For WorldatWork Members
- Leveraging Incentives for Future Work Challenges: Exploring the Employee Perspective, Journal of Total Rewards
- The Future of Work and Rewards, research
- AI Is HR’s Future, but Modernization Comes First, Workspan Magazine article
For Everyone
- Traditional Job Architecture Career Streams Collide with Modern Work, Workspan Daily article
- Job Architecture for the Future of Work, on-demand webinar
- How AI Is Transforming the Total Rewards Landscape, Workspan Daily article
CEOs are pumping out new business strategies in the wake of increased competition, mandates and disruption. While HR leaders are all in as strategy partners and enablers, those executive-led strategies are also making HR a bit edgy. Why is that? According to new Gartner research, relatively few of these HR professionals feel their organizations are really prepared for upcoming changes tied to the future of work.
“Organizations are seeking to reset their strategies to reflect emerging conditions, but most feel unprepared to execute,” Jessie Knight, a vice president in the Gartner HR practice, said during the firm’s research recent ReimagineHR Conference in Orlando, Fla. “Our research found three critical gaps [in collaboration, skills and technology] that organizations must reconcile in order to successfully reset in pursuit of new strategic ambitions.”
The Collaboration Gap
A Gartner survey of almost 18,000 employees in the second quarter of 2024 found only 29% are truly satisfied with their collaboration experiences and outcomes at work. That percentage is a drop from 36% in 2021. In addition, the 2024 Gartner analysis identified that satisfaction with work collaboration has a direct and critical impact on organizational performance; on average, employees who are satisfied with collaboration are stronger performers.
“Employees today have more connections but less valuable collaboration due to uncertain connection norms following the pandemic, broader social tensions, and new technology that can isolate employees and depersonalize work,” Russ McCall, the director of advisory in the Gartner HR practice, stated at the recent conference.
According to Gartner, HR can help employees increase the usefulness of their existing connections by providing “guided collaboration.” This involves actively reshaping the needs and norms of how individuals interact.
The Skills Gap
Organizations also face persistent skills gaps that can’t easily or effectively be addressed through traditional development approaches alone. The firm’s research found skills changes now are outpacing levels from the height of the pandemic; a May 2024 survey of 3,375 employees found only half felt truly equipped to respond to unexpected work changes.
“We also see on-the-job learning falling short. [The May survey] revealed that nearly 60% of all employees are not getting on-the-job coaching that supports their core job skills,” said Knight. “Due to factors like new work models, turnover, the pressure to do more with less and an emerging technology, there is a growing disconnect between employees who have critical skills and those who need to learn them.”
To mitigate this critical skills gap, the firm said “collective intelligence” likely serves as a pathway between employees who have needed skills and employees who actually need those skills.
Two facets of collective intelligence are:
- Dynamic jobs. Organizations and their HR leaders should focus efforts and investments on the jobs that are changing the most; these jobs likely account for the most acute skill risks.
- Gather expertise from the work itself. Organizations and their HR leaders should leverage technology to pull together expert knowledge from the work being done — through various organizational systems — rather than the experts directly.
The Technology Gap
An August 2024 Gartner survey of around 450 users of emerging technologies — namely, artificial intelligence (AI) and GenAI — showed 41% of the time saved by using AI is wasted.
Speaking on this optimization shortfall, McCall said, “There is a lack of communication between employers and employees around the effects of technology in the workplace. In fact, employers often don’t involve employees in technology discussions at all — as of July, only 14% of HR leaders, among more than 180 surveyed, said that employees have a voice in technology decisions at their organization.”
Addressing this tech-centric gap likely requires organizations to take a “human-first AI approach” — put the emphasis on people and then weave in related technology solutions. By using this method, HR leaders may be able to help their organizations prioritize tech for productivity and consider human workers first when actually implementing it.
The firm said that when organizations’ approach to AI is “human first,” employees are 1.5 times more likely to be high performers and 2.3 times more likely to be highly engaged.
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