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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.


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 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.


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.


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


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.


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.


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


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.


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


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


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%


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


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.


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.


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%


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.


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.


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


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!


“Ensuring new hires meet

long-term capability needs”

is the number one talent

acquisition priority for Top

Employers in North America


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%


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.


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


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.


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


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%


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



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.


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%



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


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.


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%



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.


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]

Copyright : Top Employers Institute *

* All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

Top Employers Institute Headquarters

Mondriaan Tower, 17th floor

Amstelplein 36

1096 BC Amsterdam

The Netherlands

Interested in getting certified as a Top Employer?

If you are not yet participating in our research but you feel like your organisation is at the top of its

field, we invite you to get in touch with us. Becoming certified as a Top Employer will position your

organisation as a leader in people practices. As a recognised Top Employer, you are provided with

branding, benchmarking, alignment and connection tools to further build and solidify your position

as an employer of choice.

https://www.top-employers.com

mailto:marketing%40top-employers.com?subject=

https://www.top-employers.com/en/contact-us/

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