4 Big Changes Coming to

HR This Year
Your company is only as good as your employees,
but finding and keeping high-quality talent is one of the
most challenging aspects of running any business. And it's
not getting any easier.

In April the unemployment rate in the U.S. fell to

3.6 percent, a nearly five-decade low, which has led
some businesses to take creative approaches to recruiting,
retention, and other human resources functions. More and
more, they're leveraging new technology to cut costs, and
relying heavily on data to make decisions about hiring,
raises, and promotions.

Here are are few ways HR will evolve in 2020 and what
business owners should do now to prepare for those
changes.

1. Deploying chatbots to
handle recruiting
Recruiters already use artificial intelligence and machine
learning to identify potential candidates who have the right
skill sets and experiences for the roles they're trying to fill.
But what if there's a new manufacturing plant opening and
you're tasked with finding 100 people to work specialized
machinery? Or there's a new restaurant that needs to find
30 people to fill various types of roles? In certain industries
like these, which typically don't use recruiters, the process
could take significant time.

This is an issue Jeanne MacDonald, president of global

RPO solutions for management consultancy Korn
Ferry, says her firm's clients are facing. Their
solution: robotic process automation (RPA), more
commonly known as chatbots. "It's adding recruiting
processes to an industry or possible industries that never
really had that before," MacDonald says.

Essentially, the chatbot asks a candidate if

they're interested in the job. If they are, the bot sends over a
job simulation--a video or written description of the role.
Next the bot sends qualifier questions and if the candidate
is a fit, schedules an in-person interview. Paradox, for
example, offers a chatbot called Olivia that reaches out to
potential candidates by text message, SMS, and messaging
platforms like FB Messenger, Whatsapp, or WeChat.

"The cost of talent acquisition at that level needs to be

pretty low," MacDonald says. "So companies are looking for
a kind of chain of pre-configured robotic process
automation where the bot itself is engaging the candidate
through the entire recruiting process, rather than the
recruiters themselves."

2. Reskilling of the workforce

With unemployment low, the "buy, not build" strategy of
hiring is unlikely to work. It's vital for employers to retain
employees, even those whose roles are shifting or being
eliminated from the company, because there's no
guarantee of hiring additional talent.

"Companies are getting smarter about asking, 'How do I

keep and retain and transform my workforce to be more
agile for what the demands are?'" MacDonald says.

Instead of downsizing and rehiring, HR will be more willing

to spend money and time putting employees in the
classroom to learn new skills. In the long run, it's more cost
effective. Amazon has provided a good model: Earlier this
year the company announced a path for workers to rise
from working in warehouses to data centers. The 16-week
certification program nearly doubles employee's earnings
from $16 to $30 per hour, while helping the company staff
a fast-growing part of its business.

3. Shaking up who's in the HR

department
With human resources becoming ever more
important to company growth during this period of low
unemployment, HR people themselves are more likely to
come from various backgrounds, and bring new skill sets
that previously weren't essential for the job.

"There's a trend of hiring people in HR that aren't just

typical HR backgrounds," says Jon Stross, co-founder and
president of Greenhouse, an HR software platform. For
example, a fast-growing company might bring someone in
who knows how to successfully run a sales funnel--
demonstrating that they have people skills, and can run all
elements of a process from reaching out, to gaining interest,
to closing a deal. A larger company may hire someone with
an analytics background who's able to analyze employee
performance based on internal data.

"More leaders are realizing that being in HR is one of the

biggest leverage points you can have for a company,"
Stross says. "Nobody would have said that a few years
ago."

4. HR departments leveraging internal

data to find potential new leaders, and
help employees change teams
internally.
Companywide employee surveys can be used for a variety
of HR purposes such as gauging company morale,
determining benefits packages, or asking about the next
holiday party. While the use of surveys isn't new, Jody
Kohner, SVP of employee engagement at Salesforce, says
they're a good way to see who's performing beyond
expectations.

Right along with performance metrics such as sales quotas,

Salesforce uses "people analytics," its version of HR data,
to understand how its more than 45,000 employees are
working. The company uses confidential, semi-annual
employee surveys to measure employee engagement and
the overall health of the company's culture. According to
Business Insider, the company asks employees survey
questions like "Do you see yourself working at Salesforce in
two years?", "Are you willing to give extra to get the job
done?", and "Are you comfortable telling your boss when
your workload becomes unmanageable?"

Salesforce uses the responses to create an "an internal

Glassdoor," collecting comments that help identify who is
engaged, has good ideas about how to improve the
company, and has been helping their co-workers. The
information is then used to help enhance internal recruiting
and mobility.

Employees also have access to the results, including data

regarding any manager with at least five employees who
submitted survey responses. This helps employees who are
unhappy switch managers or change teams to find a
group where they may be a better fit. It also help Salesforce
pick out leaders who are helping their teams excel.

"We're able to pinpoint a whole new group of leaders, not

just those crushing quotas, or getting work done early, but
the people who are embracing the culture and helping
others rise to the top," Kohner says.