Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends 2021

In today’s world of perpetual disruption, it’s time for organisations to shift their focus – from a survival mindset to a thrive mindset. It’s time for leaders to shift their strategies – from preparing for the known to preparing for the unknown. How can organisations transform their thinking and position themselves to thrive when they are focused on making the changes necessary to survive? It depends on an organisation becoming – and remaining - distinctly human at its core.

The world has changed—and so has our approach to Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends research. Our 2021 report focuses on understanding what characteristics can support organisations in their shift from survive to thrive by revisiting a subset of key trends from the 2020 research, as well critical strategies to help leaders prepare for—and thrive—in the face of future disruptions.

The 2021 report takes a deeper look at five key trends which are leading us through the shift from survive to thrive.

• Designing work for well-being: The end of work/life balance
• Beyond reskilling: Unleashing worker potential
• Superteams: Where work happens
• Governing workforce strategies: Setting new directions for work and the workforce
• A memo to HR: Accelerating the shift to re-architecting work
  

This year’s report was completed by more than 3,600 executives in 96 countries, including 58 New Zealand respondents of which more than 30% were C-suite executives. For the first time in the report’s 11-year history, business respondents (59%), including 233 CEOs, outnumbered HR executives (41%) in the survey - underscoring the growing importance of human capital in organisational decision-making.

Notable findings from New Zealand respondents include:

• Nearly 1 in 5 NZ businesses did not have business preparedness strategies in the lead up to COVID-19. However, this fell to 2% after COVID-19, with 50% now defining business preparedness as “identifying multiple, likely business scenarios and creating multiple, robust mitigation plans."
• Leadership behaviours, culture and work redesign were considered the three most important factors in achieving business preparedness.
• Nearly two-thirds of respondents are now “reimagining work" after COVID-19, compared to just 30% prior to COVID-19.
• 90% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that they are “confident that today's remote work practices will be sustainable"
• 91% either agreed or strongly agreed that “the changes our organisation put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic empowered workers to more successfully integrate the demands of their personal and professional lives."
• There was a 60% positive impact on wellbeing for those businesses using remote/virtual work practices.
  

Webinar 1 | Designing work for well-being: The end of work/life balance

Date and time: Wednesday 26 May 2021, 9am – 10am

Webinar overview: Integrating workers' physical, mental, financial, and social health into the design of work itself rather than addressing wellbeing with adjacent programs. Embedding well-being while they do their work, not just when they're away from it. This is good for organisations as well as workers: Work that addresses the human need for quality of life can motivate people to give their best when on the job.

Deloitte speaker:
Sonia Breeze is a Partner in the Deloitte Human Capital practice in Auckland. Sonia is committed to enabling organisations to maximise the potential of their people. With 25 years of experience in human capital consulting, health care and as a CHRO, Sonia takes an integrated and holistic approach to talent and is particularly passionate about talent strategy, diversity and inclusion and operational improvements.

Samantha Marinus, Manager, Culture and Business Solutions for IAG.
Samantha has over 20 years experience in the field of HR, Change and Transformation. She has headed up numerous Change and HR teams in some of NZ biggest organisations and implemented a number of NZ largest transformation programs. She has worked for IAG for the past four years and currently manages the IAG OD Consultant Trans-Tasman team (Auckland, Melbourne, Sydney) focussing on Culture, Diversity and Ways of Working.

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Webinar 2 | Beyond Reskilling: Unleashing workforce potential

Date and time: Wednesday 2 June 2021, 9am – 10am

Webinar overview: Capitalising on worker agency and choice as the means to drive learning, adaptability, and impact. Giving workers more control over what work they do and what learning experiences to pursue can increase their engagement because it allows them to focus their efforts on things that truly matter to them. Aligning workers' passions and interests with organisational needs can improve an organisation's performance as well, again because workers are more motivated and engaged in their work and learning.

Deloitte speaker: Dan Howell is an experienced transformational change specialist, with wide experience in the NZ public sector (including Defence and Healthcare) and also globally in the Financial Services, Healthcare, Mining, and Energy & Resources industries. Dan's previous projects have included experience in the implementation of high impact operating models, business and process and improvement, technology implementations, process and organisational design, business strategy and overall project and change management. Dan has worked on a number of high profile global transformation efforts in EMEA and AsiaPac, acting as a trusted advisor to Senior Leadership Teams and working with a wide variety of international client stakeholders to tackle complex organisational matters.

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Webinar 3 | Superteams: Where work happens

Date and time: Wednesday 9 June 2021, 9am – 10am

Webinar overview: Creating teams and superteams that use technology to enhance natural human ways of working. The thoughtful use of technology makes it possible to change the nature of work so that it makes the most of people's dictinctly human capabilities. From collaboration tools that enhance teaming and connection to artificial intelligence technologies that can guide people in making decisions, technologies integrated with humans on teams can enable those teams to pursue new and better outcomes at greater speed and scale.

Deloitte speaker: Hamish Wilson has worked in the Human Capital field for more than 17 years. Hamish returned to New Zealand 6 years ago from the UK Deloitte Human Capital practice where he spent a decade working HC issues for multiple clients across Eurpoe and the Middle East. Hamish has extensive organisational and HR transformation experience across multiple industries. His experience covers the spectrum of human capital issues, including organisation transformation, change management, communications, HR operations, shared services, HR process design, organisational design and talent management. Hamish also has significant programme and project management expertise having managed several global programmes.

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Webinar 4 | Governing workforce Strategies: Setting new directions for work and the workforce

Date and time: Wednesday 16 June 2021, 9am – 10am

Webinar overview: Developing and acting on forward-looking insights using real-time data to harness workforce potential. Understanding the workforce is the first step to aligning their behaviour with organisational objectives in ways that recognise workers' needs, develop their capabilities, and respect their values and those of their organisation. Insights into what work is being done and how people are doing it can help organisations craft new ways of working that bring out the latent potential in every worker.

Deloitte speaker: Daniel Chee is a Manager in the New Zealand Human Capital practice. He supports organisations across a broad range of HR and organisational change challenges, and brings experience from working with organisations across the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Daniel has led HR transformation; ServiceNow implementations; global process design for SuccessFactors; the design and implementation of new healthcare models; service and process improvement; and the development of organisational and people strategies

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Webinar 5 | Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends 2021 Special Report: The worker-employer relationship disrupted: If we’re not a family, what are we?

Date and Time: Wednesday 1 September 2021, 9:00am – 10:00am

Webinar overview: The worker-employer relationship is evolving. Are you ready to navigate the change? Powered by more agency and choice, workers are re-examining everything, from who they want to work for to the role they expect employers to play. How can organisational leaders navigate a worker-employer relationship that is clearly in flux?

Our special webinar explores four potential futures that illustrate how the world of work and the worker-employer relationship could evolve, from planning for the known to planning for the unknown.