, then it was all about Paris, the City of Love. And in the build up to the show, regular contributor Dan Cave investigated the top 10 HR tech startups in Benelux, a key market for UNLEASH. As he says, “in this space, a third [of startups] offer data and analytics services, and almost 10% operate in the health and wellbeing space. All top agenda items for forward-thinking HR functions.” Innovation is strong on the mainland.
Leaning into our Work Zen I got some time in September with Dr. Oliver Harrison about health tech, and what businesses can do to both stem mental health decline and reduce pressures on health services. It turns out there’s quite a lot that we can do and much of it is tech enabled.
Looking forward
Closing out the year, we brought HR up to speed with Web3 trends (what sort of round-up would this be without a cursory mention of NFTs?), and teed up 2023 for further advancements in the world of employee recognition.
Is this where I predict what 2023 will have to offer? Always a dangerous game. Safe to say, it’ll be more of the stuff that worked and less of the stuff that didn’t. So, we’ll probably see more businesses prioritize employee mental health, D,E&I policy improvements, a rise in non-compensatory work benefits too, while quite a few will dip their toes into the ever-improving world of AI. This post about ChatGPT might raise some eyebrows…
If I could boil down this year to one word or theme – and I know I may be biased coming from an L&D background – but it would be: SKILLS. Reskilling, upskilling, cross-skilling; in an effort to retain staff, which is surely something that will take priority next year too, HR teams realized the value of holding onto their own staff and retraining them. To stave off the effects of a tough talent acquisition landscape and to make the most of the potential of your existing workforce, upskilling will play a big part next year.
Expect talent functions to talk a lot more about this in 2023. Becky Schnauffer, head of global clients at LinkedIn, agrees, as she tells UNLEASH: “To enter 2023 in a strong position, businesses must recognise that upskilling is key to responding quickly to changing market conditions. According to our research, 70% of global leaders say it’s a challenging environment to attract top talent right now. This is why upskilling programs are a critical investment. Building the skills you need from within is often the best long-term solution – from a cost, efficiency, and retention standpoint.”
Also to note – not much space to cover it here, but there are two other content hubs in the in the UNLEASH universe for America and World respectively, where you can find pre-show interviews, at-show session write ups, and post-show wrap ups that give a good look at some of the amazing speakers and subjects you can find at our shows. But really, there’s no substitute for being there. If you’ve never been, I do recommend you get involved in 2023 – there’s nothing like it in HR.
So…was 2022 a good year for you? Tell me on social.
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Editorial content manager
Jon has 20 years' experience in digital journalism and more than a decade in L&D and HR publishing.
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