Justine Figo discusses the challenges facing HR

Justine Figo is an HR director, author and executive coach. She joined The HR Leader on 14 October to discuss the issues impacting the HR industry.

These are some of the areas she covered:

Wages

Ms Figo: “What do we pay our people? The market’s moving so quickly. What do people value at the moment? Every single detail when it comes to talent essentially has been thrown up in the air. How do we catch it again, how do we keep catching it and keep juggling it?”

As reported by HR Leader, Mercer’s remuneration survey revealed wages are expected to increase by an average of 3 per cent in 2023.

Transformation

Ms Figo: “We know that a lot of our businesses, we had planned for growth. But now, is it with pace of change, with market uncertainty, contraction, extra mergers and acquisitions? Where are we going with this transformation? And just staying ahead of that.”

Technology

Ms Figo: “There’s the tech you plan for, there’s a tech transformation you think you’re getting, and there’s the one you really get down the road.”

HR Leader noted in the 21 October weekly roundup that businesses can benefit by investing in HR tech. CIPD said: “Evidence suggests employees need to be managed effectively, understand any new requirements on them and may need to develop new skills if business investment in technology is to be optimised to boost firm performance.”

Tension

Ms Figo: “HR has always sat between meeting the needs of our employees and meeting the needs of managers. As we’re re-navigating flexible work, our talent, and really burnt-out workforce, how do we meet those needs and psychological safety with businesses that need more, in this pace of change in the market with managers who may not have adapted to flexible work?”

She continued: “We’re still sitting in that tension. And then tension between people. So being at home, what that’s done is it might have created some great communication within teams, but it’s also created some silos and some significant silos when it comes to cross collaboration as well.”

Talent

Ms Figo: “I’d say the top one is the same challenge that everyone’s having. It’s talent: getting the right talent and reskilling the right talent, holding onto your people. Our people are burnt out.”

HR Leader will be discussing how to attract and retain talent in a webcast with Enboarder and Lotus People, on 13 December.

Time

Ms Figo: “And sitting underneath all of that, time. The biggest factor for HR is consistently time. How do we get to it all? We’re all things to all people because we are people. So where do you prioritise? How do you set reasonable expectations? And how do you actually show the momentum that you’re genuinely taking, when you’re constantly being redirected within everything that you’re trying to achieve, when you really care about what you’re doing?”

If your business is being affected by these issues, you aren’t alone. Leave a comment below and tell us about it, we’d love to hear from you.

The transcript of this podcast episode, when quoted above, was slightly edited for publishing purposes. The full audio conversation with Justine Figo is below, and the original podcast article can be found here.