With U.S. unemployment rates at a 50-year low, organizations will need to work harder than ever to attract, retain, engage and inspire employees in 2020. This means paying attention to employees' shifting priorities and expectations of their employers.

According to the Workhuman Analytics & Research Institute's 2019 report, The Future of Work is Human, employees ranked meaningful work as the most important aspect of their career. People want to work for an organization that has a mission which aligns with their own values, a human-focused culture and a work environment that will empower them to do the best work of their lives.

Therefore, to be successful, companies and their HR leaders (or cultural ambassadors) must win their employees' hearts and minds by shifting their thinking from how they can get more from their employees to how they can provide a more human employee experience – one that strengthens connections between people and teams, and, ultimately, drives stronger employee and company performance.

Encouraging your company to embrace the following three HR trends will help position it for success as we enter this new decade.

1. Understanding the business value of a diverse and inclusive workplace

Incorporating diversity and, more recently, inclusion have been top global HR priorities for many years. But, increasingly, what began as a matter of principle or compliance obligations is now understood to be a business necessity for competitive advantage.

Diversity–bringing together employees with different life experiences, points of view, religions, genders, sexual orientations, cultural references and physical and mental abilities–improves the workplace and enables the creative collisions that spark innovation. Inclusion, or recognizing and embracing employees' differences, empowers all the individuals in your organization to have a positive impact because of the qualities that make them who they are. Together, diversity and inclusion help optimize the work environment for continuous innovation, a requirement for companies to thrive and grow in a rapidly changing, fully connected global market.

Unfortunately, conscious and unconscious bias still exist and can undermine a company's efforts to build a culture of inclusion. Accepting that these biases exist and raising awareness of them in the moment may enable us to stem the propagation of these toxic attitudes and behaviors, help change them over time, and, ultimately, eradicate them.

In 2020, employers will elevate their diversity and inclusion strategies, moving beyond just recruitment and minimum legal compliance to implement policies and programs that foster real inclusion in the workplace.

Successful organizations will demonstrate that they value differences and break down barriers to inclusion by giving every staff member a voice to recognize, celebrate and reward contributions.
Companies will promote more women to the C-suite and prioritize seating them on corporate boards, continuing to close the gender gap. Having more women in power enables companies to build greater trust in their employee-employer relationships and helps promote workplace change.
More attention will be paid toward LGBTQ workplace rights, including LGBTQ benefits. Companies will use constant vigilance, education and re-education to continue elevating diversity, inclusion and belonging to a cultural imperative.
Companies also will make progress on ensuring that inclusion encompasses the neurodiversity population, employees who could be on the autism spectrum, dyslexic, or have attention deficit hyperactive disorder or social anxiety. Members of this population include many extraordinarily talented individuals.

2. Shifting focus from data collection to human connection

The most competitive companies are evolving in the direction of the most human qualities: inspiration, social connection, diversity, individual empowerment, emotional intelligence, an aptitude for learning and adaptation. The least competitive companies cling to top-down, slow-moving hierarchies.

While applicant tracking systems, learning management systems and talent management systems still have a place, forward-thinking companies are embracing the shift to employee-centered moments and interaction and investing in HR software that is moving beyond processes to experiences.

These human applications that focus on people rather than process are designed to foster and support relationships among people and increase employees' alignment with shared values, shared goals and shared culture. They help companies instill feelings of inclusion and belonging among diverse individuals, whose common ground is the "village" of their workplace. These applications bring people together through feedback and support, recognizing effort and celebrating achievement. Above all, they promote connectivity, engagement and well-being in each employee in a natural way, because they are built on informal, moment-by-moment communication.

3. Ensuring workplace human rights for all

Companies will increasingly become the stewards of basic human rights for all their employees. Organizations fully committed to this responsibility will be more attuned to employee expectations–delivering an aspirational vision of what a workplace can be: a place where people deserve to grow to their greatest potential through training, feedback and rewards.

An authentic workplace promise shows next-level commitment to creating what employees want and demand in a great place to work: a culture that authentically delivers meaningful work, gratitude, growth, a sense of belonging, work-life balance, opportunities to be heard and the expectations of both accountability and equality for every employee.

In August 2019, the Business Roundtable redefined the purpose of a corporation for the first time in 41 years. More than 180 CEOs joined the Roundtable's statement that corporations exist to benefit all stakeholders–customers, employees, suppliers, communities and shareholders– a dramatic shift from the usual CEO stance that public corporations exist primarily to serve shareholders. While it's reasonable to view such statements with skepticism as well as optimism, they are another step toward normalizing workplace rights. They also clearly signal that now is the time for workplace rights to become commonly accepted.

HR departments that demonstrate thought leadership by increasing the executive team's awareness of these three key HR trends as well as the business value of embracing them in 2020 will help their companies be more competitive right from the start of this new decade.

Niamh Graham is vice president of global HR at Workhuman.

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3 key HR trends for 2020

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