The future of work will be personal. As you offload routine HR tasks to AI, your focus next year should shift to personalization. Much like the marketing realm, an early proponent of personalization, you should aim to address your employees’ unique needs.
In a recent survey, some Canadian workers and job seekers reported experiencing challenging barriers at work and in the job market. HR leaders like you need to consider where you can add a personalized touch. But how?
This article explores HR personalization and how to gain a competitive edge in a challenging labour market.
The importance of HR personalization
HR personalization tailors HR practices, policies, and services to meet your employees’ unique needs and preferences. HR personalization's rise intertwines with advancements in technology and data analytics. Consumers are used to a certain level of customization in their everyday life. With an increase of new technology in HR, many HR experts are now using data and AI to gain deeper insights into employee preferences, performance, and needs. This data-driven approach allows organizations like yours to provide personalized recommendations and solutions that enhance the overall employee experience.
After all, not all employees share similar needs. Working parents may need more flexibility in their work arrangement, while mature employees may need more support in understanding their financial benefits. As workers move into multiple life phases, their needs will change.
To gain a competitive advantage, start by tailoring your services to address individual needs as much as possible. Don’t know where to start? Here are the tactics below.
Self-Service Benefits Plans
You might already be familiar with self-serve portals — a secure platform where employees can submit the time worked, request time off and modify their personal information on their own.
With the plethora of virtual solutions, employers are also sponsoring health offerings digitally. Although not a new trend, self-service benefits plans allow employees to engage with the platform at their leisure. Think about it: Not all employees’ benefit needs are the same. Some of your employees may need more eye care benefits, while others may focus on acupuncture.
KPMG went through such a design by creating a wellness pot where employees use the program towards healthcare spending, a lifestyle spending account and flexible benefits, and savings options such as a group tax-free savings account or a group registered retirement savings plan. Employees’ medical, dental and drug benefits are customizable as well.
You should gain enough data to understand which benefits are over or under-utilized. Devise a strategy to communicate more broadly about under-utilized benefits and consider additional cost-effective offerings for over-utilized benefits. You may consider targeted communication for offerings that match a specific segment of your employee groups.
Flexible Work Arrangements
Personalization in HR also involves various ways of working. With more time on your hands, consider developing different work arrangement offerings for your diverse workforce. The future is hybrid. A staggering 81% of surveyed Canadian employees said flexible work policies “directly affect whether they stay at or leave a job.” Employers that offer flexible work options — the ability to work from home and in the office — may have a competitive edge in talent attraction and retention and a happier, more productive workforce.
For deskless workers, new technology could allow employees to set their schedules and swap shifts as needed. It is another way to offer as much flexibility to meet their needs, especially in a work environment that requires workers to be in-person.
Career and Training Development Plans
Personalize your learning and development opportunities. New HR software allows HR leaders to measure employees' career projections within their company. Some organizations also have their training and learning platforms readily accessible for on-demand training.
For further personalization, consider providing a training path for your employees, a track they can follow to upskill for their next internal opportunity. The software should allow you to see which employees are progressing well and which ones could use personalized encouragement to complete their path.
You can include these metrics in your succession plan to ensure you are well-prepared for transfers and departures.
Employee Wellbeing and Engagement
Employees are used to quarterly surveys, but new tech allows HR leaders to measure sentiments quickly. Although a longitudinal view of sentiments and opinions will help you get a better view of your employees’ feelings over time, pulse surveys are more granular and offer an instantaneous gauge of employee sentiment.
Pulse surveys through regular employee emails can be emoticons or polls to measure weekly sentiments. They’re often very efficacious in times of rapid change. You can measure sentiments by department, by country and even by division. This allows you to act quicker on wellbeing at a granular level. Mckinsey used a similar strategy during the pandemic with the support of their data team, where they could target interventions effectively while protecting employees’ privacy.
At a granular level, you can address barriers that workers may face in the workplace, which we found in a recent survey, are less apparent than we might like them to be.
Onboarding
Personalize onboarding to help new employees integrate effectively into your organization and its culture.
Define a step-by-step journey for individual roles, which will allow your new recruits to be prepared after their first few months. HR platforms will enable you to curate their journey to their specific needs with reminders and pathways that must be completed sequentially for the onboarding. When they’re done, you can encourage them to complete a quick survey to rate their experience. At times, the surveys may reveal ways to personalize the onboarding process further. If they’re satisfied with their onboarding, encourage them to rate their experience on your company page.
A word of caution
While personalization is important, consider legal and ethical boundaries when managing data to personalize your offerings. Personalization should never infringe on privacy rights, and all decisions should be made fairly by a human with as little bias as possible.
Personalization is the Future of Work
HR personalization is an ongoing process that will require continuous improvement and adaptation.
Some of your competitors are focusing on hyper-personalization, whereby “HR aims to anticipate individual needs, proactively offer customized solutions, and continuously adapt based on changing circumstances in real-time.” If you’re new on your personalization journey, focus on the tactics above instead. They offer an edge in a competitive labour market.
After all, the future of work is not a one-size-fits-all. It will be personalized, engaging and employee-centric.
