The driving force of any decision made in the last year, professionally or personally, has been “The pandemic has changed things”. While that is an understatement, it does encapsulate the many difficult decisions companies had to make to navigate the uncharted waters of the time. Now we are at a point where companies and stakeholders can think of a world without the pandemic restrictions, even if it is not possible to be free of COVID itself. That has culminated in hybrid models around the world. We have already looked at how that has benefitted and enhanced employee experience.

HR is no longer a back-office function and HR leaders have become the champions of contemporary times. In addition, talent retention has become the centrepiece of any organizational strategy that is the result of wanting to compete and succeed. Nevertheless, such companies will have three pressing challenges to face up to this year.

Attracting Talent

Employee expectations have shifted since the pandemic. Before the pandemic, companies could have their pick of candidates and candidates themselves compete with one another for the best package. However, post-pandemic, companies compete with one another to attract the best possible talent to their organization. They have to differentiate themselves as the “The happening place to be” with employee experience and engagement programs. Coupled with that is the fact that if you are an organization looking for highly skilled people, you are competing with companies all over the world. With the adoption of various forms of hybrid and remote working models, candidates have a wide variety of options for work globally.

Retaining Talent

There is nothing new about this except the fact the workforce of today, in principle at least, is spread across the globe. Regardless of that, the goal remains the same – to create a cohesive culture to retain talent. The pandemic created the hybrid workforce where some people work at home, some at the office and the remaining dividing the time between the two. This has put the management in a new conundrum, having to design a completely new strategy to boost loyalty and motivation. One solution to this problem is creating an employee-led culture where leaders must understand the key motivators within their team members and create sub-groups that hold the same interests such as music, sports or video games and so on. Employees that explore common interests together are more likely to gel effectively in a problem-solving scenario.

Evaluating Talent

Finally, as it should be the case, the old ways of monitoring performance are also gone and those metrics have evolved into trusting and productive environments in remote setups. In the current corporate culture, motivation has replaced intimidation, measurement of output has become the measurement of input and continuous feedback has become periodic appraisal. Performance feedback sessions must be employee-driven, especially within companies with a Millennial or Gen Z majority. They are traditionally resistant to being told what to do, and it can be counter-productive. Instead, a coaching or brainstorming approach has to be taken and ensure their objectives align with that of the business.