“Employees will get to choose their salary structure,” Ravi Mishra

2022 was a volatile year for HR & workforce

In many organisations employees did not enjoy reasonable growth, either in salary or career, for almost 2.5 years during the pandemic. Most employers are conservative when it comes to granting salary hikes during tough times and fail to be generous during good times. During the first half of 2022, the economy started opening up in a big way after the pandemic-imposed lull. Employees were presented with great opportunities to think beyond loyalty to their employers and focus on their personal lives, career growth and salary raise. This led to the Great Resignation, amidst a spike in demand for talent across sectors. The hospitality and financial sectors witnessed unprecedented demand with many companies having to start from scratch. The second half witnessed massive layoffs, but only a few businesses were affected, mostly in the information technology (IT) and related space. In India, many companies other than IT, such as manufacturing, chemicals, pharma and so on, exist in large numbers. Few of these have been impacted due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Stress has also increased due to trade ties between US and China souring. Few Asian countries, such as Sri Lanka and Pakistan, are collapsing economically and are almost close to bankruptcy. These are some of the factors triggering layoffs as business activities are related in one way or the other.

2023: Will it be a turmoil again or peace?

It will be largely peaceful and move towards maturity in terms of its value proposition. Focus will be on the key factors of business sustainability and growth, unless there is another huge global crisis such as a World War or natural calamities having power to influence larger than COVID-19. Key focus areas will include employee engagement, organisation ecosystem, fairness and transparency in work processes and design, flexibility and hybrid work culture, digitisation and digitalisation and employee well-being.

Skills are going to be much in demand and can’t be evaluated in as simplistic a way as has been followed till now

More growth – oriented skills

Yes, we need to hire psychologists and neuro experts, apart from core HR process experts, in the HR function, to fairly understand the behaviour and minds of our people. We cannot expect employees to speak and register their complaints and issues for resolution. Instead, they should be able to take a call to move forward without wasting time. Skills are going to be much in demand and cannot be evaluated in the simplistic way of the past or the
present. Earlier, we used to look for skill sets while skill and upskilling were less valued. Growth lies in how
we create a future-proof system as the foundation of building blocks to focus on upskilling and selecting employees with similar mindsets. The era of reskilling is slowing at margin being redundant in fast pace of change in work process and technology.

Pay transparency or staying discreet?

Corporates feel that they are able to maintain pay confidentiality. However, unofficially, to a great extent, it is possible to find out pay-related information. This practice will continue. What is more important is to let the employees decide on their salary structure based on their personal needs, career stage, tax policies, and so on.
Employers should clearly convey the CTC and basket of benefits, based on
regulations & compliance.

Importance of employee talent bringing HR closer to the top role

Yes, of course. Businesses must rethink the definition of leadership, changing dimension in new age, role and impacts, where it is not the function, and cannot be bundled into qualification, or functional expertise but core values, authenticity and so on.

33 leaders predict the upcoming trends for 2023. To find out more click here.