As we step into 2024, the landscape of human resources is evolving rapidly, driven by technological innovation, changing workforce dynamics, and new organisational needs. Top HR professionals and industry analysts have offered their predictions on what the sector might look like in 2024 and beyond.
Let’s take a look…
Just in case you’re looking, some companies who can offer HR software to help your business include:
Our Experts
- Damon Anderson, UK Managing Director of Employment Hero
- Ifty Nasir, Founder and CEO at Vestd
- Rachel Duncan, Chief People Officer, Experian UK&I
- Chris McCarthy, CEO at Skillable
- Annee Bayeux, Chief Learning Strategist at Degreed
- Farley Thomas, CEO at Manageable
- Deb Muller, CEO at HR Acuity
- Doug Dennerline, CEO at Betterworks
- Tal Clark, CEO at Instant Financial
- Colm O’Cuinneain, GM EMEA at Greenhouse
- Eric McDermott, Founder & Chief Next Officer® at NEXTpectations®
- Viktor Qvarfordt, Principal Engineer at Sana
- Karoli Hindriks, Co-Founder and CEO at Jobbatical
- Dan Lawyer, Chief Product Officer at Lucid Software
- Susanna Yallop, Chief People Officer at Starling Bank
- Armine Pogosyan, IT HR Director at Dyninno Group
- Kerrie Mooney, Head of HR at TrunkBBI
- Grace Savides, Market Research Analyst at G2
- Amanda Day, Director of People Enablement at Remote
- Charles Butterworth, Managing Director at Access People
- Aggie Mutuma, Founder and CEO of Mahogany Inclusion Partners
For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.
Damon Anderson, UK Managing Director of Employment Hero
“Employment contributes to 50% of global GDP, yet recruitment processes remain inefficient, expensive, and labour intensive. Ripe for disruption, digitising employment and integrating AI is the solution to saving employers significant time and cost.”
“In 2024, AI will not be limited to simplifying the hiring process but will extend to developing comprehensive career management tools that aid job seekers in their employment journey. These tools will effortlessly manage professional profiles, streamline admin tasks, handle rosters, and make the entire employment experience more efficient and user-friendly.”
“One such example is Employment Hero’s SmartMatch launching in early 2024. This platform instantly matches candidates to suitable roles. It aligns opportunities with candidates’ skill sets and salary expectations, catering to diverse work preferences as well as offering access to the hidden job market. It will fundamentally transform the way job seekers find and get compensated for employment, and the way businesses find and manage labour on a global scale.”
“As we move into 2024 and beyond, AI in recruitment and employment will become more sophisticated with advancements in machine learning refining how businesses and job seekers connect. Making the recruitment process more personalised and dynamic.”
“This AI-powered evolution marks a significant step towards a more efficient, equitable and prosperous global employment ecosystem.”
Ifty Nasir, Founder and CEO at Vestd
“In 2024, I expect the battle between remote and in-office working to rage on. We’ve seen a number of high profile CEOs and leaders publicly share their intentions to get their staff back into the office, often met with resistance from employees. This tension could be heightened if the ongoing economic malaise continues long into this year.
“Although staff highly value the flexibility and natural work-life balance that remaining home offers, some do miss aspects of the office life. As such I think we are likely to see an equilibrium settle where hybrid working becomes a vast norm. With this being such an option, HR will have to lean into this preference or risk losing out on top talent.
“Vestd has always been a remote business, and that is one of our greatest strengths. It has allowed us to be competitive and attract incredible fintech talent from both within and outside the stereotypical talent pools of London and other major cities.”
Rachel Duncan, Chief People Officer, Experian UK&I
“2024 will be an interesting evolution of the past two years when it comes to the workforce and employees. Businesses are going to have to continue to work through changes around the likes of sustainable working practices, wellbeing, hybrid working and swiftly adapting to advanced technologies. All of these factors are important when it comes to creating the right employee experience.
“However, what will be paramount is creating an inclusive environment where people feel welcome and empowered to be their authentic selves. This will allow businesses to tap into a wealth of different perspectives and insights that stem from individuals’ diverse backgrounds and experiences. To achieve that, businesses will have to prioritise diversity and equity and really hold themselves accountable with regards to how they recruit, train, engage and progress their workforce.
“In addition, future skills will become more significant in 2024 especially when you look at the continued rate of technology adoption. Businesses will need to upskill employees to ensure they understand how to effectively tap into data and AI as well as how to utilise all the tools and platforms to hand. This in turn will also help employees feel like they are gaining new skills which aides in retention.”
For any questions, comments or features, please contact us directly.
Chris McCarthy, CEO at Skillable
“The employee experience becomes more individual-centric: Promoting diversity and inclusion should be table stakes for all organizations today. But that should expand to personalizing the career experience for all people and their individual needs. This includes those with specific accessibility requirements, plus people with different neurodiversity, genders, races, and backgrounds. To create a seamless learning experience that meets everyone where they are, using skills data (that is, data collecting from their every day work plus learning) can ensure you deliver personalized recommendations for courses, simulations, and content that match with each person’s learning preferences, levels, and interests.
“Thoughtful ecosystems: The need to scale learning and skill development quickly especially during Covid forced many organizations to sacrifice personalization to reach broad audiences. But that’s not good enough for employees today. They want personalized guidance and specific career development. The same way the last 10 years saw the explosion of knowledge-based content, the next 10 years will be about high touch at scale. The answer isn’t more tools and technology – the market is already saturated. Customers are looking for organizations that can deliver impact, personalization at scale.”
Annee Bayeux, Chief Learning Strategist at Degreed
“2024 brings some interesting opportunities and challenges for business, HR, and L&D leaders as we move towards a future where AI is mainstream, some skills attract a premium, and jobs disappear. Remaining open to change, with flexible workforce strategies and systems will help organizations adapt to whatever changes come in 2024. We can expect to see more AI ‘killer apps’ launch over the year, and how this changes our work and skills is yet to be determined. Having a culture of lifelong learning will be critical, as people will have to learn new skills potentially within days and weeks in response to new technologies.
“AI captures our imagination with what it can do for our lives — in our workplaces it could automate and augment even more activities beyond what machine learning and generative AI can do today. It will transform our homes and cities, into truly smart, connected spaces for humans to exist within. AI will help us become more informed, healthier, efficient, and data-driven. But we must tread carefully, especially when using AI in workplaces where adoption is growing exponentially, for example, ChatGPT set the record in early 2023 for the fastest-ever user base growth, reaching 100 million users in just two months (compare this to TikTok which took 9 months and Instagram that took two and a half years to reach this milestone).
“The potential and power of AI is such that employers could potentially know more about us than we do. We are treading a fine line between using AI for the good of employees and being too intrusive with the data insights that we glean through it. Finding the right balance hinges on employers using solutions with clear employee benefits — putting individuals in control of their data and how AI uses it, with human oversight on every recommendation made.
“The degree you relied on decades ago to start your career won’t be enough to navigate the changes that AI will bring in 2024. Instead, it will be the learning you complete every day and the upskilling habits you cultivate today that ensure your long-term career success in the AI era.”
Farley Thomas, CEO at Manageable
“There is no doubt that as we go into 2024, AI will continue to have a dramatic effect on the way we work. But, AI isn’t the first thing to cause disruption to the workforce; over the last 10,000 years, we’ve had huge shifts in the nature of work and the skills we needed from industrialisation, to the Web and so on. So, when entering the new year, we should be talking about reskilling and upskilling rather than how AI might bring about the demise of work.
“Wharton’s Professor Lynn Wu confirms in her research that workers will not necessarily be displaced by automation and AI. Instead, as the nature of the work shifts, it demands different skills and this is going to impact the managerial level in particular. If all you’re doing is supervising processes and production, this work is likely to be perfect for AI to do better and cheaper. However, the need for high-value work is only going to increase, especially when building the right team dynamic, shaping culture, motivating people and helping them grow. This is the human touch that will coexist with AI and, in this sense, I like the idea of seeing AI as a co-pilot for complex human work, such as leadership.
“I see two upcoming trends for the coming year but also broadly the next decade: a shift of training budgets in favour of managers’ soft skills, especially coaching skills, and a phasing in of AI to support leaders with complex decisions and tasks.”
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Deb Muller, CEO at HR Acuity
“As we move forward, post-pandemic, factors such as return to the office, layoffs or reductions in force, increased performance expectations, and broader economic challenges and global crises are all contributing to the increase in mental health issues in the workplace.
“Addressing the mental health crisis among employees requires a multifaceted strategy, involving increased investments in investigation aftercare and additional training for HR professionals. Organizations must recognize that the mental well-being of their workforce is integral to overall productivity and employee satisfaction. In this context, strategies to support employee mental health over the holidays can serve as a microcosm of broader initiatives that can be implemented year-round.”
Doug Dennerline, CEO at Betterworks
“In the upcoming year, we’ll witness a notable impact on workplace dynamics. The return to office is poised to disproportionately affect women, potentially resulting in a loss of skilled female professionals. Simultaneously, a projected 90% failure rate in global AI signals a need for businesses to reassess their AI investments due to prohibitive costs. In 2024, organizations will pivot towards a more thoughtful application of AI tools, recognizing the continued necessity for human involvement in managing internal processes.
“Expect a surge in turnover rates, particularly among HR leaders, possibly reaching 75%. To counter this trend, new leaders must adopt innovative strategies with a focus on operational refinement. The implementation of suitable technology, including AI for efficient manager training, is anticipated to foster improved manager-employee relationships.
“Looking ahead, I emphasize the evolving role of generative AI in reshaping work processes. With a year since ChatGPT’s introduction, 2024 will be a defining year where businesses refine their strategies around it. Beyond its evident efficiency gains, leaders will increasingly leverage generative AI not only to boost productivity but also to create more equitable and fair workplace and customer experiences, marking a trend that is set to gain momentum in the coming year.”
Tal Clark, CEO at Instant Financial
“Earned wage access (EWA) continues to be a concept employers need more education around. There is still so much “green grass”; available across many verticals since it’s still so early in the market.
“There has historically been a disconnect between what an employer believes their employees need and what they actually need. We must continue bridging that gap through research, communications, and marketing. For instance, in our recent EWA survey, 71% of HR leaders said the lack of employee requests is far and away the prevalent reason for not offering it. The idea that companies should wait for employees to request EWA assumes employees already know about the benefit but don’t want it. That may not be true.
“We must continue to develop earned wage access solutions to provide more choices for employees. In the future, employees will have more and more control over the timing of their pay and how they receive their pay.”
“In 2024, we’ll continue to see growth in the payroll segment. Tip payouts and tips management will move faster in the restaurant space than EWA in other verticals. There will also be opportunities to use the platform we have built to manage other types of payouts across new verticals.”
“Within 5 to 10 years, we’ll see full gross-to-net solutions that provide with employees on-demand pay and tips instantly. Employees will continue to seek solutions where they can manage when, how, and where they receive their pay.”
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Colm O’Cuinneain, GM EMEA at Greenhouse
“DEI Workplace Forecast: Over the next 5 years, HR and management processes will begin to integrate technology, leveraging AI as a co-pilot to identify and mitigate biases while ensuring ethical use. The prospect of instant, personalized automation excites, foreseeing AI aiding, not replacing, human decision-making in hiring will become a reality.
“EMEA Job Market Outlook: I’m not an economist, however, I would like to see interest rates go down as inflation comes under control. If that starts to happen, it will encourage companies to increase investment in growth and expansion, which is always good for the jobs market.
“AI’s Impact on Hiring: AI-driven recruiting will reshape hiring processes in 2024. The continuous emergence of new AI recruitment software enhances efficiency for recruitment teams. AI’s content generation and summarization capabilities will significantly benefit recruiters, making the hiring process faster and more effective.
“Large Language Models (LLMs) empower recruiters to create job postings and templates effortlessly. LLMs streamline the structured hiring process, providing quick insights by summarizing vast amounts of data. This intuitive and human-centric approach allows busy recruitment teams to receive insightful answers promptly.”
Eric McDermott, Founder & Chief Next Officer® at NEXTpectations®
“With four generations now active in the workplace and continued rapid change, I foresee in 2024 that more HR leaders will recognize the need for focused learning that continues past an earned degree. Building a continuous learning culture will become a priority for many more HR Leaders. However, differences from workplace literacy to technological literacy can vary widely across generations. Heightened by hybrid teams, new approaches to increase coordination becomes essential.
“Those who figure out how to align their teams to close these gaps will enjoy an increased competitive advantage over those who lag. More HR leaders will see the need to invest in continuous learning tracks, either in-house, or more likely bring in expertise to contribute to a culture of ongoing learning and improved coordination. This will promote a shift in 2024 away from “feeling good” measures like pep-talks, to instead “doing well” measures — like focusing on workshops and learning tracks. Done right these will enable more effective communication, trust, coordination, not to mention teams that can invent new and improved practices. The advantages of this will significantly impact the organization externally with customers, and internally with team members — both for the better.”
Viktor Qvarfordt, Principal Engineer at Sana
“Businesses who don’t employ AI “virtual colleagues” to assist their workforces will quickly get left behind: 2024 will see businesses embrace AI knowledge assistants that act as “virtual colleagues” to employees, enhancing their performance, augmenting their intelligence and even making them more productive, creative and fulfilled in their work. Any organization that doesn’t will be moving too slowly and quickly lose any competitive edge.
“AI will soon automate our daily lives: Sophisticated AI agents will automate mundane tasks in our daily lives as early as within the next five years. For example, we’ll see documents that update themselves, and recommendations that are spot on without you having to give the AI agent much instruction.
“Hidden AI” will improve our experiences: The evolution of AI interfaces will move beyond “chatbots” to hidden AI integrations. For example, Spotify’s use of machine learning for music recommendations, which is just merged into products as another clever feature, rather than marketed as an AI feature. That’s a great example of how LLMs can be deployed in a niche domain, to do something really well. Many companies will be following suit, changing the way people work forever.”
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Karoli Hindriks, Co-Founder and CEO at Jobbatical
“HR will continue to evolve in line with a constantly changing world of work; juggling core, functional HR needs along with an increasing need for new, forward thinking ways to manage turbulent macroeconomics.
“Politics will heavily impact business and employee conversations in 2024. Employees increasingly want their employers to take a stand when it comes to politics, values and ethics. This will come to the fore even more this year as continued global unrest is met by big possible political changes brought on by the U.S. and potential UK elections. HR’s role will be to ensure businesses respond appropriately to not only any relevant legislative changes, but also employee sentiment and morale.
“Linked to this, skills shortages will become more acute this year. Ageing populations, technological advances and prohibitive skilled immigration policies mean that existing skills shortages are going to become more acute in 2024. With planned changes to the UK’s skilled migration policies due to come into force in Spring, HR will need to reconsider its position on international talent attraction and global mobility and be prepared to invest more heavily in these areas to help plug skills gaps.”
Dan Lawyer, Chief Product Officer at Lucid Software
“Modernising legacy systems will reign as a top priority for organisations this year. Gen-Z workers are fast learners and have high expectations in the way they collaborate within teams. Providing a more sophisticated and efficient tech stack is key to attracting and retaining top tech talent who are driving innovation forward. These are key indicators of the type of work environment and career prospects they offer as they look to cultivate a forward-thinking employer brand. As such, we’ll see more traditional companies looking to transform their legacy ways of operating and developing strategies for attracting workers with highly-sought skills from tech-native companies.”
Susanna Yallop, Chief People Officer at Starling Bank
“Our staff are increasingly keen to come into the office and work alongside their colleagues. To meet the demand for desks, we will soon be increasing our footprint in London with a new floor being added to our Liverpool Street office! Last year we opened a new 14,061 sq office in central Manchester and it’s great to see the teams settling in there.
“We predict that companies will continue to see an increased need for spaces where teams can come together face-to-face. We’re happy that our offices are welcoming places to work and feedback suggests this is a big factor in the employee experience. This drives increased collaboration and meaningful interactions across different teams leading to broader opportunities to have an impact on personal, professional and business goals.”
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Armine Pogosyan, IT HR Director at Dyninno Group
“Three aspects will take the top priority in HR this year – one, DEI will become the top priority, two – more organizations will aim at gamifying their learning and development, and three – AI will take the center attention.
“Many HR professionals claim that DEI initiatives will become their top priority in 2024. This implies that HR teams will focus on creating an inclusive workplace culture and will invest in programs to increase cultural awareness and nurture inclusive leadership skills.
“Also, it is worth to note that DEI practices will become a strong determining factor in both attracting and retaining the top talent – and this is particularly important to form strong and efficient global tech teams.
“Technology is the enabler of identifying and harvesting the new improvement opportunities in both the way the work is being performed, and the output of the work. Therefore, from using enhanced predicting analytics and AI-driven decision support integrating AI algorithms, to strategic workforce planning using analytics to forecast the needs, it is clear that data-driven decision making will continue to evolve in 2024. The use of digital survey tools will make data, and especially real-time feedback more accessible and more understandable. In the past few years, HR has moved from the position of a “hiring-and-firing” – HR, equipped with data tools, bridges the gap between the HR team on the ground, and the strategic mission of the C-level executives. Due to this shift, access to data that supports decision-making becomes even more important than ever before. “
Kerrie Mooney, Head of HR at TrunkBBI
“The labour market is still competitive currently, the tide is likely to turn during this coming year, which is going to be a relief for some employers who have struggled to recruit.
“Employers will still need to offer jobs that pay sufficiently but also enable people to achieve what’s important to them, flexible working arrangements, autonomy, and engaging work. The flexible working (amendment) regulations 2023 comes into effect on 6th April 2024, and this means that employees have the right to request flexible working arrangements from their first day on the job. Employers will need to embrace a shift in workplace dynamics, but on a practical level they will need to ensure a thorough consultation on the request, respond within two months and be prepared for people making more frequent applications (it used to be just one in 12 months).
“We can’t underestimate the cost-of-living crisis, so people will generally still prioritise higher salaries over a shorter working week, so increased salaries will be an expectation from the workforce.
“In addition, AI is becoming increasingly used as businesses recognise its ability to boost productivity. For the HR professional, the CIPD encourages us to ‘lean into the technology’ in two ways; firstly, ensuring that our staff can use it responsibly and ethically and at the same time take advantage of these tools ourselves. As a HR professional developing your technical and digital skills is going to become increasingly important to your job.”
Grace Savides, Market Research Analyst at G2
“Employee experience software is becoming increasingly important as competition for top talent intensifies and companies realize the link between employee happiness and productivity. Research has found that workers who feel less connected to their peers are more likely to create a stressful company culture.
“On G2’s software marketplace, we’ve observed an increase in new products and adoption of tools focused on employee engagement, team building, and wellness – as more offices turn to these solutions to try and develop team cohesion and morale. In fact, the corporate wellness software category on G2 grew 27% over the past year.
“As businesses continue to navigate the uncertain economic landscape and look to recruit and retain qualified candidates, they will invest more in employee engagement, team building, and other employee experience software in 2024. We can anticipate their tech stacks to reflect this trend with solutions focused on perks and wellness as companies aim to simplify workers’ lives and combat loneliness.”
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Amanda Day, Director of People Enablement at Remote
“Global-first business operations will be a key driver for the evolution of HR in 2024. A global-first company goes beyond the conventional notion of conducting business internationally; instead, it signifies an international mindset and set-up so your business can work efficiently even when your team members don’t share the same postcode or country!
“By thinking global-first, addressing the skills gap becomes not just a challenge met but an opportunity seized. By attracting the best and brightest minds globally, your business can stay at the forefront of innovation and maintain a competitive edge, and you’ll often find that by hiring internationally, you’re able to recruit highly-skilled employees with fresh ideas and talent.
“The global-first approach is a holistic strategy that positions your company not only as a remote-friendly workplace but as a global player with a mindset geared towards innovation, diversity, and adaptability.
“We’re extremely fortunate to live in a time where the world is completely interconnected, and businesses, irrespective of their work models, should recognise the significance of a global-first mindset. It’s about future-proofing your organisation, staying ahead in the global race, and creating a workplace culture that thrives on the diversity of ideas and experiences from every corner of the world.
“In essence, if remote-first was the first step towards the workplace of the future, global-first is a true realisation of the future of work; an all-inclusive revision of a now antiquated rulebook — a new framework for an interconnected world.”
Charles Butterworth, Managing Director at Access People
“HR professionals need to ensure that they use generative AI (such as ChatGPT) wisely. AI is a fantastic way to improve operational efficiencies and streamline administrative tasks to give HR managers more time to spend on elevating the employee experience.
“However, businesses do need to tread the fine line of balancing the time-saved by AI, without compromising on the most essential element of HR – the human factor. Companies should look at which tasks AI can help them to simplify and save time on, which will help all staff to embrace the technology, not fear it.
“Attracting and retaining the next generation of talent and meeting their expectations will also be a challenge for 2024, especially as the cost of living crisis continues to affect millions through rising rent and mortgage prices. As more companies require remote workers to return to the office, employees are likely to have an even sharper awareness of what they’re spending going to work.
“Gen Zs also have even more desire to work in a career that encourages work-life balance, culture, diversity, inclusion and sustainability. Businesses will need to focus heavily on retention strategies this year, which could include added benefits or travel subsidies, wellbeing programmes, or even increasing their annual leave allocation.”
Aggie Mutuma, Founder and CEO of Mahogany Inclusion Partners
“Mahogany Inclusion Partners champions technology as a catalyst in sculpting more inclusive workspaces. And as we enter into 2024, we can expect the landscape of HR to continue its evolution by integrating technology to fortify diversity and inclusion efforts within organizations. For instance, we’ve already begun to see how AI-driven analytics have redefined recruitment, ensuring fair and diversified candidate selections. Simultaneously, virtual reality-based training modules are set to foster empathetic understanding of diverse cultures among employees. We’re just at the tip of the iceberg!
“Technology is expected to play a role in maintaining fairness within compensation structures and ensuring that everyone has equal access to opportunities. Furthermore, and really excitingly, 2024 heralds the deployment of technology to create safe spaces within workplaces. Mahogany Inclusion Partners foresees digital platforms, leveraging AI-driven sentiment analysis, nurturing environments where employees can authentically express themselves without fear of judgment. These safe spaces encourage open dialogues and inclusive collaboration, fostering innovation while nurturing psychological safety, which is vital for diverse work cultures.
“Beyond technological strides, we anticipate HR’s evolution to continue to pivot toward human-centric strategies that prioritise the needs and experiences of individuals. Specifically, strategies that aim to cater diverse backgrounds and identities within the workplace to celebrate diversity and nurture a profound sense of belonging.
“The overall direction of HR will likely be a dual approach: leveraging both human-centric strategies and technology to create an inclusive and equitable work environment. Through responsible tech integration, HR in 2024 fosters environments where authenticity thrives, empowering every individual to contribute meaningfully to their professional journey.”
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