From ‘The Great Resignation’ to ‘quiet quitting’, the HR sector has seen an influx of names put to trends in the industry in recent months. But aside from the arrival of these new buzzwords, the reality for professionals is that there’s more pressure – and higher stakes – than ever to make thoughtful and informed decisions around the future of their workforce.

With shifts around the economy, digitalised workplaces, personal attitudes and brand relationships all happening at the same time, can we rely on old wisdom about how any of them will affect us going forward? Who has the right idea when it comes to balancing new risks and opportunities? How can we resolve today’s skills shortages without opening new ones tomorrow?

It’s easy to see why a catchy phrase might be a comforting guide to decision-making. The truth, though, is that no simple, single idea will be the right guide to the future. We’re facing trying times, and we’ll need to keep thinking, innovating, and adapting if we’re to ride them out successfully.

I believe that the best mindset is not about finding the correct Big Idea for the future of work, but attending to the basics and making sure that everyone gets the right kind of support to bring out their best.

With that said, here are where I see the major challenge points, and what we should be doing about them.

Employer brand upkeep
We‘ve been in a candidates’ market in recent years, which has upended the assumptions that many HR professionals would usually bring to their work. Amidst a shortage of skills and greater personal freedoms for employees about where and how to work, many businesses have turned to burnishing their employer brand in order to become a destination of choice and out-compete rivals in the talent market.

With economic uncertainty biting deep into revenues and budgets, the next few months will reveal a lot about which employers are truly committed to the work of improving the employee experience and which merely used it when expedient. Some, for example, will see learning and development as a relatively soft part of the budget when times get tough, while D&I investments might be slimmed down where businesses feel themselves to be out of the spotlight in terms of equity and equality.

These are, of course, tough decisions – but there should be no doubt that others will be watching when these decisions are made. People will remember how companies choose to act when the going gets tough and whether or not they kept on their promises. Those that fail to adequately support their people will likely feel the impact beyond the immediate crisis.

There is of course a positive slant to this. It also makes this an opportunity to demonstrate truly meaningful commitment to what matters most to an employer brand. Even where difficult changes do need to be made, authentic and transparent communication, together with a persuasive and engaging focus on the heart of the business’s purpose, will stand businesses in good stead for long-term reputational benefits.

Refocusing employee engagement
Another outcome of a recent turn towards employer brand management has been an uptake in the use of wellbeing platforms – especially in the context of the pandemic, when global disruption impacted personal health and happiness as much as it did business performance.

While it remains to be seen how usage of wellbeing programmes will hold up in the context of recession, it has been a positive outcome that more businesses have been keen to explore holistic approaches to employee wellbeing, and that more services have emerged to fulfil that demand. From health and fitness support to routes towards acute mental health intervention, this area has matured far beyond the free lunches and step counters which, even a few years ago, were the limit of many businesses’ engagement.

In a newly challenging economic context, such efforts will be reappraised just as other parts of the employer brand strategy are. However, that economic context will also affect employees in ways that need careful management. When staff are facing personal struggles with cost-of-living increases, housing affordability, and other major threats, it’s important that wellbeing programmes are delivered with genuine empathy: the risk of them being perceived as a sticking plaster for a much more serious problem is very real.

This is especially true given that many will already feel somewhat battered by events of recent years. There is a large contingent of workers who were fearful of job loss during the pandemic, and who may have hung on by postponing personal plans or even working on reduced pay for significant amounts of time. Facing another wave of disruption, there’s a critical risk of a rapid rise in demotivated, burnt-out, or even angry employees.

Just as we did during the pandemic, it will be important to consider what other kinds of innovation – including flexible, sensitive adjustments to working hours and patterns – can be offered to smooth the road ahead. With news emerging of businesses doing U-turns on flexible and remote working commitments, the next few months will reveal much about the new sense of responsibility businesses have to their employees.

HR support
A fresh wave of challenge for businesses’ bottom lines and in employees’ personal lives will also be a fresh wave of challenge for the HR functions which are tasked with mediating between all of these overlapping and often contradictory pressures. Faced with the demand to perform deep empathy while also attending to their business’s financial resilience and executing the change management involved in shifting hiring working patterns, the modern HR experience is a rollercoaster.

I think this is especially true for younger professionals who, one or two jobs into their career, may never have experienced a ‘business as usual’ version of HR. They have been thrown from an all-hands-on deck pandemic support role, to rapid rehiring as businesses built capacity post-pandemic, to carrying out emergency savings measures as we head into a recession.

A decade’s worth of drama within three years will, for many, prove to be too much: stop-start reactivity is exhausting, and burnout will likely lead to many, whether they are experienced leaders or fresh talent, leaving the profession. This, of course, raises the spectre of serious skills gaps if and when the business world does plateau into a more stable new normal.

There will need to be some looking-inward, even as we manage workforces through new challenges. We know that a responsive, human HR department makes all the difference in the world to the employee experience and skills retention. Finding ways to give professionals the right headspace and environment to do that successfully is now more important than ever.

For all these trends, though, it’s worth remembering that the start of the pandemic was not simply a turning point after which everything got worse. Indeed, that’s the kind of thinking that leads to identifying overly simplistic trends rather than attending to the complex needs of staff. While the challenges have been all too real, we have also gained a lot of experience, learned how to integrate new approaches to wellbeing, explored different ways of acquiring skills and building workplace communities, and seen the real positive impact that businesses can have for people when they choose good directions.

Let’s take that forward as we make sure that HR shows up for people.