The 13 skills HR professionals need to be future-ready

HR professionals will be expected to keep up every step of the way with a changing workforce. What skills will future-ready HR professionals need, and what are they prioritising?

As technology continues to redefine the ways we interact with one another and the world around us, it is difficult to imagine any industry will go unaffected in the coming years in a substantial way. Indeed, according to LinkedIn Learning, 40 per cent of work-related skills will change by 2025.

HR is no exception. Apart from the obvious changes implied by hybrid/remote work and flexible working hours, the very purpose of HR is undergoing change. “Gone are the days of compliance and transaction,” said Heather V MacArthur in an article for Forbes.

People expect more from their employers, and HR will be crucial in mediating the change: “HR’s role needs to dramatically change to effectively support the future of employee engagement and retention,” said Ms MacArthur.

Not only are employees wanting more, but some employers are looking to bring HR more into the strategic decision-making fold. As noted by Eva Majercsik: “More and more CEOs are turning to the HR executive to support with decisions in DEI, sustainability, workplace strategy and, most importantly, strategic decision making.”

This idea was explored in a recent HR Leader podcast with author, speaker and business leader Margot Faraci.

According to research from IBM, 70 per cent of executives believe HR is due for reinvention, while research from Boston Consulting Group found HR to be one of the most highly new skill-disrupted industries.

Clearly, skill sets need constant updating. In a recent article from the Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR), the following 13 skills areas were identified as essential for HR leaders moving forward:

1. Change management and change consulting
2. Risk management
3. People analytics
4. Stakeholder management
5. Management of strategic deals and alliances
6. Integrating cultural differences
7. Ethics and data privacy
8. Critical and systems thinking
9. Negotiation skills
10. Inter-departmental collaboration
11. Resilience and self-care
12. Project management
13. Organisational design

Changing priorities

Having considered the most important skill areas for HR leaders going forward, let’s look at what HR leaders are actually going to be prioritising in the near future. According to Gartner’s annual HR Priorities survey, HR leaders are planning to prioritise the following five things in 2024:

1. Leader and management development

Research has shown that managers have been disproportionately burdened by bigger workloads over recent years. More than three-quarters of employees have recently placed increased importance on manager support, while managers have 51 per cent more responsibilities than they can effectively manage.

Perhaps more concerningly, only 25 per cent of HR leaders are confident that their investments in manager development are working. Helping managers meet the new demands of their roles and developing the roles accordingly will be crucial moving forward.

2. Organisational culture

According to Gartner, 41 per cent of HR leaders say their employees’ connection to culture is compromised by hybrid work. While some companies are requiring their employees to physically return to work and some predict hybrid work to go away within the next few years, the impacts will at least continue to affect HR functions for some time. This is just one challenge faced by HR leaders in promoting a positive, sustainable organisational culture.

3. HR technology

New technologies are constantly changing the way we work. Those HR leaders who can best make use of emergent tech will likely thrive, while latecomers will struggle to keep up. For instance, some predict generative AI to play a major role in the future of recruitment. As noted by McKinsey, generative AI is set to shake up recruitment and professional development.

“There’s hype around AI and generative AI and conversations around productivity and the need for responsible AI. Yet most HR functions are unprepared to implement AI-related initiatives effectively,” said Gartner.

4. Change management

Those companies that can serve the interests of their employees while capitalising on emergent trends and technological changes will be best placed in the coming years.

“The volume and pace of change is overwhelming for employees. Changes are now stacked – as well as continuous – which harms employee wellbeing and can have devastating impacts on key outcomes,” said Gartner.

5. Career management

Eighty-six per cent of HR leaders believe career paths at their organisations are unclear for many employees, according to Gartner.

“Traditional career maps no longer fulfil business requirements or employee expectations – and leave employees unsure how to move forward in their careers,” said Gartner.

HR professionals will be expected to design flexible, adaptive career paths that meet employer demands for flexibility and employee demands for predictability.

Similarly, as noted by AIHR, not only are functions and required skills changing in HR, but so are the career paths available to HR professionals: “The career paths are no longer linear, and HR professionals have more career development options than ever before,” said AIHR.