HR Insights Blog

More businesses are seeing personal and career development to be the responsibility of the individual rather than something that the company, be it through Human Resources or individual managers, directs and provides. There is a growing belief that people develop fastest when they feel responsible for their own progress, and that individuals should be encouraged to take the initiative in developing their skills and capabilities. For this to happen the individual employee needs to develop a sense of ownership over their career and personal development, and to understand the importance of honest self-assessment.

Regular coaching and feedback is now an essential element of an effective performance culture; if organisations fail at creating an environment based on trust, accountability, feedback and strong personal relationships, then new Performance Management processes will not have any significant impact on the improvement of performance.

First impressions are important. We saw in the previous trend (see full report) that the On-boarding process now starts much earlier, already during the recruitment phase. The first impressions new hires gain may well shape the way they feel about their new employer in the longer term. 

New attitudes towards ‘full-time employment’ have been emerging over recent years, primarily driven by a rise in the use of contract and contingent labour, more flexible working schedules, job sharing, retirees continuing in the workplace in a part-time capacity, and other working arrangements that would have been much less common a decade or more ago. 

Organisations are increasingly taking a more inclusive approach to compensation and we are seeing a Total Rewards philosophy applied more frequently at global Top Employers. Total Rewards implies a much broader focus, not purely on the money element of compensation and benefits, but also including more holistic aspects like health and wellbeing, work/life balance, work environment and development opportunities. 

The way that we define leaders is changing. More than half of our participants defined leaders not by their position within an organisational chart, but by their degree of influence and performance. As organisations become less hierarchical, flatter and more matrixed, employees find themselves needing greater leadership and collaborative skills for working and sharing across business units and geographical borders, and adapting to ad-hoc project work. 

To stay competitive, organisations need to adapt and respond quickly to changing business needs, and to optimise new opportunities. This high level of volatility within the commercial marketplace has resulted in the traditional inflexible yearly goal setting cycle becoming increasingly ineffective.

Historically, On-boarding has been an event that usually lasts a maximum of 2-3 days after a new employee joins the business. In a classic orientation programme the curriculum often centres on company HR policies and an understanding of the role, whilst there is usually much paperwork to be completed.

There is a feeling that Leadership Development has become too individually focused and elitist, often residing in a person or a specific role, and this has contributed to a noticeable growing transition towards viewing leadership as a collective process that is spread throughout networks of people. To facilitate this transition, businesses need to stop identifying individual leaders and instead, shift focus towards creating an environment and culture in which great leadership can develop and thrive.

Succession Management has previously become an established process within larger organisations as they have sought to maintain leadership continuity through a pipeline of emerging talent. However we are now seeing an increasing recognition of value of succession management processes, from smaller organisations.

There is an increasing awareness amongst organisations participating in the Top Employers certification programmes, that having a sophisticated Performance Management process in place is not enough on its own to help realise best-in-class results. For high performance to become sustainable the Performance Management process needs to be embedded in a ‘High-Performance Culture’. This idea is widely adopted by the participating companies as already 95% of them (and even 100% of the Top Performers) include a description of their desired Performance Management culture when defining their Performance Management process.

Today, we see greater differentiation in compensation, particularly for those deemed to be high performing employees. Instead of pay being equally spread, we are more often seeing relatively smaller increases for moderate and lower performers, with greater budget allocated to employees with outstanding performance. This way organisations are allocating their budgets more effectively to ensure there is room for higher salaries if the performance requires it.