The state of our employees and HR teams

Recent conversations with CEOs and top People leadership echo similar sentiment – an unsettled relationship with employees, overwhelmed HR teams, and a need to improve efficiencies while finding cost savings.

Trying to address these challenges is a heavy lift, but many HR teams are also trying to balance other important priorities like manager development, workplace culture, employee communication, and the rapid business changes impacting employees too. Leaders feel that they simply don’t have enough hours in the day to deliver on 2024 human capital priorities.

We’re hearing sentiment like, “our employees seem unhappy, frustrated, or discontent – and this is coming from what was once a satisfied workforce.” A recent Gartner report, Gartner Leadership Vision for Chief HR Officers in 2024, shows employees are wanting something much different than pay or benefits alone. Employees seek improved working conditions including flexibility on work location. They need a reprieve from the relenting work expectations and feel they can’t sustain productivity levels. Employees also want organizations to support skill development that will grow their careers. And all these factors are impacting employee trust in their organizations and leadership – trust is at an all-time low of 53%.

We can’t think of one credit union HR team that feels they have enough headcount to deliver on the needs and expectations of leaders and employees. Many have created a thoughtful plan – done the homework to execute, evaluated technologies and programs to support efficiency and deliver on a desired experience – yet they can’t seem to acquire the budget needed because of competing organizational projects. We often hear it can be frustrating that ‘employee programs’ take a back seat to other initiatives.

So, what’s the solution? Adding more hours in the day may seem like the only option, but we’d suggest refocusing on what People teams are great at – engaging top talent, focusing on growing and developing people, while ensuring work remains purpose driven and meaningful.

Create an innovative, technology savvy, and financially disciplined People team.

1. It’s starts with evaluating the team.
   • Who on your team invests in learning about and experimenting with the latest human capital trends?
   • Who raises their hands to learn and investigate new technologies?
   • Who looks at the People budget and reallocates dollars not being fully utilized to greater value add initiatives?
2. Develop skill gap training for HR/L&D employees that demonstrate a growth mindset.
3. Expect HR employees to model Human-Centric Leadership components – authenticity, empathy, and flexibility – showing genuine care for employee wellbeing. How they handle employee relations, design programs for all demographics, and their willingness to look at each employee as individuals sets the tone and models an employee centric culture.

Ensure that senior leadership effectiveness and top talent development is embraced and resourced.

1. CEOs need a trusted sounding board and want perspective. Their strengths are often in strategy, the financials or operations. Be a coach and help them develop strong feedback skills, foster collaborative teams, and strengthen their organizational communications.
2. Assess and partner with leaders on change management. Help them build greater agility, accountability, and resilience with their teams.
3. Don’t assume that senior leaders are competent at people leadership. Utilize 360 Assessments, work with trusted coaching partners to help identify individual areas of development, and put action plans into place.

Focus on priorities that demonstrate employees are HR’s primary stakeholder.

1. Gather information from surveys and focus groups on topics specific to employee experience; remote work, desired skill building, pay for performance, etc.
2. Research, redesign and redeploy programs based on feedback and trends.
3. Engage employees in dialogue on how they are feeling about their workload. Use this to review job descriptions and reset expectations.

As you read this, if you’re thinking the HR team is just trying to get through the daily tasks, and all the suggestions above seem overwhelming, then narrow the focus to one thing. Make these the priority:

• Tell your story! Share the good stories about the employee experience to demonstrate the credit union’s commitment to employees and their wellbeing.
• Operationalize employee communication and put a plan in place to support weekly messaging and employee meetings if this team doesn’t currently exist.
• Provide budget for the HR team to continue their education – expect that they are learning about new trends and exploring ways to implement.
• Make it a part of your culture to gather employee feedback often. Consider short pulse surveys to more frequency gauge sentiment and then put a plan together and stick to it.
• Support leadership development programs. Don’t cut this budget – leadership needs care and support during challenging business times more than ever.

And lastly, advocate as a HR leader or as an ally on behalf of them. At Cultivate, if we had one wish for leaders in our network, it would be ask more. No one would argue that HR leaders have carried a heavy weight through the last few years and can’t sustain just getting through the daily tasks – they need support and opportunity to do what they love – building strong workplaces.

Help find budgets needed for employee technology, leadership development and outside partners that can be the extra set of hands. After all, investing in the success of your HR team is the foundation to make your credit union the employer of choice!