HR trends to watch in 2024 for high-performing workforces

Jihan Ahmed, Head of Employer Brand, offered some critical insights into understanding the current job market and how employers might consider keeping up: 

“Even though 2023 was a big year for tech layoffs, I’d still consider it unwise to speculate that 2024 will be purely an employer's market. Why? There are two main reasons: 

1. Even though many firms switched off their attraction activities, brand remains a constant even in a downcycle. Companies competing for the very best talent will need to work hard to rebuild awareness and trust. 

2. Top talent is more aware of, and holding firm on, their non-negotiables. The demand for flexible work arrangements is higher, but it generally means that candidates are more adamant on choosing where they take their talents. 

In 2024, we will likely see a trend of making policies more individualised. These would be policies based on the employee lifecycle and business performance rather than a blanket, company-wide approach. But how might that look? 

It could be recent graduates or apprentices needing mentorship and development, which happens best hands-on, in the office. Or, a senior high-performing employee with a family who needs flexibility to do their best work.

This more personal, intentional approach may play a decisive factor in how employers are able to attract and hire the best talent around.”

For our second trend, we turn to Luke Sondelski, Personio’s Director of Reward, who lays out a compelling case and crucial considerations for the future of compensation:

“As we head into 2024, your teams should make sure to use reliable professional data sources for benchmarking and also keep an eye on important internal indicators (offer acceptance, turnover/leaver, engagement data, etc.) and what you hear on the ground from candidates.

To create a truly holistic compensation strategy, don’t forget to include consideration for: 

• Business strategy and priorities

• Company culture and philosophy

• Internal equity (fairness)

• Benefits and perks

• Long-term incentives

Additionally, I see location strategy playing a critical role in 2024. Teams will need to consider location variations in benchmarking data, they decide the location strategy for how to reflect this in salary bands considering the overarching talent and location strategy. 

As an example, some companies tie pay explicitly to the location. Others may be more than happy to pay London-level salaries to remote workers in a less-expensive locale to get and keep the talent in. The difference is a strategic choice. 

This opens up a bunch of questions. Especially post-pandemic, organisations are considering (or reconsidering) the value of teams being physically together for synergy and efficiency as well as its impact on culture and community.

Ultimately, benchmarking and location will be big topics in 2024. Teams should regularly review and adapt their compensation strategy to remain aligned with evolving market conditions and organisational needs.”

Ruth Thomas, Director of People & Organisational Development, cites two key things heading into 2024: change and what she terms “knowing your why”: 

“Over the last couple of years, the only constant for organisations has been change, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. 

That is not a bad thing. Instead of trying to ‘manage’ change, organisations need to focus on increasing our change readiness so that we can better embrace and navigate change.

This starts with your leadership team. Increasing their awareness around why change can be hard and how we can empower ourselves to take ownership of how we lead and engage with change. At its core, this is about making a shift in how we perceive change and improving our personal and organisational relationship with change.

At the same time, we need to go back to basics and know our ‘why.’ To do that, it is essential to have clarity on what your business really needs from you as a HR partner: What will really move the needle and is it the needle that needs moving right now? 

One challenge all HR teams face is that there are too many things that could be tackled, but not enough time or resources. If we are being honest with ourselves, we are also overwhelming our internal customers and not being true strategic partners.

In 2024, getting clear and working with the business on not just what you will deliver on, but why you are delivering it, will ensure your HR function drives impact in a sustainable way.”

Learning and development is always a priority for busy, growing organisations. Here’s what Rebecca McGuire, Learning Experience Lead, has her eyes set on for 2024: 

“In the year ahead, I’m focusing on learning content that is generated by employees. 

This includes things like peer learning groups, crowdsourced employee resource recommendations, team “teach backs” and employee mentorship programmes. 

As L&D teams, we can easily leverage the wide variety of expertise that we already have across the company, and use our learning expertise to help scale and share it. 

And, as companies start to prioritise in-person employee connection more and more, I see learning experiences enabling employees to connect and share with one another in both formal and informal ways.

Our final HR trend for 2024 is brought to you by Personio’s VP of Talent, Fritz Singer, who offers a read on how talent acquisition (TA) is changing in the year ahead: 

“Like most people, I’d expect AI to be a hot topic within the broader HR space, and a particular focus within TA. Most TA tools are looping AI functionality into them, and teams will need to continue to think about how to automate the manual work across their processes.

Beyond that, I foresee a couple additional trends on the horizon: 

• Internal talent strategies: In an uncertain macroeconomic climate, I expect external hiring to be a luxury. Organisations will look inward to give new opportunities or learnings to existing team members.

• Top talent stubbornness: Continued uncertainty in the market will drive top performers to remain where they are instead of taking risks on new opportunities.

• Work-from-home (WFH) policies normalising: We’ve seen a lot of fluctuations with WFH policies. I anticipate that companies will take firmer stances on their policies, especially in terms of how they enforce them. 

• Diversity and inclusion: This is a big topic every year, but I anticipate that D&I will continue to be a key focus. Given less potential hiring, companies can afford to slow down and be intentional about their diversity initiatives and how to bring those into their end-to-end hiring processes. 

Which trends will play a key role in your organisation? While that is likely to depend on a host of factors, we hope we gave you some food for thought as we look into 2024. 

To separate fact from fiction and buzzwords from breaking news, we publish weekly insights into the world of work in Personio Pulse: This Week in HR. You can find it every week on our blog, or sign up for our LinkedIn newsletter to never miss an issue.