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HR Trends Report 2019
Priorities and practices of the world’s leading employers
| HR Trends Report 2019 02
Introduction 03
Executive summary 04
Global Trends 2019 05
- Greater alignment with business strategy 08
- Becoming more transparent 14
- Adapting to change faster 19
Methodology 40
Contributors 41
Regional trends 24
- Europe 25
- North America 28
- Latin America 31
- Asia Pacific 34
- Africa 37
Contents
2019 is another year of change.
With industries rapidly evolving, there will be an enormous impact on the world of work, a fundamental shift in the capabilities organisations need to be successful.
Over the year ahead, companies will be focusing their efforts on ensuring they put in place the critical change levers they need to be successful.
Yet leading organisations must also keep doing what they are recognised for: ensuring the wellbeing of their most important asset, their people.
| HR Trends Report 2019 03Introduction
A global and regional perspective
For 2019, Top Employers Institute has examined the HR priorities and practices of more than 1500 leading employers around the world. Our extensive survey covers ten main topics including:
• All aspects of HR organisation (talent strategy, workforce planning and compensation & benefits)
• All “HR rituals” (training & development, leadership, career & succession, performance)
• The key elements in the talent experience journey (talent acquisition, onboarding and culture).
This huge range of verified data means the Top Employers Institute sits at the crossroads of research and
analysis. Our 2019 HR Trend Report puts into perspective what best-in-class companies are doing to attract,
retain, engage and develop their people during times of change. Only the very best employers earn the right
to carry the Top Employer Institute’s seal of approval. Painting a picture of the priorities of the world’s most
advanced employers, this report is a useful tool for every organisation to identify the effectiveness, maturity
and sustainability of their HR policies. We hope you find the data useful in comparing your current policies and
practices with those of your peers.
Enjoy the report! David Plink, CEO
In our 2019 Trend Report, we take an in-depth look at leading-edge people practices around the globe this year. Using original research from the Top Employers Institute, the 2019HR Trend Report reveals how world-class organisations are implementing cutting-edge practices in almost every aspect of HR.
Among the organisations covered in this study are leading employers from all over the world, from small
to large in size, operating in all types of industries. This ensures that the results of this research are a good
reflection of where high-performing organisations stand right now.
Global Trends 2019 This year’s report shines a spotlight on how the best employers are leading the way in areas such as talent
strategy, workforce planning, leadership development, learning, performance management, compensation
& benefits, and culture. Based on our global data from audits and certifications of the 2019 priorities and
practices of 1500 leading employers worldwide, we have identified three recurring themes at the heart of
leading organisations’ people strategies in 2019.
| HR Trends Report 2019 04Executive summary
Greater alignment with business strategy
Becoming more transparent
Adapting to change faster
1
2
3
Regional view
The 2019 Trend Report includes a regional
section discussing how the regional HR trends
making waves in Europe, North America, Latin
America, Asia and Africa.
Achieving the right balance between standard
global approaches and local customisation is
key for best-in-class employers. The regional
section shares insights on how the regional trends
compare with the global trends discussed in
this study, and the factors unique to each region
driving these differences.
1. Greater alignment with business strategy
Talent acquisition, talent management and legal compliance are key areas of focus for leading
organisations this year, as they aim to implement their people practices in full alignment with the strategic
growth ambitions of their organisations. Over the past two years, practices in these areas have become
a lot more rigorous. Take workforce planning for example. Previously it resembled a head-counting
exercise in many organisations.
Now it has become a business-critical activity: around 87% of Top Employers say they will involve
managers in this process for the 2019 cycle, to make sure their leadership teams consider the
implications of different strategic choices from a workforce point of view.
Talent management is another important area of focus for leading employers. Facing difficulties in hiring
new talent, they are choosing out-of-the-box approaches to retain the talent they already have. Over the
past year, we have seen a surge in talent exchange programmes where employers share their talent with
other companies (not direct competitors) as a way of managing people’s development expectations and
building new organisational competencies in line with business strategies.
To make sure they are focusing on the right change levers, a growing practice in large companies is
the creation of centres of excellence for HR analytics, where small groups take charge of defining and
measuring the success of different (operational) aspects of HR. However, measurement is still a weak
link in the chain. Despite improvements in the IT capabilities, organisations find that HR managers are the
ones who need to be able to explain to business leaders what the data actually means from a strategic
point of view.
| HR Trends Report 2019 05Global Trends 2019
This is why 73% of Top Employers are now providing training to their HR managers on this how to
analyse and explain HR data, a key piece in the business-alignment puzzle. There is an opportunity to
further professionalise HR data collection and analysis in 2019. While data quality is top of everybody’s
minds to ensure a credible analysis of the information available, data privacy is also a key concern for
most HR departments. Especially when it comes to people’s personal information, with the new GDPR
legislation underscoring the need to ensure compliance. For HR teams, the opportunities of using data
must always be balanced against the responsibility to comply data-protection laws and regulations.
2. Becoming more transparent
A key challenge for leading organisations is making sure that all workers – especially older ones in their
companies – are aware of how the changing business environment could affect their jobs in an
environment where work arrangements are becoming more flexible and new technologies are flipping
traditional business models. With the huge shift underway in leading organisations, employees demand
greater transparency. This is why proactive communications about workforce changes or restructurings is
a growing trend among leading organisations worldwide, sharing information in a timely fashion so that
staff know about possible (negative) changes coming their way. One of the other key areas where we
have a great shift towards transparency over the past year is in compensation and benefits, perhaps not
surprisingly given that the gender pay gap has been high on the news agenda.
Of the Top Employers we surveyed, almost nine in ten say that they have taken action to address the
gender pay gap during the past year. The trend towards transparency is extending into others aspects
of HR, too. Similar to how they have become more open about communicating their compensation
and benefit practices, leading organisations are becoming more transparent about their global talent
management practices, which were previously only communicated to elite groups of employees like
“top potentials”.
Nowadays, 70% of Top Employers make it a priority to inform ALL of their employees about
their talent status, up 3% since 2016, illustrating the movement towards transparency and proper
management of employees’ expectations (what you can and cannot expect your employer to do
for you).
Consistent with this approach, Top Employers are equally honest when it comes to managing the
expectations of their low performers, especially in cases where HR/management’s view may not align
with the employee’s own career aspirations. The goal is to be candid upfront and let employees know
where they stand.
| HR Trends Report 2019 06Global Trends 2019
3. Adapting to change faster
Since Top Employers operate in such a rapidly evolving business environment, they need to react faster
than ever before to help their employees cope with change. One of the main areas where we are seeing
the trend towards agility is in how organisations manage their people’s performance and development.
Many of the changes revolve around real time feedback, recognition and evaluation. As of 2019,
73% of Top Employers, managers and employees now have ongoing (monthly or more) informal
discussions about performance to manage expectations and exchange feedback. Goals are also
getting less rigid. A greater number of Top Employers are allowing employees to reset their goals at any
point of the year in response to changing circumstances – and to make sure the goals are achieved!
Perhaps because of the difficulties finding talent, there is now a greater focus on quickly onboarding new
hires and getting them engaged and productive almost from day one. But rather than let this process
happen passively, a growing number of Top Employers are facilitating “learning by doing” through
implementing online/virtual onboarding platforms companywide, which make sure new employees
formally complete a range of tasks and activities – everything from knowing how to access their e-mail
to doing mandatory compliance trainings. To date, 58% of Top Employers have introduced such
a platform, up from 26% in 2016. The benefit of such platforms is that they help to ‘activate’ new
employees and make them productive in a short timeframe, while also adhering to global standards.
Taking things one step further, around 32% of global Top Employers now enrol their new joiners in
an official pre-boarding programme before their first working day. Enabled by mobile apps, pre-
boarding programmes deliver nuggets of knowledge on the company’s organisational culture and its
ways of working, and give new employees a preview of what they can expect from day one.
| HR Trends Report 2019 07Global Trends 2019
| HR Trends Report 2019 08Greater alignment with business strategy1
Leading organisations are making it a priority to design HR strategies in harmony with their business strategies, and to measure execution with more rigour than ever before.
1.1 Putting the human factor into business strategy
Here’s a common dilemma facing many HR
leaders. You see opportunities in the market and
you want to move quickly to stay one step ahead
of the competition. But you don’t have the right
talent in place. Or maybe you do have some great
individual talents, but you lack the commitment of
middle managers and teams to go the extra mile to
make your strategy come alive. For the successful
execution of any strategy, the essential starting
point is to make people feel engaged, secure and
confident about their work environment. This is why
nine out of ten Top Employers make it a priority to
limit the risk to people and their job security when
making strategic business decisions. Knowing that
employees are more willing to go the extra mile
then they feel safe in their own roles, this is also why
HR teams are increasingly playing an active role in the
early stages of business-priority setting, making sure
that leadership teams understand the implications of
different strategic choices from an employee point
of view. Yet despite these laudable efforts to align
people strategy with business strategy, there remains
a clash between the objectives of both types of
strategies and the people implications of executing
them successfully. To use an aviation analogy,
corporate strategy departments continue to work
like the pilots of their organisations, in command of
the flight route, whereas HR acts like the air-traffic
controller, making sure that everyone will take off, fly
and land there safely.
1.2 Workforce planning is helping organisations plan for change
of Top Employers proactively share information with their people about how business strategy will affect long-term workforce needs.
75%
Over the last few years, we have seen a rising
trend in how leading organisations drive their
efforts in workforce planning. Once viewed as
a head-counting or accounting exercise, today
it has become a much more wide-ranging,
strategic exercise, penetrating deep into each
organisation. From anticipating the critical
competencies needed to succeed in a new
product category to predicting the rate of staff
turnover in a key market, advanced organisations
make it their priority to design a workforce that
is in full harmony with the strategic vision of their
business. Top Employers now see workforce
planning as an enabler of innovation.
It helps them make sure the right people are being
lined up for the right roles at the right time.
of Top Employers involve theirmanagers on the organisation’sworkforce planning process
87%
But even with the best-laid plans, companies
struggle to find the urgent capabilities they need
right now. Talent acquisition leaders tell us it has
become almost “mission impossible” to find
professionals in areas like software development,
innovation and e-commerce in some markets.
HR is feeling pressure from business leaders who
want to have their open vacancies filled at short
notice, yet recruiters have to cope with operating
in an environment where candidates have all the
power. Essentially, candidates have more choices
than ever before – they can afford to be choosy,
as many of them are receiving multiple job offers
at the same time. The solution for Top Employers?
An increasingly popular approach is expanding the
ecosystem of candidate sourcing – for example,
developing deeper partnerships with universities
and industry associations. Related to that, social
media allows organisations to activate a network of
(passive) candidates to make job vacancies go viral.
As an example of that trend, 66% of global Top
Employers have built internal/external candidate
communities on platforms like LinkedIn to
engage with interesting candidates for potential
future opportunities. Similarly, 17% of global
Top Employers now operate an alumni network
on the likes of LinkedIn (up 2% in the past year)
with the goal of helping ex-employees stay in touch
and maybe even return to the mother ship if a suitable
vacancy arises. As the labour market tightens further,
these trends are likely to accelerate in the years to come.
1.3 Finding new ways to hire more effectively 1.4 More contract/freelance workers in the mix
With the growing trend towards “Uberisation” or “gig working” in a fast-changing labour market,
organisations have been ramping up the hiring of contract and freelance workers – sometimes to fill
gaps on a short-term basis, or sometimes because talent is not willing to commit to a long-term contract.
Aggregate data from our 2019 survey shows that, on average, contingent/freelance workers now
officially represent around 26% of Top Employers’ workforces, but this number may be even higher
due to the increasing involvement of suppliers and subcontractors.
| HR Trends Report 2019 09Greater alignment with business strategy1
of Top Employers’ workforces are represented by contingent/ freelance workers
26%of Top Employers have built onlinecommunities for job candidates
66%
1.5 Organisations will experiment more to gain the capabilities they need
Considering that the compensation costs of temporary staff tend to be high and that temporary staff are
not always a good fit with organisational values, Top Employers are evolving their recruiting models for
permanent staff, working on a pipeline of talent they could tap into just when they need it.
To drive the desired capabilities they need to succeed in their industries, an increasing number of
organisations will be turning to out-of-the-box approaches over the year ahead. Instead of looking to
“buy” capabilities externally, over the past year we have seen many Top Employers set up talent exchange
programmes with other companies (not direct competitors) as a way of managing talent and workforce
needs, upskilling their existing workforce, a practice that is getting popular in Western Europe.
This is also feasible option for mid-sized companies with limited scope for internal mobility. Next to that,
several best-in-class Top Employers have introduced incubation units within their businesses to drive
innovation programmes and start-up ventures, providing an opportunity for current employees to gain
new knowledge and build new competencies with an eye to the future. Even if the main aim is to have
staff come up with money-spinning innovations, these units are also represent a strong retention tool for
employees who have an entrepreneurial mindset.
As another way to drive retention and engagement, many Top Employers are building communities for
employees to network with each other and swap innovative ideas: 92% of Top Employers facilitate their
talents from different business units/functions/geographies to meet each other, and 71% formally
activate social learning, linked together via online communities, as part of their organisational L&D
strategy, up 5% since 2016.
| HR Trends Report 2019 10Greater alignment with business strategy1
of Top Employers aim to facilitate cross-functional networking
92%
1.6 Measurement has improved, but much work needs to be done
While a lot of progress has been made on
HR reporting capabilities in recent years, Top
Employers will be looking to refine their HR
measurement practices in several areas during the
year ahead. The first challenge is establishing what
metrics to focus on. Unlike a business strategy,
which can be tracked by clear indicators like
improvements in sales growth or profit margins,
people strategies are still far too often measured
qualitatively, focusing on feelings and perceptions.
Where quantitative data is available, many HR
metrics focus on the operational aspects of HR
– but far fewer to track the impact of business-
critical priorities. For example in talent acquisition,
organisation-wide priorities typically cover
topics such as raising the quality of candidates
hired, improving candidate experience and
boosting diversity. Yet most of the metrics for the
recruitment department actually relate to things
like the number of CVs processed, the time-to-
recruitment and the cost of job postings. If the
diversity part is measured at all, the KPIs do not
relate to recruitment but rather more generically to
the company’s CSR activities. Currently among Top
Employers, only 49% have a formal description of
each of their HR metrics and how they use them
for reporting purposes. There is an opportunity
to professionalise this practice over the year ahead.
The second challenge facing many organisations
is where to source their data. Take headcount
numbers for example. If you ask a finance director,
an HR director and an IT manager about head
count in their organisation, they will all probably
give you a different number. Bad source data
coming in means bad reporting data coming out!
1.7 HR teams will play a greater role in data analysis
While HR metrics focus on monitoring progress
towards accomplishing a goal, HR analytics are
much more focused on longer-term planning and
decision-making. HR teams involved in analysing
data analytics can use many different sources of
information. Some of the information is highly
structured (for example, sales figures). Some of
it is semi-structured (the results of a satisfaction
survey, for example). And part of it is rather
unstructured, such as comments on social
networks. Despite the logistical challenges just
mentioned, Top Employers nowadays have the
right infrastructure to start showing the true value
of their organisations’ HR strategies, thanks to
a growing array of HR IT systems with in-depth
reporting capabilities. However, the lack of
expertise within HR departments to be able to
properly analyse data and provide meaningful
insights to their management teams is a key point
of pain organisations will want to address over
the year ahead. It all starts with training. Currently
around three in four Top Employers say they are
training their HR managers to explain HR analytics
to business leaders, but 14% still have not made
any efforts to do so. This explains why 30% of
Top Employers say their business leaders still do
not trust the metrics/data provided by HR.
have a formal description49%
of each of their HR metrics and how they use themfor reporting purposes
| HR Trends Report 2019 11Greater alignment with business strategy1
of Top Employers are training their HR managers to explain HR analytics to business leaders
73%
1.8 HR data is a legal compliance risk
95%of Top Employers see their business leaders as key stakeholders for leadership development, but only 78%do so for talent acquisition
1.9 An opportunity to involve management in setting HR strategies
A common complaint from management teams is that HR strategies do not focus on the kinds of
levers that would really drive improved business performance. What causes this misalignment? One
factor is that HR teams only involve their business leaders in setting the HR strategies that directly affect
leaders themselves. For example, 95% of Top Employers currently see their business leaders as a
key stakeholder when it comes to setting leadership development activities, but only 78% do so
for talent acquisition. Given all of this, there is an opportunity for leaders from different functional
areas to get more involved in shaping their organisational HR strategies, just as HR has been rising to
the challenge of getting more actively involved in shaping business strategy. By doing so, leaders will no
longer feel that HR strategies are simply imposed on them, and HR teams will have a better view of what
can be realistically achieved in a given timeframe.
With the digital age we live in, HR teams are
already using a growing volume of personal
data from employees to improve their people
practices. However, data privacy has become a
major issue worldwide, especially when it comes
to people’s personal information. For HR teams,
the opportunities of using data must always be
balanced against the responsibility to comply with
all local and international data-protection laws
and regulations, such as the new General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe.
The legal context is likely to limit the scope of HR
analytics over the years to come. For example,
60% of Top Employers say they would not be
willing to use analytics derived from the use
of internal social platforms to help identify
employee engagement issues. The reasons for
not doing so include the lack of trust in the results,
the ethics behind these kinds of practices and the
new GDPR law in Europe.
As a response to the growing compliance
challenge, 98% of Top Employers have put
in place ethical codes of conduct for their
employees together with legal compliance
trainings. All leading organisations are anxious
to keep their data safe and handle it responsibly,
as breaches can have a very negative impact
on customer trust, profitability and ultimately
employee engagement.
| HR Trends Report 2019 12Greater alignment with business strategy1
of Top Employers maintain anethical code of conduct for their employees
98%
of Top Employers see gender as their number one priority when it comes to diversity.
88%
1.10 Accelerating diversity
Top Employers are aware that one of the success factors for any business is having a deep insight into
what customers need and desire. Having a diverse workforce is an essential part of gaining this level of
insight, as well as to improve company branding in an environment where employees are the “face” of
their organisations as well as “ambassadors” on social media.
Our survey data for 2019 shows that Top Employers’ practices around diversity have become increasingly
sophisticated. For 2019 and beyond, organisations will be focusing not only on the traditional area of
gender diversity in senior management (which nonetheless remains a top priority for 80%) but they
will also be making interventions in the areas of age diversity to attract more millennials (23%) and
seniors to reflect the demographics of society.
Top Employers will also be focusing on strengthening the leadership pipeline and transforming a wider
group of leaders into change agents. Like every other aspect of business strategy, diversity doesn’t
happen by accident. It relies on people taking action to drive change.
| HR Trends Report 2019 13Greater alignment with business strategy1
Top Employers aim to be open and honest about the HR strategies and people practices in an environment where new technologies are flipping traditional business models and reshaping the labour market.
| HR Trends Report 2019 14Becoming more transparent2
2.1 Employees need to be aware of how the changing business environment could impact their jobs
Political changes, new technologies, increased
competition, Uberisation. The business
environment brings huge challenges for
organisations large and small. They face a stark
choice: adapt their ways of working now, or
risk being disrupted later on. When it comes to
automisation, for example, not a day goes by
without an article in the press telling us about the
latest industry to be turned on its head. Studies
predict that close to 50% of current jobs in
certain professions will evolve or even disappear
over the next decade. Robots and software
platforms will take over the work that humans once
did, potentially triggering a tsunami of layoffs or
at least creating a critical need for employees to
upgrade their competencies and skills. Nobody
knows if enough new jobs will come on stream in
areas like robotics and software development to
offset the jobs lost in other sectors. What is certain
is that that organisations need to be proactive and
help their people to adapt. A growing trend from
our audits of more than 1500 Top Employers
shows that 75% of leading organisations around
the world now proactively share information with
their people about how business strategy will affect
long-term workforce needs, a trend that particularly
evident in Europe and Asia. This will help staff to
understand what is “fake news” and what is real, and
to engage talent in a context where the workforce
looks set to split into “winners” and “losers”.
*Source: https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf
In some professions, close to
of jobs will evolve or disappear over the next decade*
2.2 Communicating proactively about business transformations and reorganisations
| HR Trends Report 2019 15Becoming more transparent2
The changing business environment is driving
big transformations in many companies. And
these reorganisations are happening at a faster
pace than ever before, which is why proactively
communicating about these kinds of changes is a
growing trend among Top Employers worldwide,
sharing information in a timely fashion so that
staff know about possible (negative) changes
coming their way. For example, traditional training
methods will have to adapt to face this wave of
transformation. Top Employers will need to offer
much more self-learning, more social learning,
more automated learning, to help employees
define their learning priorities. There is also a
huge responsibility of leading organisations to
put news about automation into context, to help
their employees cope with change. Leading
organisations understand the importance of
showing their people that they are being open and
honest about their plans in a context where
employees could just as easily hear rumours about
2.3 Communicating openly and honestly
of Top Employers aim to give their people advance warning of culture changes and reorganisations
74%
During times of transformation, the HR
trend at global level is to encourage “open”
communications in which employees can raise
comments and concerns, such as town-hall
meetings, team-dialogue sessions or webcasts
where employees can raise their questions to
executive management.
Such an approach is far more engaging than
pushing news out to employees via e-mail and
hoping employees will understand the business
rationale behind the decisions made. It also helps
organisations shed light on how their people
are responding to change, helping to manage
expectations on both sides. Nevertheless, while a
strategy might be well articulated at global level,
there are usually gaps at the local/team level.
Employees struggle to understand the “what’s-
it-means-for-me” part. How will they prepare if
they are not properly informed? More training
for managers to communicate with their teams is
the answer. At team level, around 70% of Top
Employers now train their managers on the
benefits of effective communication with their
teams. For example, during a time of business
transformation, managers might recommend team
members to do more self-learning, more social
learning, more advanced learning, to help deal with
the changing situation they find themselves in. It is
critical to be open and honest to let people know
where they stand.
potential changes their companies via social media
as they could in the office canteen. According to our
2019 data, 74% of Top Employers say they aim to
give their people advance warning of upcoming
business transformations and reorganisations, up from
60% in 2015, which is a huge rise in three years.
of Top Employers train managers to communicate effectively with their teams
70%
2.4 More transparency, more detail on pay
One of the areas where we have the greatest shift towards transparency over the past year is in
compensation and benefits. Of the Top Employers we surveyed, around eight in ten now say
they share information about their reward practices freely with all employees, up 6% since 2016.
In addition, almost nine in ten say they have taken action to address the gender pay gap, which has been
prominent on the news agenda during the past year. An increasingly popular method for organisations
to give be open about all of the benefits they offer their employees is total reward statements, which give
staff a clear overview of their pay and benefits, which include annual compensation, employer benefits
and pension arrangements. As of 2019, almost four in ten global Top Employers say they share a
yearly statement with their employees, an increase of 5% since the previous year’s survey.
Leading organisations who have introduced these statements tell us they are a very strong retention tool.
Employees traditionally considered compensation as being only their monthly pay and annual bonus.
Seeing the full overview of (non-cash) benefits detailed out in a personalised statement makes it less
likely that compensation will be the main driver for any employee who decides to quit his/her job.
Slowing down the adoption of this practice is the fact that organisations still struggle to put a financial
value on some of the benefits they offer their people. For example, is there any financial benefit of
working in the city centre instead of a suburban office park? And how does an employer quantify the
financial benefit of home-office arrangements vis-à-vis savings in transport costs? The challenge is to be
equally transparent about what an employer can and cannot calculate.
| HR Trends Report 2019 16Becoming more transparent2
2.5 Decentralising compensation decisions to drive trust
Another area of transparency in compensation and benefit is to take away some of the mystery about
how pay and bonus decisions are calculated. This drives trust in the process among employees.
For example, a key area of focus is opening up access to tools and practices that HR previously owned.
Some leading organisations are introducing tooling that allows employees themselves to calculate the
financial impact of reducing their working hours, for example. Managers are also playing a bigger role
in making compensation decisions for their teams. More than 55% of Top Employers now provide
managers with comprehensive functionality to support annual compensation decisions and ad-hoc
salary increases, taking into account individual/business performance, available budget and benchmark
information. Shifting the decision-making to managers, in turn, allows managers to share these decisions
openly with their team members and explain the reasons behind the decisions made.
of Top Employers say they are taking action to address the gender pay gap
of Top Employers enable managersto make their own compensation decisionsfor their team
87% 55%
2.6 More transparency on talent management policies
| HR Trends Report 2019 17Becoming more transparent2
Similar to how they have become more open
about communicating their compensation and
benefit practices, leading organisations are
also becoming more transparent about their
global talent management practices, which were
previously a bit of a “black box”. Nowadays, 70%
of Top Employers make it a priority to inform
ALL of their employees about their talent status,
up 3% since 2016, illustrating the movement
towards transparency and proper management of
employees’ expectations (what you can and cannot
expect your employer to do for you).
Consistent with this approach, Top Employers are
equally honest when it comes to managing the
expectations of their low performers, especially
in cases where HR/management’s view may not
align with the employee’s own career aspirations.
The goal is to be candid upfront and let employees
know there they stand. Amid all the changes
affecting leading organisations worldwide, Top
Employers know they have to offer their employees
tools to manage their careers more effectively.
However, one area where there is still scope for
more transparency is in career and succession
planning. Currently only 68% of Global Top
Employers make information about succession
planning freely accessible to all employees, and
we haven’t seen much improvement on this
point in recent years.
The likely reason is that many employers fear that
too much transparency around succession planning
would damage the motivation of employees who
are not “on the list” for promotion, or indeed for
those whose names are taken off the list. The
challenge of getting the communication right can
often outweigh the value of the transparency.of Top Employers inform staff about their talent status70%
2.7 More involvement of leaders in people development
| HR Trends Report 2019 18Becoming more transparent2
Despite complaints from managers that too much
HR work has been outsourced to them over the
years, HR leaders realise they must be upfront
with line managers about the areas where they
must a greater role in people development in
the future; such as, for example, coaching and
performance management. Already, almost
80% of Top Employers make sure their senior
leaders play an active role in delivering learning
and development. To make sure that managers
are ready to take on their (additional) HR
responsibilities, Top Employers also invest time and
resources to make sure managers are equipped to
deliver. For employees, the benefits of management
support are twofold. First, it’s engaging to know
that your manager cares about your professional
future. And second, the fear generated by the
disappearance of certain tasks or roles can be
reshaped into to something positive: an opportunity
for you to adapt and grow, anchored to the strategic
direction of your organisation, to obtain the skills
and experiences you need in order to succeed now
and in the future. In another example of leadership
involvement, Top Employers are also starting to
take a more formalised approach to mentoring.
Increasingly, we are seeing global companies
set up formal mentoring programs by matching
experienced managers with promising talents, to
help meet specific individual development objectives
and have senior employees lead by example. Leading
organisations now use mentoring as a people
development tool, a talent retention tool and a social
learning tool (e.g. through reverse mentoring).
2.8 Leadership development: an opportunity to become more open
Bucking the trend towards transparency, one area that still feels like a taboo subject in many organisations
is leadership development. While our survey data shows that 74% of Top Employers worldwide currently
give general information about their leadership development offering to all employees, only 2%
currently allow their employees to apply for one of these programs based on merit. The vast majority
of employers still require top management approval or talent review committees before an employee can
be accepted into a programme. It seems probable that this will change in the years as Top Employers take
the next important steps in providing the level of transparency their employees would like to see, and to
make sure ALL talent is given an opportunity to shine. A trend to watch in 2019 and beyond. Some 87%
of Top Employers now operate a formal mentoring programme, up 2% on 2018.
of Top Employers makesure senior leaders play an active role in developing people
80%Only 2% of Top Employers allow speculative applications to their leadership development programmes
Top Employers operate in a rapidly evolving business environment. They are reacting to change faster than ever before to engage and develop their people
3.1 New styles of learning and collaboration
With the changing business environment demanding new kinds of skills, it is no surprise that
new methods of learning and team collaboration are emerging. Long gone are the days when
classroom learning was the only show in town. Now, Top Employers are encouraging their teams
to learn from each other and exchange knowledge faster, virtually, in real time and “just in time”
to ensure greater efficiency and knowledge retention.
As of 2019, 87% of Top Employers maintain an online learning management system,
which provides learning-on-the-go right when employees need it. Some Top Employers are
introducing TripAdvisor-style rating systems within their learning portals so that employees can
rank online courses according to their usefulness. Which means colleagues can then focus quickly
on the most effective content and HR can rapidly adapt the catalogue content in light of those
evaluations. Meanwhile, collaboration has become more agile, a good way to spur innovation.
Some 77% of global Top Employers formally facilitate social learning as part of their
learning strategy.
| HR Trends Report 2019 19Adapting to change faster3
100%Teaching others
70%Learning from experience
20% Learning from others
10%Structured
learning
*Percentage of knowledge retention for each learning ways or path
Unlocking the knowledge that already exists
within companies contributes to agility and
knowledge retention, ensuring that best practices
gain the traction they deserve. There are also
benefits for the employees who share their own
knowledge. In fact, a new learning framework is
emerging based on the “100/70/20/10” model.
This theory states that while employees only
retain 10% of the knowledge shared in a
traditional classroom environment, they can
retain 20% through learning from others
(e.g. mentoring), 70% through learning by
doing (e.g. work assignments) and 100% by
sharing their own knowledge with others.
You will never forget something you
taught to someone else.
To drive higher levels of engagement and
collaboration, the vast majority of leading
organisations have been moving towards
moreflexible work practices and open-plan office
spaces, which not only result in lower real-estate
costs (fewer desks needed; more people per
square metre), but are also thought to result
in higher levels of employee engagement and
satisfaction in their work environment. Some
Top Employers have even shifted their executive
management teams into open workspaces where
they sit right next to their team members.
The idea being that it will be easier to ask your
colleague a question when they sit 10 metres
away from you than if you have to knock on their
office door. Open-plan work environments make
organisations feel less hierarchical but some
research shows that these environments are not
always having the intended effect when it comes
to the way people work together. A 2018 study
from Harvard, for example, implies that open-plan
offices can actually make teams less collaborative.
While the stated goals of an office renovation is
usually to boost interaction and collaboration,
the measured effect in some organisations has
been a rise in number of e-mails and face-to-
face interaction time has decreased by around
70%. Top Employers will want to consider not
only the cost angle when planning their work
environments, but also the related cultural aspects
to ensure people work together more effectively.
3.2 Work environments are becoming more collaborative
of Top Employers have open-plan workspaces
72%
| HR Trends Report 2019 20Adapting to change faster3
Another area where we are seeing more agility
is in how organisations manage their people’s
performance and development. Eight in every ten
Top Employers now endeavour to arrange their
performance management process to cater to the
needs of different target audiences, rather than a
rigid, one-size-fits-all approach. Many of the changes
revolve around real time feedback, recognition and
evaluation. At 73% of Top Employers, managers
and employees now have ongoing (monthly or
more) informal discussions about performance
to manage expectations and exchange feedback.
Goals have also become more elastic. A greater
number of Top Employers allow their employees to
reset their individual goals at any point of the year in
response to changing circumstances. By encouraging
managers and employees to have honest
conversations at regular intervals throughout the year
and by keeping goals smart and realistic, employees
go into their annual performance review with a good
feeling of there they stand in terms of performance.
Less chance of last-minute surprises that could have
an adverse effect on somebody’s engagement.
Performance management remains an area of
constant evolution. Knowing that the challenge of
creating the perfect system has not yet been solved,
80% of Top Employers will continue to monitor
the quality of their performance management
practices in 2019, rather than simply measuring the
quantity of dialogues completed.
3.3 Companies are measuring engagement faster – and acting faster on the insights gained
| HR Trends Report 2019 21Adapting to change faster3
With change happening at rapid speed in many
industries, listening to the voice of employees
remain a key element in any HR strategy. As a way
of measuring how employees perceive their work
environment, a yearly or biannual engagement
survey has now become a slightly old-fashioned
practice. By the time the results come in, business
dynamics have already changed. That is why four
in ten Top Employers now complement their main
engagement survey with pulse surveys or other
barometers, which help them to react faster to the
insights gained. Nonetheless, many organisations
struggle to find a balance between measuring
engagement in real time without making
employees feel like they are being pressured into
answering too many surveys. As a way to deal
with this challenge, some Top Employers run
their engagement survey on a monthly basis but
with different samples of employees so that each
employee is only asked to do the survey once
per year, yet the organisation receives a monthly
update on results. Others try out new questions
with a small sample of employees before rolling
them out across the organisation. The key is to
build flexibility into the process.
3.4 Performance management is becoming a year-round activity
of Top Employers are measuring engagement more than once per year
43%
of Top Employers have shifted their performance management frameworktowards continuous feedback
73%
Common in all leading organisation, a dedicated
onboarding process swings into action from
the new hire’s first day. What’s new in 2019
is that rather than let this process happen
passively, a growing number of Top Employers
are implementing online/virtual onboarding
platforms companywide, which focus on learning
by doing and make sure new employees
complete a range of tasks and activities within
a short timeframe – everything from knowing
how to access their e-mail to doing mandatory
compliance trainings. To date, 58% of Top
Employers have introduced such a platform,
up from 26% in 2016.
The benefit of such platforms is that they
help to ‘activate’ new employees and make
them productive fast, while also adhering to
well-defined global standards. Organisations
also appear to be renewing their interest in
measuring the first impressions of their new hires.
The goal is to find out whether employees’ initial
expectations match the reality of working in the
organisation. Around 64% of all Top Employers
now measure their new hires’ early impressions,
up from 54% in 2015.
3.5 Faster efforts in employer branding, talent acquisition and diversity
Larger-sized organisations are taking steps to professionalise their employer branding activities and
make them more current. This includes making sure they put in place a clearly aligned employer value
proposition that meets their organisations’ mission and strategy. Some Top Employers have now started
to refer to this as their “talent value proposition”, to make it more relevant to existing employees as
well. This year, more than eight in ten Top Employers will be aiming to link their employer/talent value
proposition to their company (leadership) behaviours and values in an exercise of strategic alignment.
They will also be raising their spending on corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, which already
increased by 40% over the last 7 years. This can directly help Top Employers to attract, retain and
engage their people, and to be an employer of choice.
| HR Trends Report 2019 22Adapting to change faster3
82%of Top Employers link their employer value proposition to their company behaviours/values
3.6 Onboarding is also getting faster and more professional
of Top Employers haveimplemented virtual onboarding platforms.
of Top Employers now enrol their new hires in a pre-boarding programme
58%
32%
3.7 The practice of ‘pre-boarding’ is a growing trend
Data from our 2019 survey shows that leading
organisations are finding new ways to speed up
their approach to onboarding, so that they can
make new employees productive even faster.
For white-collar positions, close to 85% of Top
Employers now take the initiative to send out a
preemployment package to new hires after a job
offer is accepted.
A typical package contains contractual information
as well as some general information about the
organisation. Around half of Top Employers also
carry out this practice for blue-collar employees as
well. Taking things one step further, around 32%
of global Top Employers now enrol their new
joiners in an official pre-boarding programme
before their first working day. Enabled by mobile
apps, pre-boarding programmes deliver nuggets
of knowledge on the company’s organisational
culture and its ways of working, and give new
employees a preview of what they can expect
from day one.
3.8 Buddy programmes are back
Our research from previous years indicated that formal buddy arrangements appeared to be going out
of fashion, but now they are making a gradual comeback as part of the onboarding practices of global
Top Employers. Around seven in ten Top Employers now have a buddy system in place for managerial
positions, up 6% globally over the past four years, although interestingly enough, only 43% of newly
hired executives work with a buddy during their onboarding period.
There is certainly scope to drive up these numbers, as being able to reach out to a peer rather than the
HR department helps new employees, no matter what their level of type of role, to get a faster response
to their questions or concerns. Despite the flurry of activity in the early stages of a new joiner’s lifecycle,
focused on making them productive as soon as possible, onboarding remains a short-term process.
Currently only about 42% of Top Employers follow up with new hires one year after joining to check
how things are going. Given the amount of changes that can happen in one year, it’s likely that more Top
Employers will be implementing this practice over the years to come.
| HR Trends Report 2019 23Adapting to change faster3
of Top Employers run buddy programmes for newly hired managers
70%
Priorities and practices of leading employers in Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Americas
Regional HR Trends 2019
| Regional HR Trends Report 2019 25Europe
Europe’s Top Employers are preparing for another unpredictable year. The challenge? To get ready for the unexpected, to be agile and adapt fast.
Many of Europe’s Top Employers have decades of history under their belts. They survived multiple crises
in the past. But now, with the market changing faster than ever before, they must become faster, more
innovative, if they want to thrive in the new competitive landscape.
While uncertainty reigns on the political front, the continent’s major economies have been enjoying a
period of solid economic growth over the past years. Which means that labour markets are getting tighter,
payroll costs are going up, and critical skills are becoming harder to find. As a result, there are multiple
challenges for Top Employers in the old continent. Nevertheless, lots of opportunities for the most
innovative companies to make their mark.
Strategic alignment
When it comes to defining business-aligned people strategies, Europe’s Top Employers are the most
advanced in the world. Practically nine in ten leading organisations across Europe make strategic
workforce planning a priority, and seven in ten perform a gap analysis between their current company/
employee competencies and those needed for the next strategic period. Europe’s Top Employers also
What Top Employers in Europe are doing best
98% ask their managers to actively promote the career development of their team members
95% educate their people about business strategy, priorities and results
95% offer special assignments to employees for career development
80% view social networking as a critical part of their recruitment strategy
77% see employee wellbeing as a key business imperative
Strategic alignment (continued)
focus on making sure employees understand
reasons behind the strategic decisions they make.
Some 95% of leading organisations have a
communication plan in place to educate their
people about their business strategies, and
to help employees understand their roles in
executing those strategies. A key area of focus
is measuring the impact of people strategies. Yet
here we see a gap. Even though the majority of
leading organisations across Europe have been
investing in their HR analytics departments, few
have invested in the capabilities at local level to be
able to translate HR data into actionable insights.
Europe’s employers have an opportunity to do
more when it comes to training their HR managers
to analyse HR data and explain it to business
leaders. To date, just 71% of Europe’s leading
organisations have done so, which is behind the
trend globally, indicating the limitations of farming
out HR data analysis to an analytics department far
removed from daily business realities.
of Europe’s leading organisations have trained their HR managers to analyseHR data and explain it to business leaders
of leading organisations in Europe actively share information with theiremployees about how business strategy will affect long-term workforce needs
71%
75%
| Regional HR Trends Report 2019 26Europe
Culture of transparency
Internal communication is now the number 2 priority for Top Employers in Europe on 2019, while it was
only the fourth biggest priority one year ago. This indicates the desire of HR departments to activate
greater transparency and allow leaders to play a bigger role in helping their people join the dots between
business strategy and individual development needs.
Despite a highly professional workforce planning process and a huge range of data available through HR
reporting tools, only 75% of leading organisations in Europe actively share information with their
employees about how business strategy will affect long-term workforce needs. Organisations in
Europe have an opportunity to use data more transparently, while of course making sure this is done in a
legally compliant way.
Compensation is another area where there is room for improvement. Only 59% of Top Employers in
Europe give managers the possibility to manage their team’s compensation, which means that annual
bonuses and salary increases continue to feel like a “black box” in many organisations, as employees
cannot hear from their own managers about how these decisions came about.
The move towards transparency is moving faster in some areas, however. Europe’s Top Employers are
excellent at giving opportunities for employees to share bottom-up feedback with management.
Some 44% of leading organisations across the continent run regular pulse surveys with their
people throughout the year, in addition to their annual engagement survey, giving employees more
opportunities to make their voices heard.
Adapting to change faster
Big ships turn around slowly. Yet Europe’s Top
Employers know they have to move faster and
keep the right talent on board, which is why
they are starting to show much more agility in
the HR domain. When it comes to performance
management, for example, a top priority for
Europe’s leading firms is ensuring an effective,
two-way dialogue between employees and
managers about performance.
Around seven in ten managers and employees
now have ongoing (monthly or more) informal
discussions about performance to review
expectations and feedback in real time rather
than waiting for the annual review. And around
eight in ten have made employee recognition an
ongoing, formally defined activity as part of their
performance management cycle. In addition,
leading organisations in Europe are speeding up
their approach to recruitment. More than nine in
ten now recruit via social networks, and within
those social networks 65% have started
“communities” to engage with interesting
candidates for potential future opportunities and
to be able to act more quickly when a position
needs to be filled. In people development,
Europe’s Top Employers have also innovated their
practices to cater to the needs of different target
audiences. For example, 66% offer job rotation
programs, 95% offer special assignments, and
91% offer international mobility programmes.
Knowing that the role of managers is crucial,
98% ask managers to actively support the career
development of their team members. As a result,
employees can better evolve in their skills and
career without having to leave the company. Which
ultimately leads to higher retention rates, greater
internal mobility and better employee satisfaction.
Top Employers in the old continent still have a long
road ahead to become faster in the execution and
renewal of their HR practices. Key areas needing
attention in 2019 and beyond include employer
branding, talent acquisition and talent
management. For HR to become a better business
partner, success depends on trying innovative new
approaches and increasing the focus on HR metrics
to help HR teams operate in full alignment with the
realities of their businesses.
| Regional HR Trends Report 2019 27Europe
offer job rotation programs to their employees
66%
What Top Employers in North America are doing best
99% run an annual engagement survey
96% facilitate employee networking
90% link their employer branding efforts to desired leadership competencies and behaviours
78% train HR managers to explain HR data to business leaders
59% have a formal taxonomy of their HR metrics
48% enrol new hires in a preboarding programme
Despite instability on the political front, businesses conditions remain very healthy in North America. Top Employers must find the right talent to capitalise on the opportunities available.
On the macroeconomic level, the U.S. and Canada have been enjoying strong GDP growth
over the past two years. In December 2018 alone, amid a global trade war and a government
shutdown, the U.S. economy added over 300,000 private-sector jobs, piling extra pressure
onto an already-tight labour market. Challenges for organisations in the region include higher
payroll costs, upskilling employees to deal with the technical threat, and the challenges of
engaging talent in an environment where employees have more choices than ever about where
and how they want to work.
Strategic alignment
As mentioned, the macroeconomic conditions are positive, yet leading organisations in North America
are struggling to find people with the skills they urgently need to execute on their growth strategies.
For 2019, “ensuring new hires meet long-term capability needs” is the number one priority for Top
Employers in North America when it comes to talent acquisition. And the number two priority is filling the
demand for new hires as HR teams come under pressure to hire the right talent in the shortest possible
timeframe. Perhaps because of the yawning gap between companies’ hiring needs and supply of available
North America | Regional HR Trends Report 2019 28
Strategic alignment (continued)
talent, HR teams are making it a priority to beef up their own skills on HR data analysis, so that they can better
understand the market trends that are affecting their talent acquisition strategies. Compared with their peers
globally, North American Top Employers are 5 percentage points more likely to train their HR managers
to explain insights from data analysis to their business leaders. Likewise North American are 8% ahead
of the global average when it comes to translating their talent strategy into key HR metrics, and are 11%
better at making at formally documenting their HR metrics and making this information available to all users
of reports, dashboards and scorecards. As a result, 81% of business leaders in the region use HR metrics
for fact-based decision-making, which is 11% ahead of the global average. The impressive use of metrics
in North America is probably due to cultural factors, as organisations in the region follow a structured and mature
approach to measurement. The belief, according to conventional wisdom, is that what gets measured gets done!
North America | Regional HR Trends Report 2019 29
“Ensuring new hires meet
long-term capability needs”
is the number one talent
acquisition priority for Top
Employers in North America
Culture of transparency
Limiting the risk to employees and their job
security is an important priority for almost all
leading organisations in North America.
Yet with unemployment at record low levels and
the unstoppable march towards Uberisation and
automisation, many organisations are exploring
ways to outsource or automate routine tasks.
This could lead to job losses further down the line
in the automotive and manufacturing sectors, for
example. In this context, there is room to improve
the culture regarding transparency. Four in every
ten Top Employers in North America admit they
are poor at sharing information with their people
about how business strategy will affect long-term
workforce needs.
They will need to make this a higher priority
in 2019 and beyond if they want to maintain
employee engagement and give people time
to prepare for a time when jobs may not be as
plentiful as they are today.
of Top Employers in North America are poor at sharing information with their people about how business strategy will affect long-term workforce needs
39%
Adapting to change faster
Across North America, the global trend of faster change-adaptation is most evident in talent acquisition.
Eager to get their new employees productive in the fastest possible timeframe, around 48% of leading
organisations in North America now enrol new hires in a formal ‘pre-boarding’ programme (i.e
onboarding before Day One), which is well above the global average of 32%.
Organisations also show agility when it comes to employee networking. A whopping 96% of leading
organisations in North America now facilitate cross-functional/departmental networking, well above
the global average, helping teams to get out of their individual silos. Yet is also scope for more speed
in some areas. Take performance management, for example. Organisations in North America seem to
be falling behind the global shift towards real-time feedback, recognition and evaluation. Only 68% of
Top Employers in North America have moved their performance management framework in this
direction. The reason? Probably because organisations are reluctant to tamper with tried and trusted
formulas, especially when it comes to the all-important annual bonus calculation, which remains a key
driver of talent retention in the region.
Nonetheless, with all of the changes and uncertainty in the workforce, Top Employers in North America
will want to help their people embrace change faster. This is the only way to ensure long-term success –
both for employees and the organisations they belong to.
North America | Regional HR Trends Report 2019 30
of Top Employers in North America have moved their performance management framework towards real-time feedback
68%
What Top Employers in Latin America are doing best
98% run an annual engagement survey
88% facilitate informal crossfunctional/departmental networking
75% train HR managers to explain HR data to business leaders
54% measure the candidate experience of talent acquisition
Latin America’s Top Employers are preparing for another volatile year. Leading organisations will want to ready to re-plan their business strategies at short notice to respond to changing circumstances.
Latin America
Practically every Top Employer in Latin America region is well used to operating through times of crises.
But now, additional geopolitical shifts and tensions on the world stage mean that anything could happen
on the economic front this year. The contagion could even affect even more stable economies, directly
influencing the profitability and performance of leading organisations in the region. Organisations
everywhere will therefore have to become more agile, more innovative, if they want to thrive in such a
challenging business landscape. For those organisations who successfully navigate the way forward, there
will be many opportunities to position themselves as excellent places to work.
Strategic alignment
Like everywhere, organisations in Latin America are struggling to find the right talent to meet their long-
term growth strategies, which is why “ensuring new hires meet long term capability needs” is now their
number one priority for talent
acquisition. Different the rest of the world, however, leading organisations in Latin America do not have
| Regional HR Trends Report 2019 31
Strategic alignment (continued)
a major problem attracting a critical quantity of applicants for critical positions. Rather, the challenge is
finding people with the right (international) skills, which is why creating a strong employer brand is the
second-highest priority for leading organisations in the region.
When it comes to aligning business and people strategies, HR data analysis is a growing practice in the
region with room for improvement. Three in four Top Employers in Latin America now train their HR
managers to explain insights from analytical analysis and help business leaders translate them into clear
actions, yet only 44% have a formal description/taxonomy of their HR metrics, which is below the
global average of 49%. Latin American Top Employers are also somewhat below the global average
regarding translating their talent strategy into key HR metrics and related targets: only 69% in LatAm do
this versus 71% globally and 78% in North America.
The move towards formal measurement in Latin America is happening slower than other markets,
perhaps because of cultural habits where flexibility is often prized over standardisation or rigidity.
Another reason might be the prevalence of customised IT systems or more manual processes, which are
less measureable than standard (formal) systems and processes.
Culture of transparency
To get an insight into what is on people’s minds, the annual engagement survey remains a trusted
method used by 98% of leading employers in the region. Yet while Top Employers in Latin America
have been making dedicated efforts to build a more open work environment, there is room to improve
regarding what kind of information employees receive. Take internal communication, for example. Only
around 83% of leading organisations in Latin America have introduced a process of communicating
their talent strategy with their employees, which is below the global average on this topic. And
almost one in four Top Employers in Latin America admit they are inconsistent at sharing information
with employees about how business strategy will affect long-term workforce needs. The region’s Top
Employers will need to pay greater attention to this topic in 2019 and beyond if they want to maintain
employee engagement and give people time to reskill and adapt to change.
of Latin American Top Employershave a formal description/taxonomy of theirHR metrics
of leading organisations in Latin America have introduced a process of communicating their Talent Strategy with their employees
44% 83%
Latin America | Regional HR Trends Report 2019 32
Adapting to change faster
One of the ways leading organisations in the region
are encouraging faster change adaption is through
their performance management frameworks.
Above the global average, 76% of Latin America’s
Top Employers now ask their managers and
employees to have frequent informal discussions
about performance and development, which
helps employees make adjustments faster rather
than having to wait for the end-of-year review.
Organisations also show agility when it comes
to employee networking. An impressive 88% of
leading organisations in Latin America now
facilitate informal cross-functional/departmental
networking, well above the global average,
helping teams to get out of their individual silos,
although only three in ten organisations take the
effort to define formal standards for this activity.
Given the extremely volatile business environment
in which they operate, Top Employers in Latin
America will continue to make it their business
to help their people embrace change faster and
plan against risks and threats, as is the only way
to ensure long-term success at an individual and
organisational level.
Latin America
of Latin American Top Employers ask their managers and employees to havefrequent informal discussions about performance and development
76%
| Regional HR Trends Report 2019 33
As organisations become less hierarchical, Top Employers in APAC are moving into line with the key trends happening in the rest of the world – and leading the way in others.
Asia Pacific
Flatter, more diverse, more inclusive. With labour markets tightening, organisations in Asia Pacific appear
to be moving away from their traditional ways of working. Leading organisations know that their next
phase of growth will only come about if their people remain engaged and empowered to drive change.
Companies in the region are facing into a period of economic uncertainty, in which the high growth
of previous years is far from assured. This means firms will be focusing on how to keep their people
informed about their evolving business strategies and enabled to react faster to challenges and
opportunities in the marketplace.
Strategic alignment
When it comes to business and people strategies, it is heartening to note that around 90% of Top
Employers in APAC say they consider job security of their employees as a major factor when making
business decisions – exactly in line with the global average. This year, 92% of HR teams will be taking
the initiative to communicate their talent strategy to employees, in line with the global trend towards
strategic alignment. Additionally, almost 99% plan to run town hall meetings, webinars and feedback
sessions with their leaders to help communicate their strategy to employees and keep their people informed
What Top Employers in the Asia Pacific region are doing best
99% communicate their strategy via town halls, webinars and feedback sessions with their employees
95% have implemented gender equality measures in support of diversity
83% formally facilitate social learning (77% global), up 7% from last year
82% ask their business leaders to play an active role in promoting the use of internal social media platforms
80% make information about career and succession management available to all employees
70% maintain (internal/external) candidate communities to engage with interesting candidates for potential future opportunities
| Regional HR Trends Report 2019 34
Strategic alignment (continued)
and engaged. At the same time, fully 17% of leading employers in Asia admit they are not consistent
in the way they communicate to their people about how their business strategy will affect long-term
workforce needs. This suggests a substantial gap between the desire to move towards a culture of greater
transparency and the reality of senior management still wanting to control the flow of information.
Culture of transparency
The move towards transparency is definitely happening in Asia Pacific – but it is coming along at a
relatively slower pace than in the rest of the world. On the positive side, 89% of leading employers in
the region provide insights for employees on their compensation, up 9% from last year. Moreover,
80% of leading organisations endeavour to make information about the career and succession
management cycle available to all employees, up from 70% last year, well ahead of the global
average of 68%.
Yet even though more information is flowing from the top down, employees do not appear to enjoy
as many opportunities to give bottom-up feedback as they do in other parts of the world. When it
comes to engagement, for example, most Top Employers in the region (59%) continue to conduct
their engagement survey on a biannual basis, meaning long gaps without insights into how their
people are feeling about change. Worse, only 11% of Top Employers in the region actively involve
their employees in developing action plans consistently and just 19% use focus groups to align on
improvement of those action plans. As always, leaders are role models for the kind of culture they want
to see in their organisations. Here we also see room for more transparency.
Only one in six Top Employers in APAC encourage their leaders to share their personal objectives with
their teams, versus one in four globally. HR teams have room to become more transparent, too, as only
73% consistently engage employees in the design of their HR practices, meaning that many HR
departments are still operating in silos.
Asia Pacific
of leading employers in APAC provide insights for employees into their compensation, up 9% from last year
89%
| Regional HR Trends Report 2019 35
Adapting to change faster
Leading employers in Asia have seen their business models get turned upside down thanks to the
spectacular growth of the past decade, which drives a belief that “change is good!”. That is a phrase we
often hear when we speak with employers in the region.
Perhaps as a result, leading organisations in APAC seem to be willing to try out new “cutting-edge”
HR practices that have not yet gained as much traction in other regions. As an example, 42% of Top
Employers in Asia now operate a formal pre-boarding programme for new hires versus only 32%
globally. And 87% of the region’s Top Employers make sure managers and employees have regular
dialogues on performance and development, versus 73% globally. In the area of learning, we have
seen a major increase in the percentage of APAC’s leading employers who formally facilitate social
learning as part of their organisations’ learning strategies: 83% of Top Employers in the region now do
this, compared with 77% globally. Likewise, we have seen an increase of 5% in the number of Top
Employers that support or incentivise their employees to create (social) learning materials.
One of the most impressive areas of change is diversity. Whereas Asian Top Employers once used to
be quite sceptical of the benefits of gender diversity, now fully 95% of Top Employers in the region
are undertaking gender equality measures to support diversity. This figure is much higher than
the global percentage, which is 87%. All of this data shows that Asia is an incredibly dynamic region
catching up fast with trends that started in other parts of the worlds a few year ago. We can surely expect
to see Top Employers in the region at the forefront of driving new HR trends in the years to come.
Asia Pacific | Regional HR Trends Report 2019 36
of APAC’s Top Employers make sure managers and employees have regular dialogues on performance and development
87%
What Top Employers in Africa are doing best
95% support cross-functional networking
92% undertake equality measures to support diversity
91% communicate their talent strategy to their people
50% measure the candidate experience in talent acquisition
African Top Employers are keenly aware of the global trends reshaping HR. The pace of change is happening quickly despite the unique market realities and challenges.
Africa | Regional HR Trends Report 2019 37
With over 1 billion potential customers, Africa is a vital source of future growth for global companies.
Indeed, a sizeable number of Top Employers in the region are Western-owned; multinationals
that have made a strategic choice to invest in the continent over the long term. If these strategies are
executed successfully, increased profitability is the prize on offer. Yet doing business in Africa comes with
a complex set of challenges. Volatile politics, difficulties in accessing talent, infrastructure challenges, and
the need to sometimes work “out of the box” are just a few of the issues that will be causing sleepless
nights for business (and HR) leaders over the year to come.
Strategic alignment
Sluggish economic performance is putting a brake on the ambitious growth plans of many organisations
in Africa. As a result, leading organisations face the challenge of keeping their people informed about
how readjusted growth strategies will have an impact on their workforce needs. In this context, it is
good to see that 91% of Top Employers in Africa now take the initiative to communicate their talent
strategy to their people, a rise of 10% on last year. Aware of the headwinds on the economic front, HR
leadership teams argue the case that retaining talent during the current economic slowdown will help their
Strategic alignment (continued)
organisations to have “boots on the ground”
when growth picks up again. However, the talent
mix within leading organisations in Africa is a
double-edged sword. The difficulties of finding
worldclass local talent in some industries has
led to a higher rate of contingent workers and
independent contractors (up to almost 50% in
some companies) meaning that these workers will
be easy to let go during bad times.
This context may explain why over the past year,
55% of Top Employers in Africa have made a
formal taxonomy of their strategic HR metrics,
higher than the global average of 49%, as this
helps them to argue for extra resources from
their global headquarters – or at least to protect
the resources they already have.
Culture of transparency
Top Employers in Africa are very people-focused. They place a huge amount of emphasis on teamwork
and collaboration, and oral communication is typically the preferred method for leaders to keep their
team members informed and engaged. Even though organisations share more information with their
people than ever before, internal company politics seem to be slowing down the move towards full
transparency. For example, only 77% of African Top Employers freely share information with their
people about the politically sensitive topic of compensation and benefits, compared to 83% globally.
Also hampering the move towards full transparency is the fact that Top Employers in Africa are not
quite as processoriented as they are in other places of the world.
For example, while the vast majority of Top Employers globally focus their talent acquisition metrics on
process-related aspects like time-to-hire, around 50% of Top Employers in Africa prefer to measure
the “candidate experience”, which is more qualitative in nature. Likewise with engagement, only
76% of Top Employers in Africa consistently measure employee engagement through formal survey
tooling, whereas 88% of leading organisations globally do this. There is certainly still room for
improvement in the drive towards transparency across the continent.
of African Top Employers have made a formal taxonomy of their strategic HR metrics
of African Top Employers freely share information with their people about compensation and benefits (83% globally)
55%
77%
Africa | Regional HR Trends Report 2019 38
Adapting to change faster
With all of the business challenges and opportunities on the horizon, the good news is that leading
organisations in Africa are learning from best practices in other parts of the world and
applying them to the local context.
For example, leading employers across the continent are finally starting to address previously
“untouched” areas of HR such as diversity. Fully nine in ten Top Employers across the continent are now
undertaking equality measures to improve gender diversity and youth talent.
Likewise, the practice of “social learning” seems to be picking up speed, having risen by 10% over
the past year. As an example of that, 95% of Top Employers in African countries now encourage
cross-functional networking, a practice that delivers positive outcomes for individuals and for
organisations. And there is also good news in the area of business ethics. Fully 92% of Top Employers
have introduced a formal code of conduct for their staff as part of the efforts to eliminate corruption
when dealing with governments and public officials, although this is still below the global average of
98%, indicating there is still room for improvement in this area.
All of these trends illustrate the unique challenges facing Top Employers in Africa. They need to bring
their business practices up to world-class standards. Yet they also need to grasp new opportunities based
on current market realities. Ultimately, success depends on conserving the knowhow they already have,
retaining a healthy degree of pragmatism, while building additional capabilities that will allow them to be
successful in the future.
Africa | Regional HR Trends Report 2019 39
offer their staff training about ethics and legal compliance as part of their efforts to eliminate corruption
92%
The data quoted in this report was captured through the Top Employers Institute’s “HR Best Practices Survey”.This detailed framework covers 9 main topics on Core HR activities and offering and 10 topics related to Company culture.
Methodology | Regional HR Trends Report 2019 40
• Those topics from the HR Practices Survey are analysed under five Performance areas, from strategy
to practices, to ownership, to measurement and technology
• Over 1500 certified companies have documented their own HR practices under this framework and
have been certified
• The auditors from the Top Employers Institute have validated the information submitted by each
participant
• Our analysis are then objective and fact-based, compare to other talent trend surveys based more on
perceptions and questions asked to HR professionals
• Furthermore, this research reflects organisations from all over the world, as the data contains
information from Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific and Africa
The Certification Programme consists of four main stages
The HR Best Practices Survey consists of 10 topics
1. Survey 2. Validation 3. Certification 4. Feedback
Talent strategy
Performance management
Workforceplanning
Leadership development
Talent aquisition
Career & succesion
management
On-boarding
Compensation & benefits
Learning & development
Culture
Benoit MontetInternational HR Expert
Eric MorelloInternational HR audit manager
Chloé GesretInternational HR Auditor, France
Lauren PotgieterGlobal Content Marketing Manager
Irene MartínezHR Research Project Manager, Spain
Ammara NaeemSenior International HR auditor, Netherlands
Nathalie MédardHR Auditor, Germany
Benoit is a HR leader with more than 20 years of
international experience. An ISO committee member,
he assists HR masters as well as teacher and students
and is a regular speaker at industry events. Having
worked in leadership roles across various industries,
he has a deep insight into the application of HR best
practices and trends.
A seasoned HR professional, Eric has delivered a
wide range of projects over more than 20 years at
international companies including 15 years at UBS.
His key fields of expertise include talent acquisition,
talent management, performance, employee
engagement and culture change.
Chloe joined Top Employers Institute 3 years ago.
Her previous roles and responsibilities include
experience in a global organisation on topics such
as employee engagement, diversity, ethics, well-
being and social reporting. Her research paper
explored the link between employee well-being
and loyalty to the organisation.
A marketing and communications professional
with 12+ years of advertising experience, Lauren
previously worked for various brands and agencies
in South Africa before joining the Top Employers
Institute in 2018.
An expert in Human Resources with more than
20 years of experience in Talent Development,
Professional Brand, Employer branding and Employee
Value Proposal (EVP). Her book “Professional brand,
how to be outstanding, relevant and different”
was published in 2014. Lecturer and speaker at
congresses, conferences and business schools.
An MBA graduate with 7+years of HR experience,
Ammara previously worked for international
companies on the strategic design of HR
processes, recruitment, people policies and
succession planning. Having lived and worked in
several countries around the globe, a variety of
organisational cultures always catch her attention.
With a Masters in Work and Organisational
Psychology and working experience in talent
acquisition, onboarding, wellbeing and also
B2B Sales, Nathalie worked for various
international companies before joining the
Top Employers Institute in 2017.
| HR Trends Report 2019 41Contributors
The Top Employers Institute Report was brought to you by:
Research:
Benoit Montet, Eric Morello, Chloe Gesret,
Ammara Naeem, Irene Martinez, Nathalie Medard
Copy and Marketing:
Lauren Potgieter and Greenline Communications
Design:
Renderintent
If your organisation is not yet a Top Employer, you can visit our website for more information on the
Certification Programme. Here you will also find details on the programme benefits, insights from
the world’s Top Employers and details on upcoming events. www.top-employers.com
For general information and queries, email [email protected]
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