HR professionals have a busy year ahead of them as they continue to take on both the ongoing issues of retention and recruitment as well as new challenges disrupting the workforce. As they look for success in the year to come, there are some issues and areas of opportunity that they'll be focusing on, according to a survey from Green Circle Life.

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

"The findings from the survey confirm what we thought were challenges in the industry," said Dinesh Sheth, CEO and founder of Green Circle Life. "Corporations are facing increased costs for benefits packages, so it's important for them to have a proper return on investment for the resources offered."

There's definitely some room for improvement: While 53 percent say their employees are happy with their benefits and HR, 40 percent say they're "somewhat happy" and the rest say they're not happy with the benefits and services they're offered.

In addition to technology, driving cultural change and dealing with a multi-generational workforce are among the challenges HR professionals are aiming to address in the coming year.

When it comes to cultural change, more than 48 percent say achieving such change, as well as engaging employees in the company's culture, are important goals for their organization this year; 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 way to engage, attract and retain employees," Sheth said. "Additionally, as the workforce is becoming more age-diverse, employers must provide solutions and competitive offerings to best reach everyone. In 2020, the HR community will strive to get the most value out of their resources and use technology as an accelerator to achieve their goals."

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

But there are other roadblocks, too, since different generations have different priorities and lifestyles; 44 percent cite such conflicts as challenges to their organization's benefits offerings, while 64 percent say they need to "improve and develop their strategy further" to engage their multi-generational workforce with the 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 say that there's a communication gap surrounding those lifestyle and priority conflicts.

Technology presents problems, too, with 16.7 percent saying their workforce is challenged by different technological preferences.

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Enhancing HR services in 2020: Professionals' top priorities

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