Top Employers Institute surveyed over 2,300 participants for its 2024 ‘HR Best Practices Survey’, including 112 Certified Top Employers from the UK.
Its resultant report, Navigating a Dynamic Workforce, uncovered new realities in modern workforces, including:
- The modern workforce is more fluid, with employees moving freely between organisations.
- Employees are intermeshing with freelancers, gig workers and long-term contractors.
- Companies clearly need different and creative ways to do their work.
So how should employers adjust to these new realities? Top Employers Institute’s report offers four recommendations on how to keep pace, drive employee engagement and embed human-centric people practices:
- Include contingent workers: Successful organisations value and respect every contributor, including contingent workers. They should be included in opportunities that normal employees would experience, such as access to various HR processes, practices, and deliverables.
- Support employees with directing their own career evolution: Organisations should empower employees to chart their career paths and provide resources for self-directed learning. This can be done through online self-service resources, interactive career portals, internal digital career marketplaces, and mentoring/coaching for career development.
- Provide resources that promote self-directed learning to all employees: The speed at which skills and skill demands are evolving requires ongoing reskilling. Organisations should offer online training programmes, personalised learning portals, and micro-learning content integrated into everyday activities and facilitate opportunities for employees to learn from one another through online learning communities.
- Facilitate a smooth transition in and out of the organisation for all employees: With a dynamic workforce, onboarding and offboarding become important ways to leave a lasting impression on employees. Organisations should optimise the onboarding experience and implement meaningful offboarding practices, including a fit-for-purpose offboarding experience and gathering feedback from departing employees.
Top Employers Institute’s analysis offers organisations a route map to unlock business success in uncertain times. Self-directed career evolution, resources for self-directed learning, smoother transitions in and out of organisations, and a more inclusive approach to contingent workers are four recommendations that will go a long way to leveraging and empowering contracted, non-traditional talent.
Download the full Navigating a Dynamic Workforce report now