Human Capital Trends 2019

Leading the social enterprise

In order to direct our efforts to make a meaningful impact we have organised our human capital trends for 2019 into three actionable categories. The first deals with the future of the workforce: how organisations should adapt to the forces restructuring job and work design, the open talent economy, and leadership. The second deals with the future of the organisation: how teams, networks, and new approaches to rewards are driving business performance. And the third deals with the future of HR: how the function is stepping up to the challenge of redesigning its capabilities, technologies, and focus to lead transformation in HR and across the enterprise.

Download the full Human Capital Trends 2019 report to explore 2019's human capital trends.

Future of the workforce

• The alternative workforce

The alternative workforce can be a long-term solution to tight talent markets but only if treated strategically.

• From jobs to superjobs

As organisations embrace and adopt robotics and AI, they’re finding that virtually every job can be redesigned creating new categories of work, including hybrid jobs and “superjobs.”

• Leadership for the 21st century
  

Leaders today face new challenges due to the speed of technological, social, and economic change. Do these new challenges call for a new breed of leaders?

Future of the organisation

• From employee experience to human experience

What creates a positive, motivating experience at work? Mainly, it’s the meaning and growth people find in the work itself and to improve that, the entire organisation has to be involved.

• Organisational performance
  

Hierarchies are being displaced by teams at organisations across industries and geographies. How can senior leaders, HR departments, and rank-and-file workers get teaming “right”?

• Rewards

​With wage growth lagging behind inflation, many organisations are turning to noncash perks and programs to help drive worker retention and performance. But perks and pay aren’t what matter the most.​With wage growth lagging behind inflation, many organisations are turning to noncash perks and programs to help drive worker retention and performance. But perks and pay aren’t what matter the most.

Future of HR

• Accessing talent

In today’s world of changing jobs and skills, organisations have an opportunity to take a fresh look at how they approach talent acquisition, exploring new approaches to determining what talent they need and where and how to find it.

• Learning in the flow of life
  

In a competitive external talent market, learning is vital to an organisation’s ability to obtain needed skills. But to achieve the goal of lifelong learning, it must be embedded into not only the flow of work but the flow of life.

• Talent mobility
  

An organisation’s biggest potential talent source may be its own people. But why do so many organisations find internal talent so hard to access?

• HR cloud
  

​Cloud-based systems have not been a panacea for HR but then, they were never intended to be. Instead, they can give organisations a solid foundation for integrating the explosion of new tools that HR software vendors are now developing.

• Looking ahead

​The alternative workforce can be a long-term solution to tight talent markets but only if treated strategically.