Want to Tackle Top HR Priorities in 2023? Take a Look At Your Employees’ Wish Lists

Tasked with managing the happiness and productivity of your organisation’s greatest asset, HR leaders know better than anyone the meaning of treating employees as customers. However, these customers have become more demanding, stressed and prone to sparking catchy-named phenomena in recent years. How can you be confident you’re giving your workforce what they both need and want when the goalposts keep moving?

As we approach another festive season and New Year, it’s customary to take stock of the year that has passed before considering what lies ahead. And if there’s one adjective we can use when summarising 2022 from a workforce perspective it’s “disruptive” – and the general flavour of the mood of HR leaders as we approach 2023 is “uncertain”.

These teams are under constant pressure to reinvent the wheel in order to stand out, attract and retain talent. It’s no surprise “The Great Burnout” amongst HR professionals was also a feature of 2022.

To help you focus, pre-empt rather than catch-up, and understand the levers at your disposal, this blog looks at the top HR issues through a different lens- through the eyes of your employees.

What are the top 5 HR priorities for 2023?

According to Gartner’s new HR Trends study, HR teams are plagued by a “triple squeeze” of pressures: a turbulent economy, increasing focus on employee well-being and the expectation for HR to manage trade offs between cost savings and the investment needed to recruit and retain talent. HR leaders are lining up their priorities ready for next year and Gartner report they can be ordered as follows:

1. Leader and Manager Effectiveness
2. Organisational Design and Change Management
3. Employee Experience
4. Recruiting
5. The Future of Work

We’ll examine each of these five priorities through an employee-focused lens by illustrating how they can be achieved when delivering on employees’ expectations and wishes.

HR Priority – Leader and manager effectiveness

60% of HR Leaders are prioritising leader and manager effectiveness in 2023. Organisations have learned, through the various trials of the past few years, just how much of a complex balancing act leadership is.  What makes you a great leader- the ability to foster trust, coach potential, give effective feedback, create vision and accountability to name a few- has almost nothing to do with the technical talent which frequently gets people promoted. Post-pandemic, this chronic skills gap is only widening. 

Leadership approaches adapt but there two fundamentals which always underpin a great leader: their character (who they are and how they see things) and competence (the skills). If these aren’t effectively developed, organisations can end up with a potent mix of both anxious, stressed out leaders and overconfident, complacent ones. 

 A FranklinCovey survey found 60% of leaders feel overwhelmed with their responsibility at least once a month. Separate Forbes research revealed an alarming disconnect in perception: whilst 91% of first-level leaders felt confident they have the trust of their team, 58% of employees claimed they trust strangers more than their own boss. 

Workforce Wish – Inspirational, consistent leadership

It is well understood today that employees want to feel part of something and treated like a whole person with a life outside of work. To zone in on how this feels day to day, most of us would describe a great boss as someone who makes our job simultaneously easier and more fulfilling. This hinges on two things: 

• Being able to trust the decisions, commitments and good intent of our leader
• Feeling trusted, valued and inspired by our leader

When leaders at every level achieve both, individual enthusiasm, collective action and exceptional results follow. The reward is high, but so are the risks as employees become increasingly attuned to whether or not their strengths are being utilised, their contribution recognised, their voice heard and personal needs catered to. People are realising they want to be inspired to improve and grow rather than motivated to complete a task, which cannot happen if they don’t believe in themselves or their leader. 

Self-belief and confidence in leadership occur when what makes people unique is aligned with what the business needs, and then communicated so powerfully, transparently and inclusively that the team wants to join the journey. And apply their best to it.  

There is however a lot that can go awry in this process if leaders aren’t acutely self-aware of their words, their actions and their biases. Both what they say and what they fail to say has the power to exclude, demotivate and break trust- in an instant and by accident. 

In the words of our Chief People Officer Todd Davies:  “Leadership happens one conversation at a time. So be mindful of each one.”

For an idea of  why a leader’s words can go a long way and how to wield them to unleash potential and create tighter, higher performing teams, check out these 10 Phrases Leaders Use to Build Trust. 

HR Priority – Organisation design and change management

53% of HR leaders are prioritising organisation design and change management this year. This is largely driven by the fact that disruption and friction at work are key drivers of continuing attrition.

It is unsurprising that a recent study from Gartner found that employee willingness to support organisational change reduced by 49% between 2016 and 2022. Change fatigue- or exhaustion- is getting to people. 

Workforce Wish – Take the pain out of change and smooth the way for them

People can find even objectively positive change stressful to experience and so it is essential that leadership remains a calming presence which reduces the drama, rather than adds to it. As Curtis Bateman explains in his blog about the language of change, “when a leader is sporadic or overly optimistic/pessimistic in their delivery of a key message surrounding change….people feel lost and unimportant. They don’t take initiative or make any decisions because they don’t feel led or directed enough to have the confidence to do so.”

The FranklinCovey Change Model takes the mystery out of the process of leading change—showing leaders how to prepare, initiate and persist through it in a stable way. The model begins by giving leaders insights into their own reactions and emotions surrounding change, then looks at the predictable pattern uncertainty follows. From the zone of status quo, through disruption, adoption, and innovation – each zone enables us to make sense of what’s happening, what we’re feeling and why. 

It provides a universal playbook for dealing with change in a world which has become used to throwing old norms, rules, and guidelines out the window. Having a shared framework for communicating emotions, understanding each other and identifying next steps is a powerful tool which makes the change feel not only achievable, but less lonely too. 

To dig into this more, click here for the five leadership behaviours which drive collective action in a fluid landscape.

HR Priority – Employee Experience

A top priority for just under half of HR leaders. Employee engagement is all about how your employee’s relationship with their job impacts the business. Employee experience is all about how your business impacts your employee and their relationship with you. The organic result of a positive employee experience is improved engagement.

Another way of looking at this is a principle for business success Stephen R. Covey described in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People decades ago: a failure to care for the goose who lays the golden egg, or, the P/PC balance. P equals Productivity and PC equals the Capability to Produce. When the wellbeing of those who produce- your employees- are neglected, their capability to produce plummets. They consciously or subconsciously ‘Quiet Quit’.

Workforce Wish – A healthy give/take employee/employer relationship

With employees, companies get what they give. And people want more. ‘Quiet Quitting’ is said to be in service of greater work/life balance, which is an organic result when the give/take relationship between employee and employer is working properly. When it’s not, engagement is lost.

People are willing to work hard, but no longer at the expense of themselves and their wellbeing. They want to do great work, but not unsustainable, unfulfilling or unrecognised work. A 2022 Gallup survey asked over 13,000 employees what the most important factors were in deciding whether or not to accept a new job, 61% cited better personal wellbeing and 58% said the ability to do what they do best.

When leadership abundantly gives more than is printed on paper- growth opportunities, empathy, trust, equity- then so will employees.

When planning your HR strategy around employee experience in 2023, ask yourself if it fulfils this statement where every employee can say “I am a valued member of a winning team doing meaningful work in an environment of trust”. 

HR Priority – Recruitment 

A top priority for 46% of HR leaders. In today’s hybrid-driven labour market, hiring managers face a double whammy of high attrition rates and a low supply of talent. With the pressure only increasing to deliver better results, faster, HR in 2023 will be working hard to attract the right people, with the right skills, competencies and values. But are you peddling what that talent wants?

Workforce Wish – Flexibility, Mobility, Inclusivity

Money matters, but if a competitive salary is your principal differentiator, then it’s less and less likely to be enough. 

Being part of a forward-thinking, value-driven, diverse organisation where the happiness of everyone matters, will snag the top talent, but there is only so much you can demonstrate about your company in the hiring stages. However, there are some things job seekers are on the lookout for which you would be wise to capitalise on: 

Flexibility 

According to recent research carried out by Plus One Recruitment Specialists, “Hybrid working now represents the most sought-after perk for most candidates looking for a new role”. After the sudden move to remote during the pandemic, people have gotten pretty comfortable. They’re enjoying the lack of commute, fewer distractions, increased autonomy and better work/life balance. If your organisation isn’t demonstrating trust and relevancy with flexibility- whether that is hybrid working, flexible hours or empowering other personal freedoms- then you will struggle to compete. 

Mobility

Today, people are a lot more likely to stay true to themselves than blindly loyal to a company. This means looking for room to grow, advance and achieve more. A recent research confirms this, finding that 88% of job seekers said an abundance of career opportunities would be their priority. To motivate the investment even more, studies show that employees stick around almost twice as long as those in organisations with fewer opportunities for both horizontal and vertical mobility.

Inclusivity

An investment in DEI initiatives has been an empowering outcome of the pandemic. From diverse representation and inclusion to equitable opportunities, treatment and support for all, people want to see these issues being taken seriously by their employer. This is particularly true for Gen Z, which a 2022 Glassdoor study shows have higher expectations in this area than other age groups. Interrogate whether the leaders in your organisations are committed to authentically growing inclusivity over time, connecting people who bring different experiences and viewpoints, and owning their mistakes and biases with humility.

Read our free guide on the three keys to building an inclusive, high-trust organisational culture.

HR Priority – The Future of Work

A key priority for 42% of HR leaders, though this can be interpreted in a myriad of ways. The only certainty any of us can have about the future is that it is always shifting. 

Whatever the vision of your organisation, your employees are likely feeling this uncertainty. A study of 3,000 people conducted by Amazon and Workplace Intelligence revealed that 70% of people don’t feel prepared for the future of work. 

It may be the last on the list, but this challenge cannot be overlooked.

Workforce Wish – Opportunity and investment in development

The nature of both work and life has evolved so much that in 2020 the World Economic Forum determined that 50% of the workforce would need reskilling by 2025. We’re now soon to be two years away from that deadline, and the race is on to stay fit-for-purpose. 

The good news is, employees want to grow. They want to learn, nurture their career and improve their personal prospects. They view this investment in their development as an indicator of how much they are valued as both individuals with aspirations and as assets to the business- which indeed it is. 

A study of 1,357 employees and HR leaders by TalentLMS and SHRM found 76% of people said they would be more likely to stay with a company that offers continuous training. Further research by Hays showed that 83% of workers said they were “very much” open to learning and upskilling. 

The bad news is, research shows employers aren’t quite on the same page. That same Hays study found only 48% of employers believe their employees are interested in learning, whilst 34% of workers are considering leaving because of a lack of advancement in their careers or opportunity for future-oriented skills.

This disconnect between what employees want and what their employers believe they’re interested in could be a double-pronged reason behind increased attrition. First, employees are experiencing burnout due to lacking the necessary skills and tools to complete the functions expected of them. Second, employees naturally feel it’s necessary to look elsewhere for their upskilling and career progression opportunities. For both these compelling reasons, businesses must do more to increase learning and development opportunities for their workforce in 2023.

To explore how FranklinCovey can help you thrive, read our guide Help Your Organisation Thrive in the New World of Work. 

Looking towards an unpredictable but exciting year

HR faces a truly generational challenge in the year ahead. The rapid changes we’ve experienced over the past few years have made it feel a bit like 2020/21/22 have melted into one blurry mass of disruption and drastic change. 

To remain relevant to the employees they are tasked with managing, HR leaders- in fact, all leaders- will need to pivot their focus and place more value on improving employee satisfaction, addressing skills scarcity and building a workplace fit for the future.