Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+

Change managementCoronavirusEmployee engagementLatest NewsEvidence-based management

HR priorities switch as pandemic heralds a new future

by Adam McCulloch 25 Jun 2020
by Adam McCulloch 25 Jun 2020 Could empty offices be here to stay?
Shutterstock
Could empty offices be here to stay?
Shutterstock

The advent of Covid-19 has seen a major switch in HR priorities, a new survey has found, with the ‘future of work’ becoming the number one priority.

The Gartner survey of 172 global HR leaders on earlier this month found that 52% reported their organisation’s business operations were continuing at a reduced level due to the pandemic.

Related articles

Future of offices in skyscrapers in doubt

Financial whistleblower wins £75k payout

Govt publishes guide on safety to businesses about to reopen

Pandemic has changed the skills employers seek

“Many organisations have entered the recovery phase and are focused on stabilising the business and restarting activity,” said Mark Whittle, vice president of advisory in the Gartner HR practice. “HR leaders will play a critical role during this period. However, they continue to face uncertainty around several key issues, including equipping leaders to manage remote teams over the long haul, preserving company culture with a more remote workforce, and engaging workers in a cost-constrained environment.”

To address these issues and best support the business, HR leaders are adjusting their priorities for the remainder of 2020. Additional research found that the top priorities were:

  • Future of work
  • Critical skills and competency development
  • Org design and change management
  • Employee experience
  • Current and future leadership

Before the pandemic the same priorities appeared in the top five but not in the same order.

“Business leaders are planning for entirely new scenarios,” said Brian Kropp, chief of research for the Gartner HR practice. “For many, if not all organisations, the three-year strategic plan may be gone and planning is occurring quarterly. Perhaps most importantly, understanding the future of work is about understanding the permanent workplace shifts post-Covid.”

Whittle added that since the pandemic’s onset about three-quarters of HR leaders reported that more than 40% of their workforce has had to use new skills.

Gartner proposes that to adopt a more dynamic approach to managing shifting skills needs, HR leaders should focus on identifying areas of the organisation with significant changes in priorities and related changes in skill needs. Roles and projects that need support should be broken down into individual skills and outcomes.

It suggests the upskilling of a select cohort of motivated and influential employees to provide personalised learning support to colleagues, and the encouragement of internal movement across the organisation by engaging employees to gauge their skills, goals, and points of confusion around organisational skill needs.

In terms of organisational design and change management, Gartner’s research showed that successful change-management outcomes required a shift from top-down change led by senior leaders and communicated down to employees, to open-source change where employees were involved in designing change processes. It claimed that when organisations use an open source change strategy, the probability of change success increases by as much as 24 percentage points.

To achieve an open source change culture, HR needed to help managers and leaders create two-way dialogues that acknowledged the reality that change is difficult and then listen to employees’ reactions. Adopting open source change management could increase employee engagement by as much as 38 percentage points and intent to stay by as much as 46 percentage points, Gartner claimed.

Gartner’s HR strategists contend that the pandemic and fallout has changed the focus of employee experience to sustaining the performance and engagement of a hybrid workforce – with some employees working fully remote or partially remote and others at the workplace. It said that HR must gauge to what extent its employees believe HR really values people and were ensuring their wellbeing. It also needed awareness of how employees were collaborating with and learning from team members and how it was helping employees get the skills and tools and resources they needed to be successful during this period of disruption; a period that may become normalised.

Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance

Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday

OptOut
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

In terms of leadership, Gartner added that organisations needed more resilient leaders than ever. Resilience could be fostered by HR supporting leaders at all levels of the organisation and by identifying leaders’ skills gaps and creating leader-to-leader partnerships.

Latest HR job opportunities on Personnel Today

Browse more human resources jobs

Adam McCulloch

Adam McCulloch first worked for Personnel Today magazine in the early 1990s as a sub editor. He rejoined Personnel Today as a writer in 2017, covering all aspects of HR but with a special interest in diversity, social mobility and industrial relations. He has ventured beyond the HR realm to work as a freelance writer and production editor in sectors including travel (The Guardian), aviation (Flight International), agriculture (Farmers' Weekly), music (Jazzwise), theatre (The Stage) and social work (Community Care). He is also the author of KentWalksNearLondon. Adam first became interested in industrial relations after witnessing an exchange between Arthur Scargill and National Coal Board chairman Ian McGregor in 1984, while working as a temp in facilities at the NCB, carrying extra chairs into a conference room!

previous post
Caution urged over reliance on Covid-19 antibody testing
next post
Could furlough and redundancy for visa holders increase the skills gap?

You may also like

University of Salford launches Better Working Lives cluster

14 May 2025

Why HR burnout is a strategic issue

12 May 2025

Succession planning now ‘more of a priority than...

24 Apr 2025

High performance is not the preserve of ‘superstar’...

3 Apr 2025

What do HR specialists enjoy most about their...

21 Mar 2025

Ben & Jerry’s accuses Unilever for sacking boss...

20 Mar 2025

Employee engagement: Growing disconnect between effort and recognition,...

13 Mar 2025

Mitie appoints Kathryn Dolan as chief people officer

6 Mar 2025

Return to the office: Gartner highlights the risks...

27 Feb 2025

Josh Bersin research: most HR leaders are now...

20 Feb 2025

  • 2025 Employee Communications Report PROMOTED | HR and leadership...Read more
  • The Majority of Employees Have Their Eyes on Their Next Move PROMOTED | A staggering 65%...Read more
  • Prioritising performance management: Strategies for success (webinar) WEBINAR | In today’s fast-paced...Read more
  • Self-Leadership: The Key to Successful Organisations PROMOTED | Eletive is helping businesses...Read more
  • Retaining Female Talent: Four Ways to Reduce Workplace Drop Out PROMOTED | International Women’s Day...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2025

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2025 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Maternity & paternity
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • Brightmine
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Free trial
    • Request a quote
  • Webinars
  • Advertise
  • OHW+