Why Developing New Skills Tops Gartner's HR Priorities 2021 Survey

Most companies have spent the past eleven months managing the upheaval and anxieties brought on by COVID-19. However, as the world slowly moves into a post-pandemic reality, HR teams are shifting their time and attention to optimize and strengthen their human capital. In fact, in Gartner’s annual HR Priorities Survey, 68% of over 800 senior HR leaders ranked building critical skills and competencies as their top priority for 2021.

From Gartner’s 2021 HR Priorities Survey

And while the hands-on process of up-skilling a team of analysts on a new data visualization tool or rolling out a new sales training program usually doesn’t fall under the HR’S remit, there are several overarching themes that people leaders can promote in order to create a resilient culture of continuous growth and learning. What’s especially important about these elements, is that efforts to implement them can begin now and they are relevant to both in-home and at-work environments. 

Building empathy and fostering honesty

Both empathy and honesty are important qualities for any organization, regardless of the company’s size. Empathy is the ability to understand the needs of others and recognize their feelings and thoughts, while honesty is the long-term alignment between your words and your actions. While it can take years to develop these capabilities in employees, the pandemic has brought an increased need to deploy these traits now. This might mean that we pause to carefully select words for a Slack message that could be interpreted in multiple ways, or that we take time to better understand why a colleague may be struggling. It might mean that we might extend a deadline or offer a resource, knowing that a colleague is juggling child care and remote learning responsibilities. 

As we continue to navigate the pandemic, leaders and managers can encourage their teams to continue to demonstrate empathy and honesty, and take steps to demonstrate those qualities with their own actions and behaviors. Encourage your employees to listen more and talk less (which is even more important in Zoom call settings!), and to continue to weave questions like “How are you doing today” and “Say more” into conversations.  Encourage your teams to strengthen their connections with colleagues.  Make an effort to understand what’s on their mind and what’s important to them. Placing a renewed focus on the colleagues around you will not only improve the relationships within your team, it will likely also contribute to a kinder and more empathetic workforce.

Getting comfortable with ambiguity

Jeff Bezos once said that he will always make a decision if he feels he has at least 70% of the information available. With less than 70% of relevant data, he acknowledges that he’s likely to be missing something important. However, if he waits to get 90% or more of the information, he feels he will be left behind by a more nimble competitor. Making good decisions also means knowing how to make them in a timely way.

COVID-19 has upended nearly everything in our lives, from spending time with family, to learning in remote environments, to carefully planned trips to the grocery store, to name just a few. Formerly routine work tasks are now filled with ambiguity and uncertainty -- how can I get adequate IT support? How do we plan our next marketing conference, how should I best communicate with my manager?

Given that everyone is wrestling with at least some level of uncertainty, from the CEO signing off on next year’s budget to an employee attempting to get access to a shared file server, find opportunities to allow your employees to feel comfortable saying “I don’t know”. When employees know they can rely on teammates to assist and fill in gaps, it can help reduce stress and promote camaraderie throughout the organization. Helping your employees get comfortable being uncomfortable will help your team navigate ambiguity and find effective solutions when the landscape is grey.

Consider empowering your team find ways to change their perspective and context. If they are presented with a challenging situation, they could seek inspiration through a nature walk or by taking a coffee break to think about the problem in a different environment. While this might not solve the issue at hand, it will hopefully allow for some focused and uncluttered thought as to how to approach  the issue from a fresh perspective. And it may even lead to a breakthrough. 

Thinking and deciding with agility

With continually evolving CDC guidelines, remote-work and school programs and shifting travel restrictions, people and companies have been forced to make swift decisions for much of the past year. In order to be a more agile thinker within this complex and changing environment, it is helpful to know what type of decision-making style you possess: analytical, practical, relational, or experimental. While analytical thinkers are driven primarily by logic and data, the practical style relies on a more organizational and operational approach. If you are a relational thinker, you rely more on engagement and sensitivity to others, while an experimental thinker approaches problems with a more imaginative, disruptive, and inventive process. Regardless of which style (or styles) you engage with, it’s just as important to know the other styles well, since certain situations lend themselves better to one style while other situations are best suited for an alternate approach. 

Leadership can promote this type of growth by helping employees engage in decision-making from each of the various perspectives through exercises, practice sessions and coaching. This nimbleness is likely to lead to better decisions overall.

Think of the Future Now

In order to grow and thrive, every organization needs to look beyond current events and environments to consider the possibilities that lie ahead. However, with the immediate concerns created by COVID-19, this kind of long-term thinking has been more difficult. 

However, despite the uncertainty that continues to surround us, such as air travel, commuting, health care, mental wellness and social justice, it is possible to consider the possibilities that may exist in the future, and to not get bogged down in the  day-to-day. For example, seek out and embrace new ideas and innovative solutions, from unconventional places, perhaps from a different department or industry. Take inventory of your biases and question your assumptions. Both activities will allow you to open your mind to new perspectives and paths forward. Disrupting your own mind and challenging yourself to consider and engage with new ideas from unusual areas can spark creativity and ultimately give way to progress. 

We’d love to hear from you! What are some of the ways in which your organization is promoting growth and development during COVID-19? We love to talk about HR and are always seeking new ways to improve our own teams. Drop us a line at info@bensonsearch.com.