The new year is a clean slate, an opportunity for HR leaders to consider resolutions that can help them continue to transform the workplace and improve employee engagement and experience. It’s a chance to build relationships, try new strategies, and assess processes and procedures.
REPORT: How to Improve Employee Engagement in an Economic Downturn
Consider these suggested new year’s resolutions for HR leaders, who want to make a difference with their work:
Tend to Self-Care
In recent years, Human Resources professionals have continuously carried many burdens and worn many hats while tending to the needs of others. Let this be the year that HR leaders care for themselves. After all, the caretakers cannot be effective if they feel burned out and exhausted. Reflect on professional goals, get rest, focus on mental health and wellness, and think of yourself, too. People must care for themselves first, so they can then care for others.
WATCH: Paving the Road to Self-Care with Self-Awareness and Self-Compassion
Improve Employer Brand
In lean times, companies sometimes rest on their laurels when it comes to promoting their employer brand and getting word out about how cool it is to work with them. Maybe they have laid off people. Maybe there is a hiring freeze. Maybe they are just trying to reduce budgets and do more with less.
So, they take their focus off recruiting and hiring. This is understandable, but it is a mistake. Instead, companies should consistently remain vigilant about how potential employees are perceiving them. Even if they are laying off people, they should help those who are let go and make sure people know they handled the layoffs with care. Now is the time to improve employer branding, so organizations are ready when the economy turns around.
Join the Metaverse
The Metaverse is a vague concept to most, but advances in technology are making this virtual world more prominent. Many are anticipating that this will be the next big thing in communication and work. Therefore, this is the year to understand the metaverse and determine how it relates to Human Resources and individual organizations. How can one use the metaverse in HR? Make it a priority to answer this question because business leaders are expecting professionals to take advantage of the latest in tech.
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Figure Out Hybrid Work
Employers are putting the pandemic in the rearview mirror now that it is much more manageable. While they have adjusted to remote work, many executives are still insisting on returning to 2019, when everyone was gathering daily and putting in long hours in an office. Some are resigning themselves to a compromise called hybrid work. However, HR leaders and business executives are still trying to determine how to best organize the hybrid workplace, when to schedule in-person meetings, and if anyone should be allowed to work remotely. This is the year to figure that all out and determine hybrid work best practices.
REPORT: Orchestrated Collaboration: How to Enable Innovation in a Hybrid Workplace
Be Kind
Being kind and elevating empathy should be the new mantra of businesspeople. For what seems like forever, Americans seemed to expect leaders at work to rule with an iron fist and promote what some might call greedy behavior that minimized the employee experience. If that ever was reality, it is no longer. Now, HR leaders must set the tone for organizations, and they will win over employees and customers by wearing their heart on their sleeve, elevating individuals, and leading with care.
What is your new year’s resolution? Let us know in the comments or on LinkedIn or Facebook.
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