Hr, the 4 areas to (pre)attend to in 2024

According to traditional Chinese culture, 2024 is the year of the wooden green dragon. In the context of the Chinese horoscope, the presence of this mythological animal facilitates communication and understanding with almost all other signs. This makes 2024 a favourable year for collaboration and cooperation between different personalities and characters. Given the global situation, let's root for it because we all need these skills badly! And they are the resources that will help us in 2024, also looking at the HR world. It promises to be a complex 12 months on many fronts, in which it will be necessary and vital to communicate effectively (listening first and foremost), cooperate and find sustainable solutions, together.

In my opinion - an opinion also corroborated by the analyses of international experts - there are four perimeters where 'doing the right thing' will be decisive for the future, bearing in mind that 'quick-fix' solutions may present us with a hefty bill later on.

1. Back to the office: more and more companies are setting themselves the goal of engaging people to re-inhabit offices. We have learnt that the hybrid work has drawbacks in terms of collaboration, sense of belonging, isolation, creativity, social connection, communication and much more, especially for certain employees and certain types of roles. For most of us, spending time with colleagues is important for our well-being and to get our work done. In principle, I believe, no one has anything against encouraging people to work together in person. What does give one pause is the feeling that, in the ways of this return, the opportunity to permanently shift from a form of 'managerial control' to a leadership style based on trust, empowerment and greater self-management has often not been taken. Many managers still struggle to fully trust their people's sense of responsibility and have not yet fully realised that being together in the workplace, despite the commute or the difficulty of finding child or dog care, is done willingly if there is a valid, overriding and important reason for doing so. If we want people to leave the comfort of their homes, we need to provide a better service: better internet, better technology, better experiential training, better coffee, meeting and meeting spaces - not just a desk, chair and screen for staff to attend meetings they could have attended from home.

2. Redundancies: companies need to modify themselves according to changes in the market and, especially with new technologies, some roles need support to update. The pace of change is so high that companies will have to consider, more and better, their ability to intervene with employees in need of re-skilling. They have a duty to anticipate the demand for future skills and to create opportunities within the company to develop the skills that will be needed. Of course this requires a generalised mindset change towards the approach to learning as well. Never before has life-long learning become not just an aspiration for our hobbies, but an attitude to be had in every domain of our lives.

3. GenAI: the report of the World Economic Forum in 2023 on the impact of new technologies predicts the creation of 69 million jobs and a decrease of an equal number of millions over the next 10 years. Unenlightened leaders might think that this situation should be handled solely by governments and welfare systems, but this is not the case. Capitalising on technology by valuing the resources and untapped potential of people is also up to organisations as part of an ecosystem that must find new and sustainable balances.