Current Trends & Cases in Human

Resource Management
Dr. Yogesh Daudkhane
Hello!

• I am Dr. Yogesh Daudkhane

 • Nothing has changed more in the past two
years than the way we work, and
companies operate.
• No other business department has been under
more pressure to keep up with this fast pace of
change than Human Resources. 

Past 2 years • What all we have witnessed?

• Lockdown
• Remote working
• Health concerns
• Great reopening
• Great Resignation
 HR as a
PROJECT than a
mere Product
Trends in HR - 2022
Remote Working
• First on our list is the most drastic trend that
developed over 2020. The idea of remote working was
not unheard of, but most companies lacked policies and
infrastructure to make this possible. As the pandemic
struck, companies had to adapt to the Working from
home trends almost overnight.

• Today, 98 percent of people prefer to work remotely

for the rest of their careers according to a report by
World Economic Forum.
Remote Learning
• As employees work at home, the business model changes. Employees need to
learn and develop, so they can work with new technologies. Learning has been an
important aspect of the workforce, even in pre-pandemic times.

• The present times are witnessing an upward trend in “e-learning” or “remote

learning”. This is where employees use virtual classrooms, video lectures, and
virtual exams to learn new skills. These virtual platforms offer fun, interactive
lessons on a wide variety of topics. Remote learning has opened a whole lot of
opportunities for the employees to work, along with its focus on their weak areas
and learn how to correct them by investing their much provided time while
working remotely.
Upskilling
• A recent survey by Udemy shows that demand for upskilling grew
by over 38 percent in the past year! That’s a huge number, and it
goes to show the demand for upskilling. We’re in an age of
technological boom, wherein the demand for trained
professionals far outstrips the supply.

• Sure, organizations could hire experts, but that is an expensive

process. A more viable option is to retrain your existing
workforce. Upskilling your employees give a boost to their
morale, thus helping you with employee retention. It also saves
the cost of onboarding and hiring. Overall, upskilling is a new
trend in HR that has huge potential.
Virtual Teams

• As more people adapt to the WFH trend, the employee experience undergoes a
significant change. Think about the pre-pandemic times. You went to your office
and met your colleagues. There were round table meetings, your seniors were
around to guide you. Your office cafeteria offered some healthy meals.

• All these experiences bring change in the WFH trend. HR will have to redesign an
employee’s journey. An employee’s connections, collaborations, and work-life
balance have to be taken into account. For instance, virtual video conferencing
helps employees to feel like a part of a team, rather than working alone.
 • As work turned remote, most organizations
turned to video conferencing software. MS
Office, Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, and Google
Workspace are some of the many platforms
that saw widespread popularity.

Digital • These platforms were a crucial starting point in

Collaboration the WFH trend. But as the recent trend of
digital collaboration continues to grow,
Platform companies will have to innovate. The focus is
now towards improving an employee’s
experience on a digital collaboration platform
so that it mirrors the human-to-human
interaction in offices. Most organizations have
already turned towards cloud (SaaS) solutions
to solve this problem.
Digital Tracking

HR is faced with the huge task of tracking employees

digitally. Traditionally, an employee would come to their
office, scan their ID card, and get attendance. The
employee would then proceed to log in to their computer,
and IT could monitor their activities and timings.

In the WFH trend, tracking undergoes a 360° shift.

Companies now have to depend upon online tools. Virtual
timesheets, virtual attendance, and virtual performance
management are trending areas in HRM today.
Virtual Employee
Experience
• The remote working trend has a domino effect,
wherein several other traditional HR activities have
been toppled over.

• Activities like hiring or firing an employee, onboarding,

and training have relied upon in-person conversations.
HR is faced with the challenge of doing all these
activities virtually. The recent HR trends 2022 in HRM
have been focused on structuring an employee’s virtual
experience. For eg- some organizations have started
“virtual fun meetings”, where employees collaborate
and share their creative ideas.
 Data-Driven HR

The world is moving towards data-driven strategies. If

you haven’t already, it’s time to adopt data analytics in
your business decision-making.

HR executives today use the data generated to access the

gaps in their workforce and skills. Also, smart data
analysis helps organizations to estimate future demand,
and plan for it. Smart technologies like automation and
AI help HR with their screening and recruitment
processes too.
Virtual Employee Engagement
• The physical distance in working from home can quickly turn into isolation. As
employees sit in front of their desks, they need to remember that they are a part of
a team. The recent trend in HR pf virtual employee engagement aims to do just
that.

• Companies are strategically developing fun activities to keep employees engaged.

Virtual board games, virtual karaoke, virtual treasure hunts, etc are some examples
where employees from different teams work together. This helps employees feel
comfortable, collaborate better, and enhance their work quality.
Automation of
Tasks
• An average HR department in a company spends up to 40
percent of their time on repetitive and tedious HR tasks.
Automation does this burdensome work manually, so your
HR staff could focus on important decision-making.
• Several tasks can be automated, like:
• 1. Onboarding- Everything from resume collection,
screening, and online tests can be automated.
2. Approving/ rejecting leave requests.
3. Handling accounting, payroll, and expense claims.
4. Employee timesheet and productivity management.
…and many more.
Mental Health Support
The Covid pandemic has hit us all differently. However, studies
show that the mental health of employees has declined over the
past year. We’ve now reached a point where companies need to
look for mandatory mental health support, rather than it being a
nice “add-on”.
According to a recent report by StartupHR Toolkit, women are still
grossly underrepresented in India. The gender gap between
working men and women is still very high.

As organizations evolve, HR departments are trying to gather

employee feedback. Recent HRM trends encourage employees to
voice their woes and offer help, support, and resources
Mobile-Friendly
Recruitment
• Technology has changed. Companies and HR who are
constantly looking for the top talent, have to switch
towards a mobile-friendly recruitment process.
Essentially, HRM has to build a process where
someone with a smartphone could apply and appear
for a job interview

• Mobile-friendly recruitment improves an employee’s

experience and reduces hassles. It’s also a cheaper and
more streamlined process for your company. Video
interviews through phones, skill tests, and digital
reference checks are some new trends in HRM.
VOLVO – The
recruiting Car

https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=oUf9_rS1fYg
 Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)
VR Breakthrough are two technologies that are changing the game
today. Gaining popularity from games like
“Pokemon Go”, VR can now be used in HRM.

The possibilities for VR applications in Hr are

endless. They are being used to simulate real-
world scenarios, where employees can be trained.
They are used to gain insights into different
situations. VR is also used to give new employees
a “virtual tour ” of the office. Additionally, some
companies use it for remote learning.
Ethical Leadership

• Any business thrives on not just the leaders, but with the help of every employee.
The year 2020 has helped companies to focus back on their leadership.

• Organizations that encourage open communication and foster a culture of trust,

usually have a higher success rate. Ethical leadership is not always simple,
particularly when jobs are at stake in the middle of a pandemic. However, this is
one emerging trends in HRM, that will continue to strengthen over the next few
years.
Getting Back to the
Workspace
• We have seen quite a few WFH is new HR trends 2022 emerging
today. And as we said, WFH is here to stay, but it cannot
altogether replace the traditional working environment.

• HR will have to decide when it is safe for employees to come

back to offices, once local restrictions are lifted. Even then,
HRM needs to have a system in place where employees can
socially distance themselves, wear masks, and get tested. An
employee’s health, well-being, and morale will be crucial factors
to consider in the process. The only viable solution is to promote
2-way communication within a company, so HR can safely
welcome back employees at the right time.
Digital Transformation
and the Evolution Of
HR Trends
Reality…..

• Till a few years ago, human resources used to be least

active in technology innovation and automation.
• But over time, digital transformation has empowered HR
to improve the human resource processes.
• In today’s economy, traditional ways of employee
engagement, performance management and recruitment
are old school and do not effectively manage millennials (a
smartphone-dependent generation).
• HR needs to transform too, by streamlining its processes
and becoming a strategic partner in the business
 Digital workforce: How can organizations drive new
management practices (which we call “digital DNA” ), a
culture of innovation and sharing, and a set of talent
practices that facilitate a new network-based
organization.
Areas
where Digital workplace: How can organizations design a
working environment that enables productivity; uses
Changes modern communication tools (such as Slack, Workplace
by Facebook, Microsoft Teams, and many others); and

are taking promotes engagement, wellness, and a sense of purpose,

place Digital HR: How can organizations change the HR

function itself to operate in a digital way, use digital tools
and apps to deliver solutions, and continuously
experiment and innovate
 For HR, digital transformation is an opportunity
where analyzing employee data, managing mobile
workforce, making well informed decisions and
executing HR processes is simplified. Digital
HR integrates SMAC (Social, Mobility,
Analytics & Cloud) technologies to redefine
employee experience, make employees more
productive and improve work life balance.
HR & Digital
Transformation Digital HR frees up HR managers’ time, enabling
them to play a strategic business role. Thanks to
new and advancing technology, HR can now
explore innovative ways to recruit high
potential talent, improve employee
performance, give best development
opportunities, engage and retain top talent.
Challenge HR to start with a
digital-first HR strategy.

• The digital enterprise and digital HR are a

revolutionary leap forward, not an incremental
step.
• The combination of mobile and cloud solutions
and the pervasive access to smartphones as
powerful as laptops and desktop computers of
just a couple of years ago, are redefining how
HR processes are designed, delivered, accessed,
and operated.
• The shift to a mobile and platform way of
thinking is at the forefront of this challenge.
Embrace design
thinking
• Social, mobile, analytics, and cloud tools are
only useful if employees adopt them. HR
must begin with employee needs and the user
experience.
• Incorporating design thinking throughout the
process will help companies maximize the
impact of new digital technologies.
Digital transformation: are
you ready for exponential
change? Futurist Keynote
Speaker Gerd Leonhard

https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=ystdF6jN7hc
 • HR has the opportunity to use agile
development—rapid development by
Leverage an integrated teams delivering prototypes
agile approach and solutions in successive releases
integrating and waves—as a new way of operating
in HR and supporting similar
HR, programs across the company.
technology, • Unlike the traditional waterfall
employees, development process, agile
and business development requires HR specialists,
leaders in the system and app developers, designers,
process employees, and business leaders to
work together as a team.
 • HR has the opportunity to learn from
early digital adopters in the company,
Share generally customer marketing and
operations.
digital • A community of practice can share
strategies digital experiences and
implementation learning across the
and company.
experiences • HR can learn from the digital savvy
across the company and, in turn, help
across the develop the enterprise’s digital mind-
set and capabilities.
company
Imagine HR and the
employee experience in
real time
• One of the biggest changes in moving to a
digital HR strategy is the focus on real-
time access, decision-making, and results.
• This involves a significant step beyond
many recent HR efforts, which have
focused on shared services and HR service
centers and SLAs (service level
agreements).
• Digital HR is also a call to automate many
areas of HR. With every employee having
a smartphone, HR teams can automate,
streamline, and adopt more real-time and
digital-first operations rather than process
forms and transactions.
 • Most HR teams today have dedicated teams that
collect information from process and
transaction systems for basic HR reports and
Integrate analysis.
• Instead, HR management information should
analytics and be an automated part of the HR digital
reporting as platform. It should provide managers with real-
time information and leaders with real-time
part of the analysis, decreasing the time spent on reports
digital and increasing the time HR and business
leaders spend on analyzing data and solving
platform, not problems.
an add-on • Analytics and reports can be configured and
integrated into a business intelligence layer of
the HR platform, linking apps directly to
leadership reports and analysis.
10 HR Trends for 2022: From Adaptation to Transformation

• Tom Haak of the HR Trend Institute (

https://hrtrendinstitute.com) presents his view on the important
HR Trends for 2022.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0cdbesQ0tk
Thank You