Economy, regulation, trends… and what is added, this is how the work schedule for the second half of the year. The work of Human Resources It will be marked by the impact of inflation on employees, the teleworking rule, the progress of the pension reform, changes in talent priorities, the democratization of flexibility and the war for qualified talent, among other issues.
“An important issue that we did not see coming was this, that inflation can play some strange tricks on us. From the point of view of human capital, wage growth will have an important game. You see a loss of purchasing power for employees and that is a reality,” says Gerardo García Rojas, Career Leader at Mercer Mexico.
Martha Hernández, director of Human Capital Consulting at AON Mexico, agrees with this. At the beginning of the year there was a positive outlook in some economic indicators, such as a inflation more low. “There are some companies that are brushing their salary increases by 2023 between 8% and up to 10 percent”.
However, Gerardo García expands, the least that organizations can do that are unable to grant a salary adjustment according to inflation it is distinguishing itself by other things, such as being a company that shows a genuine interest in topics such as diversity and inclusion or social impact.
An issue that is connected to salary pressures and that will take on more force in the second half of the year is the war for qualified talentwhich has generated salary increases well above the average for some professionals.
For Olivia Segura, partner of Human Capital and Talent Management Consulting at KPMG Mexico, an important point on the Human Resources work agenda in the coming months will not only be the talent attractionbut the retention through the retraining.
“Organizations must identify the talent they have in their companies and that could be subject to retraining and developing the new skills that are urgently sought in the labor market. Human Resources should not only focus on attracting qualified talent, but also support scanning the company’s human capital to develop new skills”, he underlines.
Telecommuting NOM and more regulation
The Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare (STPS) has almost ready the project for the Telecommuting Standard, which will regulate the safety and health conditions that must be observed in this modality. Olivia Segura has no doubt that this issue will also mark the work agenda in the second half of the year. “In the following months we will have the new telecommuting rulesand although we do not know them, they could change some rules of the game, mainly for workers who are now remote in other states.
In the same regulatory line, Martha Hernández considers that companies must continue observing the changes that the pension reform. “That will be the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, because important effects are coming for organizations. All this regulatory issue is aligned to a whole country and improvement plan, to align ourselves with various agreements at the international level, and of course they will follow the regulations.
But not everything will be economy and regulation, from the point of view of Gerardo García, in the rest of 2022 a transformation of talent management trends is expected, especially in how to approach labor flexibility in a broader concept.
“How to bring flexibility to a company that has convenience stores, for example,” questions the specialist. “A core point will be to form a collaboration network between companies and employees to co-create the concept of flexibility for the organization. That is a relevant element, which was seen, but has been evolving and is linked to the openness we have to reinvent the ways of working”.
In addition to this, the specialists agree that the change in priorities for collaborators will continue to mark the work agenda with issues such as the care of Mental health.
Dear RH: Things will keep changing
The employment landscape remains complex and challenging. For Martha Hernández, this implies that the areas of Human Resources eliminate the barriers that prevent active listening to collaborators and that the best market practices are not implemented in organizations.
Gerardo García’s perception is similar, the unilateral and drastic decisions will no longer give results, the success of organizations will be largely defined by the ability to work hand in hand with collaborators.
Faced with the trends and the uncertainty that is still present, Olivia Segura believes that the departments of Human capital they need to maintain an experimental approach. “We must be aware that there will not be a manual with the rules defined as we had them before the pandemic; There will no longer be a manual with the steps to follow.”
The consultants assure that the expected trends for the second half of the year continue to represent an opportunity for talent managers to show their strategic position in business, but also entails risks such as human capital flight or loss of competitiveness if all this is not addressed correctly.
