Are you the individual in charge of HR department at your hospital?

No 31 (31.9%)

Yes 66 (68.1%)

If yes, do you hold another position as well?

No 38 (57.6%)

Yes 28 (42.4%)

Highest level of education

High School 2 (2.1%)

BBA/BA/BS 39 (40.2%)

BSN 7 (7.2%)

BT/TS12 (12.4%)

MBA/MA/MS 26 (26.8%)

MPH 5 (5.2%)

MD 4 (4.1%)

Other 2 (2.0%)

Qualifications in HRM

No 41 (36.4%)

Yes 56 (63.6%)

Currently pursuing education or training related to HRM

No 27 (27.8%)

Yes 70 (72.2%)

Interested in pursuing education or training related to HRM

No 17 (17.5%)

Yes 80 (82.5%)

Previously attended workshops on HRM over the past 3 years

 No 46 (47.4%)

Yes 51 (52.6%)

How long have you been working in this hospital?

< 5 years 10 (10.3%)

5.1 - 10 years 8 (8.2%)

10.1 - 15 years 3 (3.1%)

15.1 - 20 years 2 (2.1%)

> 20 years 1 (1%)

Missing 73 (75.3%)

Mean (Standard Deviation) 7.56 (5.57)

Have you previously worked in the field of HRM?

No 57 (58.8%)

Yes 40 (41.2%)

Gender

Male 25 (25.8%)

Female 72 (74.2%)

Age

Below 30 yrs 19 (19.6%)

Between 30 and 45 yrs 63 (64.9%)

Between 46 and 55 yrs 11 (11.3%)

Over 55 yrs 4 (4.1%)

Most commonly reported challenges and strategies

N (%)
Challenges

Poor employee retention 55 (56.7%)

Lack of qualified personnel 34 (35.1%)

Lack of a system for performance evaluation 28 (28.9%)

Challenges in recruitment system 26 (26.8%)

Financial constraints 24 (24.7%)

Employee shortages 10 (10.3%)

Poor satisfaction 8 (8.3%)

Competition by governmental hospitals 8 (8.3%)

No strategic planning 6 (6.2%)

Limited capacity of HR Department 6 (6.2%)

Strategies

Offer continuing education and training for employees 19 (19.6%)

Improve salaries 14 (14.4%)

Develop retention strategies 10 (10.3%)

Develop incentives 8 (8.3%)

Managerial support 7 (7.2%)

Needs assessment of existing challenges 6 (6.2%)

Develop recruitment strategy 5 (5.2%)

Develop an HR strategic plan 5 (5.2%)

Improve overall environment in hospital 5 (5.2%)

Have strategies been successful? (based on 68 respondents who reported retention strategies)

Yes 54 (79.4%)

No 14 (20.6%)
HR Management trends in participating hospitals

N (%)

Does the hospital conduct performance appraisal for all staff members on regular basis?

Yes 75 (77.3%)

No 22 (22.7%)

Does the hospital conduct periodic assessment of credentialing of medical and nursing staff?

Yes 61 (62.9%)

No 36 (37.1%)

Does the hospital have continuing education or career development program for employees?

Yes 53 (54.6%)

No 44 (45.4%)

Does the hospital hold regular training sessions for staff?

No 14 (14.4%)

Yes 83 (85.6%)

In the hospital 8 (9.6%)

Outside the hospital 0 (0.0%)

Both 74 (89.2%)

Missing 1 (1.2%)

Does the hospital require training on specific skills in HR management?

Yes 55 (56.7%)

No 42 (43.3%)

Does the hospital have a recruitment and retention strategy?

Yes 26 (26.8%)

No 71 (73.2%)
IF THERE’S EVER SUCH THING AS A GOOD HR PROBLEM, THIS IS PROBABLY IT.

There are too many candidates out there.

Social networking platforms. Referrals. Job fairs. Mobile apps. Where do you even begin?

Almost all recruiters (92%) use social media to find candidates. But then, there are others who swear by
referrals – 78% of recruiters say referrals are the best way to find candidates. On top of that, there are
more than 100+ job boards to post to and track.

With all of the different options to choose from, what’s best for your team? What strategies are the top
brands leveraging across these channels?

We tapped experts from various industries to get their take on the latest HR trends:

1) CONTINUOUS FEEDBACK LOOP = MORE PERSONAL GROWTH

“Reviews aren’t dying, but they’re certainly changing. 43% of highly engaged employees receive
feedback at least twice a week, but here’s the sticky twist; many employees report being uninterested in
performance reviews. Ongoing corrective feedback is far more desirable and constructive than any form
of feedback. You can give employees an ol’ fashion pat on the back, but how will they know what
specifically went right and what could be improved for next time? Professionals want career
advancement, without direction, they won’t know where to begin advancing.”

Michael Heller, CEO & Founder, iRevu

2) BRINGING LEARNING ONLINE AND ACROSS THE ORG

“Continuous learning will be a hot trend this year. HR leaders are recognizing the need to overhaul
learning and development opportunities for their employees, considering that careers are now likely to
span 60 years. Digital training through learning management software (LMS) is an increasingly attractive
option because it gives HR teams the ability to measure employee productivity through data. It also
makes for a more collaborative experience since various departments across the organization supply
learning content. Examples of LMS on the market include SkyPrep and SkillPort.”

Lauren Stafford, HR Publishing Specialist, HRMS World

3) UNIQUE BENEFITS TO STAND OUT IN THE JOB MARKET

“A lot of employers are offering unique benefits to attract new talent. American Eagle, TransUnion and
Clarins are all offering employees Figo Pet Insurance. Americans spend over $60 billion on their pets
each year. The pet insurance industry, once an “extravagant expense,” is booming, CNBC‘s Kelly Evans
said on “Closing Bell” last summer. With Figo Pet Insurance’s advanced, cloud-based platform and app,
owners can access their pet’s entire medical needs with just the touch of a button.”

Rusty Sproat, CEO & Founder, Figo Pet Insurance

4) FOCUSING ON WELLNESS BEYOND THE OFFICE

“HR departments are recognizing the value of work-life balance. Specifically, many companies are
putting policies in place that limit checking email while out of the office and working while on PTO.
They’re trying to be proactive about encouraging people to use more PTO and to actually stay offline
during that PTO.

HR departments are also looking at ways to mitigate stress in the office. Personal and financial stress has
always creeped into the workplace, but companies are now taking the initiative to help employees
manage their stress. They can’t just keep increasing salaries, and the cost of health benefits are hurting
those budgets, so more and more companies are working financial and mental health into their regular
wellness programs.”

Brandon Carter, Engagement & Loyalty Marketer, Access Perks

5) TEAMING UP WITH BOTS

“We’re using a robot—whom we’ve named DORIS— to manage resumes and other HR documents.
Talent acquisition is a prime candidate for the use of robotic process automation. A big company might
have tens of thousands of resumes and other paperwork from past applicants, and managing all of that
is incredibly time-consuming.

We recently worked with a client to archive and store 70,000 HR documents. The files had to be
organized by candidate, saved into Sharepoint folders with appropriate security and consistent naming
conventions so that they could be easily retrieved in the future. DORIS completed the task in 36 hours—
something that we estimate would have taken two or three months for an HR team of ten.”

Brandon Carter, Engagement & Loyalty Marketer, Access Perks

6) TURNING HIRING INTO A SCIENCE

“New tech such as data science and collection techniques are being used to transform the traditional
interview process. These techniques not only make it more candidate friendly, but more predictive as
well.

Two ways organizations go about this is using gamification and video interviews. Gamified assessments
are a little out of my wheelhouse, but this video from Unilever does a pretty good job of showing what
they can do.

With video interviews, we’re going a step further than gamification. At HireVue, our team of Industrial-
Organizational (I-O) psychologists leverage video interviewing to deliver custom assessments. They
create questions specifically designed to elicit responses predictive of job success and find the right
behaviors. With artificial intelligence, candidate’s video responses are collected, analyzed, and scored
against a model of the ideal response – providing an I-O validated prediction of job success.”

Jon-Mark Sabel, Content Strategist, HireVue

7) MORE FLEXIBLE WORKING ARRANGEMENTS

At Blueboard, as a way to accommodate Bay Area-based employees with longer commutes, we’ve
adopted Work from Home Wednesdays. Every Wednesday, employees have the option to work from
home or their preferred location of choice (local coffee shops, etc.).

It’s our nod to the growing HR trend of creating more flexible working environments for employees,
which research shows helps to increase employee morale, engagement, and commitment to the
organization (source). Since implementing this benefit last year, we’ve seen strong adoption across our
team and improved performance efficiencies and appreciation for the company. Not to mention it also
helps to break up the work week, and enable us to more easily tend to personal needs and
appointments outside of the office.

Morgan Chaney, Head of Marketing at Blueboard

8) THE STUDENT BECOMES THE TEACHER

“We have two remote locations at this time which we staff with college students. Not only does this
exposure to the industry give them money and experience, but they are also on the front lines of
eCommerce and tech trends. I can’t overstate enough the importance of having college students
employed at a tech company — there is no better window to the world.”

Jan Bednar, CEO, Shipmonk

SHAPING AND OPTIMIZING THE EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE

HR has always been about the people. But technology has made this focus even more granular and
easier to track.

How are candidates discovering the company? What do they think of the brand? Why do they become
interested in joining the team? And what makes them stay?

Reach, conversion, and loyalty. Like marketers who build brand advocates externally, HR builds brand
advocates internally. New platforms and AI technologies make it possible for HR professionals to see the
entire employee experience from end to end.
HR professionals don’t have to choose between focusing their time on building individual relationships
with each employee versus finishing up paperwork. In 2018, the people and the process will come
together.

Technology lets candidates and employees take control of their own journey. Through automation,
predictive technology, and new benefits, HR will build a more streamlined employee journey that keeps
teams happy, growing, and as efficient as possible.

Time to consider the HR Trends for 2018

The HR Trend Institute was founded nearly four years ago. Our first annual HR Trends prediction
appeared in December 2014. In this article the overview of major trends we consider relevant for 2018.
“Power to the People” and “Employee Intimacy” made the list.

2015: No more performance reviews

Our list for 2015 had 9 subjects.

No more performance reviews

The org chart is fading away

Privacy seems to be less of an issue

The sharing economy is also entering organisational life

Mobile/mobile/mobile

Real time succession management

Robots in the board room

The end of PowerPoint

Community management as a recruitment tool

The reality is, that only a few of these trends really became mainstream in the past three years. The
early adaptors that abolished performance reviews are coming back on their decision. Privacy is
becoming more of an issue, not less. Concepts like the sharing of talent across organisations are rare.
Robots are kept out of the boardrooms, and PowerPoint is still the corporate standard. Are org charts
fading away? Maybe a little bit, but not very fast. Yes, mobile is more and more important, but even in
2014 that was not a very difficult prediction.

2016: HR embraces agile

For 2016 our list was extended to 11 items.

HR embraces agile

Back to the office

HR goes soft on performance ratings

Individualisation

Talent everywhere

Artificial Intelligence

Detecting and selecting the best

Moving away from big systems

Rewards: less external benchmarking

Maturing of people analytics

Keep it simple

2016 looks like a better year with regards to sensing the important trends in HR. HR embracing agile is
maybe overstating it a bit, but many HR teams are considering agile ways of working. The scope of talent
management is certainly broadening. AI was one of the hot topics in 2016 and 2017 and people analytics
is really maturing. Keeping is simple (and focused) is still a challenge for many HR teams.

2017: The consumerisation of HR

The 9 subjects we selected as important trends for 2017 were:

The consumerisation of HR

Performance consulting

From individuals to teams to networks of teams

Man-machine collaboration

Algorithm aversion

HR Operations

Data ownership

The end of open space

The battle of the apps

2017 is still in progress, maybe a bit to early for an evaluation. The consumerisation of HR is certainly an
important topic, and many organisations are now looking into ways to measure and improve the
employee experience.

What do we see as the major trends for 2018?

1. From PTB to EI

Dave Ulrich’s “Human Resource Champions” has probably been the book with the largest impact on the
HR profession in the last decades. Unfortunately, many people did not read the book, but only saw a
picture with the four archetypical roles for HR. For many the book was summarised in one key message:
you must become a Strategic Business Partner. As strategy was a role of top management, this meant
you had to get close to management, or even better, become part of top management! Many of today’s
CHRO’s have grown in this area. Therefore, HR has focused too much on pleasing top management, and
forgot to develop one of the other key roles Ulrich described: Employee Champion.

The tide is slowly turning, from PTB (please the boss) to EI (employee intimacy). Really understanding
the wishes, needs and capabilities of employees is getting more important, and this employee intimacy
is required to design relevant employee journeys. Read our earlier blog post: To a more human and
holistic HR.

2. Renewed focus on productivity

In the last years, there has not been a lot of focus on productivity. We see a slow change at the horizon.
Traditionally, capacity problems have been solved by recruiting new people. This has led to several
problems. When you need many people, it is difficult to apply very stringent selection criteria. Because
you compromise on quality, and because if you grow you generally need more coordination mechanisms
(often management), productivity goes down. When focusing more on productivity, the benefits for the
organisation and the employees can be big. You need to hire less people, and the potential of the
employees is better used. People analytics can help to determine what the characteristics are of the
best performing people and teams. The findings can be used in recruitment and in people and team
development. Read: 3 reasons to stop counting heads.

3. Power to the people (or: Bring your own everything)

Many organisations are still used to work in a top-down way. In those organisations, also HR finds it
difficult to approach issues in a different way. Performance management is a good example. Changing
the performance management process is often tackled as an organisation wide issue, and HR needs to
find the new uniform solution. In line with the trend called “the consumerisation of HR” employees are
expected to take more initiative, being tired of waiting for the organisation and HR, and wanting to be
more independent of organisational initiatives. If you want feedback, you can easily organise it yourself,
for example with the Slack plug-in Captain Feedback. A simple survey to measure the mood in your team
is quickly built with Polly (view: “How to measure the mood in your team with Slack and Polly“). Many
employees are already tracking their own fitness with trackers like Fitbit and the Apple Watch. Many
teams primarily use communication tools as WhatsApp and Slack, avoiding the officially approved
communication channels. HR might go with the flow, and tap on to the channels used, instead of trying
to promote standardised and approved channels.

4. The end of fixed jobs

The slow shift has been going on for years now. The Tayloristic organisation, where everybody has a
clearly defined and assigned job, often does not work so well. Especially when the assignments are not
so clearly defined, more flexibility is required. The jobs become more flexible, and employees get the
opportunity to craft their own job, to make the best fit with their wishes, needs and capabilities. Some
organisations go beyond job crafting. When there is an assignment, there is a process to look at the
capabilities (qualitative and quantitative) required for this specific assignment. The wishes, needs and
capabilities of people connected to the organisation are known, or captured as part of the process. A
team is established, where the availability of people and the requirements of other teams must be
considered. Teams are not build of people with specific fixed jobs, but of people who have specific skills
that are needed to deliver the assignment. People with broad skill sets, can use certain skills in Team A,
and other skills in Team B at their next assignment. The leader of Team A, who has specific skills in
building new teams, might be the agile coach in Team B, as she is also very good in agile coaching. In this
new situation, it is not possible to assign static job names to people. Read: The end of static jobs.
5. Learning in real time

The learning domain has been slow in using the opportunities offered by technology. Loads of money is
still wasted on classroom training for groups of employees on very broad subjects, often not directed at
immediate application, but for possible future use. There are signs this is changing. Big chunks of
material are divided in more digestible small pieces (micro learning). Employees will have easy access to
learning material when they need it (just in time). Knowledge and skills can be learned in a playful
manner (gamification), and VR and AR learning solutions make learning more real (and fun). The
learning experience can be tailored to the individual capabilities and needs of employees. A challenge
will remain to monitor and measure the performance of people, to be able to find (or design) the most
appropriate learning solution.

6. Hospitality and Service

HR operations has been highly undervalued. The last years we have seen an upgrade of HR Operations.
Most likely HR can add most value in the HR operations area. The requirements for the people in HR
operations are different though, and probably we need a new breed of HR professionals who can run HR
as a service organisation. In HR services both IT and hospitality are important. Organisations that
measure how employees experience their journey, often find that employees are not very happy with
how they can find relevant HR information (often on the intranet). A top-notch HR service centre is very
important for a positive candidate and employee experience. 24/7. Friendly chatbots that help
employees and managers. High level professionals that can help when the programmed processes do
not offer a solution and when the issue is too difficult for the chatbot.

Read our posts: “HR Operations in the lift” and “HR, please give me a menu”

7. Shrinking HR teams

Most HR professionals will work in HR services. The number of jobs in HR services will decrease, as the
level of automation increases. Example: the sourcing work many recruiters were doing, is rapidly taken
over by intelligent machines. HR advisors/ assistants/ business partners will become less necessary (see
also trends 1 and 3). Read: “Basic architecture HR“. HR is certainly a profession. Top HR professionals
will be needed in HR services, and on a high-level HR architects can (and should) play an important role
in the transformation of organisations.

8. Letting go
Earlier this year we published “8 talent management trends for 2018“. One of the trends we labelled: “A
more organic approach to talent management”. This trend is related to trend number three in this list
(“Power to the people”). A quote from our article: “Planning and control are overrated. Most talent
management programs cost a lot of money, and do not deliver on the high expectations. HR and
management are used to design and implement programs, and life might feel empty without. I was
speaking about talent management with a friend, who is working at a medium sized multinational,
recently. She said she was now advocating a “go with the flow” approach. Talent in their organisation
often starts initiatives without any corporate involvement. The main task of the corporate team is to
stimulate and not to stop these initiatives, and not to force them to a global approach immediately. An
interesting organic approach.” Surely this approach can also be applied to other areas in HR.