Which HR trends will dominate 2019?

The 2018 Global Human Capital Trends survey was Deloitte’s largest and most extensive to date, with input from more than 11,000 businesses and HR leaders around the world.

Interestingly, one of the major findings of the report was that despite the high expectations from millennials around corporate social responsibility and the link between social impact and financial performance, only 23% of Australian respondents say social responsibility is a top priority in their corporate strategy. Furthermore, over half (53%) say it is not a focus for them.

In fact, Deloitte Human Capital partner Juliet Bourke told HRD that social enterprise was one of the most significant themes in the report and should not be overlooked by employers.

“There was a feeling in the community that organisations really need to stand up and be the voice of the citizen,” said Bourke.

“It’s a feeling that trust is eroding in organisations and the government – and that employers must be leaders in this space.”

According to Bourke, this involves thinking not just of the value they are creating for their shareholders or a small group of people, but value in a much bigger sense to be citizens of a community.

“We see that particularly in Australia, for example, with the Royal Commission looking deeply at whether banks or financial institutions have lived up to those community expectations. I think it’s about really nailing the trust issue and expectations.”

Deloitte are currently collecting responses for the 2019 Global Human Capital Trends survey and Bourke is anticipating some interesting trends around L&D, and reimagining what a learning environment looks like.

“We have seen a trend over at number of years that learning programs are changing and that people are feeling overwhelmed,” said Bourke.

“They don’t have the capacity to invest in day- or week- long training programs – it’s this idea about digestible chunks.”

Bourke added that it’s also interesting how there is now a greater emphasis on the experience of learning.

“In England you can now become a lawyer no longer by just going to university for three to five years, getting accreditation and then starting at a law firm. It has now been approved that you can be an apprentice and learn to be a lawyer alongside people who are already lawyers.”

Interestingly, the 2018 survey also found that in preparing for the workforce of the future, 90% of Australian businesses jointly ranked a connected workplace and C-suite collaboration as their top priorities.

However, only 38% and 43% respectively indicated a readiness to tackle these challenges.