How 2021 has Changed Recruitment, Onboarding, Retention, and Offboarding, and What it Means for 2022

Jeff Schwartz, VP of Insights and Impact, Gloat

The experience of the past 18 months - the Great COVID experiment - has not only accelerated the future of the workforce, but it has also shifted us to a new set of challenges that will define HR and business priorities as we enter the new  year. As we think towards 2022, we have the opportunity to address these shifts and challenges: an emphasis on hybrid and work-from-anywhere, on career and job choice, and a need to reframe learning and development to afford more opportunities for up skilling (to move into new jobs and projects in current and adjacent areas) and reskilling (to explore and move into new jobs and experiences in new parts of our organization). These challenges - the move to hybrid, employees' desire for fast-moving opportunity, and the ability to develop in the flow of our careers and lives - frame the priorities for HR, and businesses, in 2022. 

Recruitment will need to focus on both internal talent markets (affording more opportunity for progression within and across companies) as well as improvements to make external recruitment and access more efficient. This will mean continuing to emphasize the roles of talent marketplaces and workforce ecosystems, and enabling technologies and AI, to bring markets and ecosystems to life. The “Great Resignation,” or as Heather Long of the Washington Post called it, “the Great Reassessment” is prompting employees to ask hard questions about who they work for, the jobs and projects they work on, the opportunities they have to learn and grow, where they work (onsite, offsite, or hybrid), and the purpose and values of their employers. Our strategies to drive retention need to address these concerns head-on. I don’t think we can simply survey and listen (which we still need to do of course) and we can’t simply recruit more and faster. We need to, and should expect to, undertake new initiatives focusing on the employee experience, which above all means providing employees with choice and agency on the jobs, projects, mentors, learning, and other opportunities they take on -- that's what talent and career marketplaces are all about. 

“The key is to generate some ideas, try them out, and solicit feedback from your employees on how to continue to enhance your program”

In this light, onboarding and off boarding are also being reframed. We need to both “onboard” people inside our organizations for new roles and use technology, and culture in new ways. Off boarding is an interesting challenge. Companies in 2022 need to be asking how they can retrain and create new opportunities for employees as opposed to “off boarding them.”  And finally, in the 2020s and beyond, as careers are longer and involve multiple chapters, it’s probably relevant to think of off boarding as not only an off ramp but to develop “onramps” for former employees - who we probably should think of as “alumni” - and how we can help them find new opportunities in the community, with the skills they need, and be open to (some or many of) them returning to our companies either as employees in the future, or as part of our extended workforce.

What Organizations Need to Do in 2022 to Achieve High Levels of Employee Satisfaction, Morale, and Wellness

Looking ahead to 2022, as companies proactively pivot to the new normal, the world of careers and work in the 2020s will require organizations to integrate and build upon what we have been learning during the last year and a half: recognizing that employee satisfaction is a function of an organization’s purpose, employee experience, and the work, learning experiences, and opportunities that are available. Careers, and employee satisfaction and experience in 2022 and beyond is a wicked problem. It’s complicated and will involve multiple perspectives, and stakeholders, working together in integrated teams, to design new approaches. Morale and wellness came to the forefront in early 2020. Wellness, we now know, is a combination of economic, social, mental, and physical wellbeing.  An integrated approach to wellness and wellbeing, as well as DEI, needs to be foundational in how we design work, jobs, compensation, and careers in the 2020s. 

A key question for leaders of talent and HR, and all business leaders in 2022, is whether they see the next year and the 2020s as a return to pre-COVID ways of working (perhaps with some digital and AI tossed in) or a shift to a new road, a new, integrated view of employee experience and growth that recognizes that employees are reassessing what they are looking for. 2022 is a year to be proactive. A year to make new investments. A year to lean forward. 2022 will be, I hope and expect, a year of innovation and impact…if leaders frame their people and talent priorities with a view towards rapidly moving towards the future.