In additionto technology, driving cultural change and dealing with amulti-generational workforce are among the challenges HRprofessionals are aiming to address.

HR professionals have a busy year ahead of them as they continueto take on both the ongoing issues of retention and recruitment aswell as new challenges disrupting the workforce. As they look forsuccess in the year to come, there are some issues and areas ofopportunity that they'll be focusing on, according to a survey from GreenCircle Life.

What's on the top of the to-do list? When it comes to enhancingtheir organization's HR services, 62 percent of respondents rankedtechnology at the top on a scale from 1 to 10 in enhancing theirorganization's HR services; 31 percent ranked it higher than 6.

"The findings from the survey confirm what we thought werechallenges in the industry," said Dinesh Sheth, CEO andfounder of Green Circle Life. "Corporations are facing increasedcosts for benefits packages, so it's important for them to have aproper return on investment for the resources offered."

Related: Top 6 benefits trends to watch in2020

There's definitely some room for improvement: While 53 percentsay their employees are happy with their benefits and HR, 40percent say they're "somewhat happy" and the rest say they're nothappy with the benefits and services they're offered.

In addition to technology, driving cultural change and dealingwith a multi-generational workforce are amongthe challenges HR professionals are aiming to address in the comingyear.

When it comes to cultural change, more than 48 percent sayachieving such change, as well as engaging employees in thecompany's culture, are important goals for their organization thisyear; that can be a challenge for a multi-generational workforce,which presents additional challenges in the form of benefits.

"Many companies are focusing on their overall culture as a wayto engage, attract and retain employees," Sheth said."Additionally, as the workforce is becoming more age-diverse,employers must provide solutions and competitive offerings to bestreach everyone. In 2020, the HR community will strive to get themost value out of their resources and use technology as anaccelerator to achieve their goals."

Lack of interest and understanding of their benefits, say 30 percentof respondents, are the major obstacles in getting employees toengage with those benefits, even though more than 58 percent saythey have a "strong and effective strategy in place to educate andencourage employees to use their benefits." Employees, say 25percent, view the process as time-consuming or difficult, while 20percent say the process is disjointed or the benefit vendorplatforms were difficult to use and 15 percent say they have atough time reaching employees.

But there are other roadblocks, too, since different generationshave different priorities and lifestyles; 44 percent cite suchconflicts as challenges to their organization's benefits offerings,while 64 percent say they need to "improve and develop theirstrategy further" to engage their multi-generational workforce withthe benefits on offer.

There is no strategy at all currently in place for 14.3 percent,although they're working on developing one, and 27.8 percent saythat there's a communication gap surrounding those lifestyle andpriority conflicts.

Technology presents problems, too, with 16.7 percent sayingtheir workforce is challenged by different technologicalpreferences.

Read more: 

• Building diversity and inclusion: A modernguide
• How HR can adopt and scale AI to keep up withrapidly evolving technology
• The multi-generational workforce is becomingincreasingly separated