The popular HR trends of this decade will be more holistic in approach and practice. Besides the continued use of sophisticated technologies, it will continue being human-centric. The ‘human’ in ‘human resource’ will still be the focus of HR. It will also focus on providing value to both the management and stakeholders.

Another popular HR trend involves short-term and long-term strategizing. Other trends include a focus on external and internal operations, fusion of advanced analytics and intuition, operational and strategic focus, and reflective (slow) and action-oriented (fast) approaches.

As HR software becomes more sophisticated in the capabilities, there are some emerging trends that have shaped and revolutionized the entire industry as a whole. If you are a business professional, you should be alert of the seven most popular HR trends recently:

HR Trend #1: Reduced Emphasis on Process Improvement

In the past, HR’s focus has been on process improvement. It has involved redesigning or re-engineering old processes and coming up with new tools that serve the same old goals. On the surface, everything appears modern and sophisticated, but if you lift the lid, very little has changed.

Still, most of the focus in terms of programs and solutions are very organization-centric. It’s hard to come across genuine employee-centric solutions. In 2020 and beyond, this HR trend is going to start changing, albeit grudgingly as companies shift their focus towards client groups and identify the real concerns and needs for a healthy, productive workplace environment.

HR Trend #2: More Kindness at the Workplace

This HR trend is all about infusing HR with humanness. Mostly, employees see employers as vampires seeking to draw their blood at every turn. This should not be the case. However, things are set to start changing in 2020 as the philosophy of kindness at the workplace takes root.

For instance, you can grant a day off to an employee to celebrate their birthday, or give an endearing welcome gift hamper to a new employee, or one who has just returned to work after an illness or injury. These small acts of kindness boost employee morale and sends out a message that you really do care.

HR Trend #3: Increased Appreciation of Workplace Complexity

While simplicity is a key attribute in HR, we are living an increasingly complex world where one has to sift through tones of metrics and scores of deceptive social media profiles. Simplifying helps, but it’s important to appreciate the complex nature of human behaviour and organizations.

People are not always who they say they are and may not have done what they claim to have done. It’s therefore important to implement tailored and focused HR interventions that emphasize more on granular measurement as opposed to the traditional key performance indicators (KPI’s).

HR Trend #4: A Move towards Adaptive Systems

Technology has made adoption of adaptive systems very easy. As the workplace continues to adapt to emerging technologies, the HR trends will reflect in a similar way. For instance, instead of assuming everyone wants a fast or slow recruitment process, ask to understand what the recruitment team wants, then adapt accordingly.

Feedback from an assessment of employees and managers on various aspects of the performance review will help you offer more user-specific variants. For instance, depending on the organization, matches between employees and coaches or managers can be improved.

HR Trend #5: Analytics for the People

In the past, HR has focused more on employee analytics instead of analytics for the employees. When focus is heavily weighted in favour of control and efficiency, employees usually don’t see themselves in the picture. They don’t see how they stand to benefit from improved efficiency and control mechanisms. However, the current trend going to 2020 is towards more employee-centric companies.

While doubts still linger on the genuineness of this trend, there’s definitely an awareness that productivity is enhanced where employees see themselves benefitting from that productivity. Always seek to see things from the employees’ perspective. For instance, how will a new report benefit them? That way, your analytics would be more focused on them instead of how to get the most out of them.

HR Trend #6: More Emphasis on Equal Opportunities and Diversity in Employment

There’s still a huge gap in employment opportunities between men and women. This gender gap will be aggressively addressed in 2020 and beyond as companies seek to be gender-sensitive and balanced.

The employment gap between races will also gradually start closing, so is pay discrimination at the workplace based on ethnicity, nation of origin or religion.

HR Trend #7: More Focus on Productivity

There’s going to be a slow but steady shift towards productivity, which has slackened in the last few years. In the past, companies have addressed capacity gaps by recruiting more workers. In the process, they end up recruiting the wrong people as they rush to fill these gaps. As a result, the new crop of employees has less productivity than the existing ones.

With more workers comes the need for more managers. The result: you end up with average people and more managers, translating into reduced productivity. The solution is to use analytics to look for characteristics of top teams and top performers, and the environment in which such stellar performance thrives.

You can then use these HR trends to make the right hires and, consequently, improve productivity. 2020 will see the use of such analytics scaled up.