Future of Work: Five Non-Negotiable Priorities for HR’s Agenda

By Vivian Blade, Leadership & Resilience Expert
President & CEO, Experts in Growth Leadership Consulting, LLC

Do we have it right?

That’s a question you, and other leaders in your organization are asking yourselves. You may not say it out loud, but you’re thinking it.

Navigating the Never-Normal

The ‘work’, how work gets done, and how we define the workplace have forever changed. We’re never going back to work as we once knew it.

As we look forward to 2030, how will the Future of Work evolve? According to a recent study by SHRM, “85 percent of jobs that will exist in 2030 have not been invented yet.” What we know for certain is that there’s more uncertainty ahead. Organizations that fail to proactively adapt and accelerate radical reinvention won’t survive.

These five strategic priorities must be at the top of HR and business leaders’ agenda to succeed in the now ‘never normal.

5 Non-Negotiable Priorities for HR’s Agenda

1. Human Resources Value Creation
HR – This is your time! You’re well positioned to champion capacity building for growth within your organization. But, it won’t be easy. There are big gaps in perceptions around HRs real influence within many organizations. So, step up. Take the lead on ensuring your organization has the purpose, talent, leadership, structure, capabilities, and human-centered culture to thrive.

2. Leader Effectiveness
The more things change, the more some things stay the same… Unfortunately. Still, the biggest reasons people are quitting their jobs, or “quiet quitting”, are due to a bad boss and a toxic culture. It’s time to fix this by building better leaders. Gartner suggests that if you want to retain employees, human-centric leaders must emerge.

3. Consistently Deliver a Positive Employee Lifecycle
Delivering a paycheck isn’t enough to keep your best and brightest anymore. Organizations need to invest in improving the complete working lifecycle for employees. This starts right at talent acquisition and onboarding, and continues through creating career experiences, investing in employee training and upskilling, and creating a day-to-day work environment where employees want to be and feel valued.

4. The Future of Work
Remote and flexible work environments are here to stay. Focus on workplace accessibility from ANYWHERE, rather than who’s physically in the office from eight to five every day. Leaders who are better skilled at leading in an ever-evolving, hybrid work environment and connecting employees to a meaningful purpose will build much stronger teams over the short and longer term.

5. Organizational Resilience & Agility
Rapid change and adversity exacerbate the chaos and the overwhelm individual team members experience, especially when it feels like you’re constantly in firefighting mode. Creating greater resilience and adaptability across every level of the organization will create a more nimble culture that is ready to anticipate and not merely react.

HR’s Call to Action

Human Resources – engage the leaders in your organization around these priorities. How are these strategic areas impacting your organization? What are the implications? And, most importantly, what will you do about them?

You can also catch an overview of these non-negotiable priorities, and the top trends driving them, in a recent episode of my new podcast, GGG Unleashed: Better Leaders, Better Workplaces. Listen here.

Check out more insightful podcast episodes where we dig into these priorities with specific strategies to better position your organization for profitable growth.