What changes does 2013 have in store for the world of HR?

To start the New Year we’ll run a series of blog posts that explores six themes we believe are sure to take center stage in 2013. Some are just emerging and others are re-emerging or coming into their own, but we predict that all of them will be quite important over the coming year. Watch and prepare for them!

Here’s a preview:

Crowdsourcing and Social HR Come into Their Own
After a year or two on the cutting edge, Crowdsourcing is going mainstream in 2013. Leading companies are already aware of the benefits of crowdsourcing business ideas and performance reviews and leveraging social networking (or the principles of social media) to achieve business goals. Crowdsourcing via social media is something that will happen whether you like it or not, affecting not only your B2C world, but also your company’s reputation via candidate information sites like Glassdoor.com and Indeed.com. Plus, using social principles in things like recognition or the crowd sourcing of business ideas is helping many leading companies get a leg up on competition. More companies will put crowdsourcing to work for them in 2013, and reap the benefits.

True Culture Management Is Finally Possible
Move over Talent Management… and make room for Culture Management. The advent of Big Data has finally made it possible for organizations to monitor and manage culture on every layer of the organization, from the individual to the departmental or divisional, to the huge multinational corporations. With the consolidation of systems and the ability to gather and repurpose data insights on behavior and attitudes, HR is at last able to quantify and manage culture—in ways it never has before. And this is key, because in 2013, culture will continue to emerge as a distinguishing asset for recruitment and retention of talent.

Consolidation & Centralization in the Cloud
Consolidation and centralization are nothing new for companies. This trend has been on the rise for more than a decade—with mergers, partnerships and acquisitions helping to leverage efficiencies on an organizational level. 2013 will see this trend continue to affect HRIS, where centralizing systems and data can yield those same efficiencies. The adoption of flexible, centralized cloud-based SaaS solutions is on the rise for HR. Gone are the days of scattered, management-intensive reward or talent management systems for different divisions. Companies are increasingly seeing their recognition program or their other HRIS programs include all employees all over the world. And, increasingly, HR is choosing systems that can be made to integrate, partner and share information with one another.

Mobility Becomes Secure
Flex-time and work from home are trends that have been significantly on the rise since 2010. That means more employees are working on mobile devices from remote locations. As more and more companies adopt a bring-your-own-device policy, and rely increasingly on these mobile communications, security and confidentiality are topmost in everyone’s mind. 2013 will see increased effort on making flexibility both smarter and more secure (see #3).

Big Changes (and Uncertainties) in Healthcare Coverage
The election is over and Obamacare is here to stay… but many states were caught unprepared for the new legislation to take effect, and many companies are unsure of how they will handle the coming changes (see poll #3 from this link). Healthcare is a hot button issue for employee and employer alike. Expect it to continue to be critical in 2013, and in many cases to be used as a competitive differentiator for recruitment.

The Talent War Resumes
The economic downturn offered a bit of an armistice in the War for Talent, but according to experts from PwC Saratoga, the ceasefire is over. As the economy recovers, voluntary turnover is up, even as the quality of new hires is down. Expect to expend more effort finding quality hires, and more effort on keeping top talent.

Do you have any predictions for 2013? We’d love to hear them!

More in this series of posts:

#1: How Crowdsourcing Will Affect HR in 2013
#2: Measuring & Managing Culture with Big Data
#3: Keeping HR From Getting Lost in the Cloud
#4: HR Hits the Road – The Impact of Mobile Networking in 2013
#5: Healthcare Changes and Employee Morale in 2013

Darcy Jacobsen (118 Posts)

As content marketing manager for Globoforce, Darcy Jacobsen spends most of her days submerged in blogs, tweets, reports and other delicious information about the current state of employee recognition and engagement. Her goal is to find the good stuff and pass as much of it as possible on to you!