How HR industry transformed in 2018, and its future ahead

We’re passing through an essential transformation in the way we work. Automation and robots are changing human tasks and jobs, changing the capabilities required for various jobs. A majority of these momentous changes have raised massive demanding situations for talent, organisations and Learning and Development (L&D) experts. While the rate of change is accelerating, no doubt, the search for the ‘top’ talent is fierce.

Learning and Development

Today, talent does not mean the same as it was 10 years ago. The importance of jobs, skills or even the job titles of tomorrow is unknown. The lifespan of skills is becoming shorter and employers cannot stand still. So, how can businesses prepare for a future that can be hardly defined today? How can companies attract and retain people they want? And what does all this mean to the L&D departments?

To be prepared for the future, it’s important to understand the current state of L&D. Hence, we checked with over 1500+ L&D experts across India about the trends and challenges they are facing in this space. Their valuable insights form the basis of our first annual State of Workplace Learning and Development - 2018. Here is Mettl’s State of Workplace Learning and Development-2018, bringing in the latest trends, innovations and best practices.

Top Trends

More than 80 percent of organisations have some sort of structured L&D.

About 38 percent of L&D experts say that ‘Improving Employee Performance’ is the prime focus of their programmes in 2018.

Responses to the survey indicate the need for re-skilling will be required majorly in large-sized organisations.

Getting employees to attend training sessions is highly challenging as the learner is more demanding today and looks for varied options of learning.

More than 50 percent organisations have increased their L&D budgets in 2018 compared to 2017. However, L&D spends differ within departments and employee levels.

In organisations with low attrition, 72 percent of L&D teams find ‘Pre- & Post Training Assessment’ the most effective way to measure the ROI.

MDPI

Dark traits are inherent in everyone. However, the quantity in which they are present differs from one person to the other. While such traits can be beneficial to the individual’s personal interests, they can harm those around him. The adverse effect of these traits can be traced to the workplace environment, where individual behaviour can cause a ripple of disturbance in form of employee disengagement, customer safety, unhealthy work environment, harassment and more. It directly impacts the work productivity at large. In addition, other institutions like daycare centres, schools or colleges can suffer a fatal blow if a neurotic or self-obsessive person goes on a rampage spree intentionally or otherwise. Herein, child safety and growth is at stake for such characteristics can create a long-term rift in a child’s psychology.

To overcome the adverse effects of dark traits, Mettl, along with SHRM suggests having a proactive approach towards distressing incidents rather than delaying the response. Therefore, we propose Dark Personality Assessment for blue collar and white collar recruitment, present employees, teaching and non-teaching, managers, leaders or others whose behavioural characteristics can hamper the society’s development at large. Our joint research effort with SHRM to trace the impact of dark traits across all major industries and job roles, by surveying 1,900 working individuals, has led us to the inference that it’s the absolute need of the hour to curb dark traits and safeguard customers and work culture. Since a stitch in time saves nine, it becomes absolutely necessary to identify the presence of dark traits in a person before they can manifest, causing wide-scale damage.

Top Trends

Dark personality traits are stable characteristics of a person when triggered, lead to the display of undesirable, counterproductive and destructive behaviour that has a negative impact on surrounding people (friends, family, co-worker or customers). Dark traits are inherently present in everyone. The attributes attached with dark traits make a person more suited for survival and hence their proliferation was supported during the process of human evolution, to the extent that only people with dark traits survived and others perished, as they lacked the attributes needed to survive.

Factors that trigger Dark Traits

The mere existence of dark traits in a person does not guarantee the display of undesirable behaviour from them. These traits have to be triggered. Stressful, challenging or intimidating situations usually trigger dark traits. Such triggers generate interpersonal issues for the person displaying it and create an overall counterproductive environment. At the workplace, this kind of behaviour negatively impacts the performance of co-workers and the organisation as a whole. It can even put the safety of others lives in jeopardy.

Impact of Dark Traits

Owing to the plethora of distressing incidences that dark traits cause, it is critical to have a tool that scientifically identifies and measures the predominant dark traits of a person. To solve this issue, we have created an assessment that measures the dark side by identifying those peculiar inherent traits present in an individual. The assessment is based on a personality inventory, which consists of six dark traits: self-obsession (focus on oneself), Opportunism (taking advantage of any situation for personal wellbeing), Temperamental (reacting to situations violently), Insensitivity (being apathetic towards others), Thrill-Seeking (taking high-risk decisions) and Impulsiveness (hasty decision making).

Framework to identify dark traits

Moderate to high level of dark traits in an employee can prove to be counterproductive.

Hackathon

Hackathons are generally events where people from different backgrounds (designers, project managers, coders, etc.) meetup to face various real-life problems. Once, upon a time, the events were organised solely for the coder community, however, this is no more a trend. Today, it's not just the various industries that are experimenting with hackathons, they are even trying with diverse participation/audience. Call them the new-age tools for branding, hiring, employee engagement or innovation, hackathons have clearly gained popularity in the last few years.

Dealing in the hackathon business from a couple of years, we decided to bring out some interesting insights and trends about this new-age tool to help organisations adapt to the future.

Hence, we surveyed and interviewed nearly 200+ organisations who conduct hackathons and put together this 'STATE OF HACKATHONS IN INDIA - 2018'. Overall, we discern a common trend-hackathons assist organisations in building a brand, battle talent scarcity, or helping fuel innovation across domains and functions.

Top Trends

Organisations believe there is a 30 percent increase in the number of hackathons conducted in 2017 compared to 2016.

Powerful 'Branding' - Tool 'Branding' comes out to be a key reason for which organisations are using hackathons.

Is an Investment, not an expense - On an average, organisations spend nearly Rs 8.5 lakh per hackathon in a year.

Focus on identifying the right theme - ‘Diversity’ & ‘Business Situation' becoming popular themes for hackathons.

The promise of awards attracts participants – 43 percent of participants attend ‘hackathons’ for fame/resume glory.

Attract an Organic Pool of Participants – 22 percent of organisations find ‘Relevant & Large Participation’ as the biggest challenge.

Choose the Right Hackathon Partner - 'Right Technology to conduct Platforms' is one of the top 3 challenges of organisations.

Measuring the Business Impact is critical - 42 percent of organisations use ‘quality of ideas/Innovations' as ROI metric.

Talent Assessment Study (TAS)

Today, the war to acquire top talent is fiercer than ever. As the demand for this talent continues to grow, organisations face bigger issues like that of talent scarcity. It turns out to be quite a challenge for CXOs, human resource departments and hiring managers, especially in industries like IT, BFSI, retail, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and consulting that require highly-skilled employees.

In order to solve these challenges, the talent acquisition process needs to evolve in a manner that it becomes more engaging, affordable, productive and faster. Our interactions with industry leaders revealed two key takeaways that can solve major problems faced by recruiters. Firstly, understanding the competency framework required for a job role. Secondly, the use of technology-backed tools such as online assessments and simulators to measure the competencies. The hassle does not end at hiring, for it is just the tip of the iceberg. A bigger challenge that lies ahead is retaining the top talent which is done through structured learning and development programmes to increase employee retention.

This is where talent assessments come into the picture. They play a crucial role in enhancing the employer brand value owing to their efficiency, affordability, and practicality as compared to traditional hiring practices. The first edition of Mettl’s annual report is an attempt to unveil top assessment trends for hiring and learning and development across five most anticipated industries for fiscal years 2016-2017. We hope our efforts and interesting insights and help you in making informed decisions.

Top Trends

Talent Assessment Study is based on the data collected as a part of talent acquisition and L&D programmes run by various organisations. The study has been compiled using 2,338,734 talent assessments taken by 1,757,736 candidates spanning across 21 industries from 2016-2017.

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)