A guide to HR predictions, trends, and forecasts

The internet contains thousands of forecasts about the future of HR. Lists of HR predictions and trends sprout up every year like mushrooms after a spring rain. Forecasts exist on things as broad as the overall future of work to as narrow as the future of background check automation technology.  For several years, I compiled hundreds of HR predictions into a review called the “wine-bottle index”.  This placed forecasts into categories and rated them based on whether they were truly new things or simply “old wine in new bottles”.  The wine-bottle index morphed into the SAP HR Meta-trends report which uses generative AI to do the same thing but with less humor. RedThread Research publishes a similar summary of HR Mega trends. And I suspect before long someone will create a HR Mega-Meta trends summary summarizing summaries of HR trends. This proliferation of HR predictions poses a challenge to HR leaders who want to create future-forward strategies but don’t want to read endless lists of trends. And do not want to rely solely on predictions made by a few individuals or companies that represent just one perspective regarding the future of HR. This prompted me to write this guide on how to sift through HR predictions. The following eight lessons are based on reading literally thousands of HR forecasts over the years. 

1.        HR forecasts are about finding new solutions to familiar problems.

2.        Most HR forecasts are designed to influence buying behavior

3.        HR predictions often use new terms to describe existing issues

4.        HR predictions are based more on speculation than science 

5.        The most influential HR trends are often the hardest to predict

6.        Predictions based on HR technology often take years to unfold

7.        Predictions based on “science” are often overblown and can be damaging

8.        Making effective use of HR predictions depends on how you approach the challenge

1)HR forecasts are about finding new solutions to familiar problems. The primary purpose of HR is to ensure an organization is employing people who are able and willing to execute the company’s strategy while controlling headcount costs and meeting ethical standards and legal requirements. HR is about people, and the fundamental psychology of people changes little from one generation to the next. As a result, the core challenges of HR are fairly constant. How companies practice HR may radically change, but it is always about designing jobs, hiring people, developing employee capabilities, increasing workforce performance, retaining talent, complying with regulations, reducing operating costs, and building cultures. One way to make sense of HR predictions is to interpret them relative to the constant, perennial HR challenges every company must solve.

2)Most HR forecasts are designed to influence buying behavior. Most HR predictions are directly or indirectly created, funded and promoted by vendors and consultants who have an interest in influencing how companies spend their HR budget. HR forecasts are often designed to convince HR leaders that their companies have or will soon face problems that can be solved using certain kinds of solutions and services. For example, if a company sells employee engagement solutions, then their forecasts will emphasize things like talent attraction and retention that can be addressed through improving employee engagement. This does not mean HR forecasts are incorrect or insincere. But most come from people who have a commercially oriented perspective. There is nothing wrong with this!  It is called sales and marketing, and it drives growth of economies. But it is worth remembering the following question when you read HR forecasts, “who wrote this and what is their goal in sharing this information with me?”

3) HR forecasts often use new terms to describe existing issues. Building a healthy workforce is like a building a healthy body in the sense that it is not something that is ever truly accomplished. Instead, it is maintained by continuously paying attention to enduring issues. When it comes to our bodies, these issues are things like weight, flexibility, strength, and mental wellbeing. When it comes to workforces, issues include workforce planning, organizational design, candidate recruiting, workforce communication, skill development, employee engagement, change management, operational efficiency and HR cost control. The relative importance of these issues changes in response to economic conditions and employee and business stakeholder expectations, but they are never truly resolved. 

HR predictions often try to draw attention to certain issues by giving them clever names and acting as though they were something new. Examples include “quiet quitting” (aka, an aspect of engagement), “transparency” and “employee listening” (aka, methods for increasing communication), and “future ready workforce” (aka, everything companies are doing already but with more focus on the future). There may be value in giving familiar issues new names if it leads people to think about these issues in more productive ways. Nevertheless, many of these HR predictions are merely describing the world as it already is. To illustrate, here is an HR forecast that I could have made every year since I started working and that will still be relevant long after I am gone. The following seven issues will be top of mind for HR leaders next year: finding good talent, increasing workforce communication, strengthening employee engagement, building future ready skills, improving change management, optimizing operational efficiency, and reducing HR costs.

4) HR predictions are based more on speculation than science. A lot of HR forecasts are presented as research studies, but virtually none of them should be considered objective research. These studies are influenced by the goals of the researchers, or more specifically the goals of the people paying the researchers. This shapes the research design and data used to formulate HR predictions. HR forecast studies focus on what the researchers think is important about the future, which probably has more to do with their company’s goals than your company’s goals. This does not mean the studies are not valuable.  It does mean they are looking at the future of HR from a specific viewpoint that may not align with yours.

The data used in some HR forecasts can also be somewhat questionable. For example, a lot of HR forecast data comes from panel surveys. Researchers who rely on panel data often do not know who is responding to their surveys with any level of specificity.  They simply contract for data with a company that tells them something like “these are HR leaders from Fortune 1000 companies who are paid to complete the surveys”.  I often wonder, who are these HR leaders taking all these panel surveys?  Most HR leaders barely have enough time to complete surveys for their own company, let alone someone else’s.  

5)The most influential HR trends are often the hardest to predict. The greatest changes in HR occur when they are driven by customer needs instead of vendor marketing budgets. This occurs when businesses encounter problems they must solve but cannot solve with existing resources or programs.  There are two conditions when his happens, and neither are easy to predict.

• Disruptive socio-economic events.  Something happens in the external environment that forces companies to radically change how they manage people.  Examples include the shift to hybrid work caused by the COVID pandemic or the investment in HR data privacy caused by GDPR regulation in EMEA. 
• Disruptive technological innovations.  A technological innovation so profoundly alters work or labor markets that companies must adopt it to remain competitive.  Examples include the move to internet-based recruitment in 2000s or mobile enabled HR applications in the 2010s.

Disruptive socio-economic events are hard to predict because what makes them disruptive is their unexpected nature. Disruptive technological innovations are hard to predict because whether they are disruptive depends on how companies choose to use the technology. A potentially disruptive technological innovation may sit unused for years until a triggering event leads to rapid, widespread adoption. For example, the technology required to support hybrid work models existed for years before the COVID pandemic forced companies to adopt it in a widespread manner.

6) Predictions based on HR technology often take years to unfold. A few HR predictions tied to technological innovation have experienced exponential growth in adoption over the course of one or two years (e.g., generative AI). But most plod along for decades. For example, predictions were made in the early 2000s about HR moving to cloud technology.  Cloud technology has been steadily adopted since then, but many companies still use on-premise HR systems dating back to the 1990s. Similar examples can be found regarding predictions about blockchain, metaverse, and skill ontology technologies revolutionizing HR practices. Trends based on technological innovation follow slower trajectories compared to trends caused by disruptive events because they depend on companies choosing to invest in the potential of technology, as opposed to companies being forced to use technology to respond to external events they cannot control. 

7)Predictions based on “science” are often overblown and can be damaging. Being a behavioral scientist myself, it often saddens me when HR forecasts claim “behavioral science” shows companies must change how they manage people. Behavioral science is messy and rarely conclusively shows anything[1]. Every peer-review research article discusses why the study findings might not generalize to other settings. Problems can occur when companies radically change how they manage people based on questionable scientific advice.  Examples include past trends that used "science" to encourage companies to get rid of performance ratings only to damage procedural justice by decreasing transparency or embrace generational differences which increased ageism by  viewing people differently based on the year they were born. 

When you read a trend or forecast that claims to be based on a scientific discovery from the world of psychology, neuroscience or behavioral economics try to seek out an impartial professional from the field and get their opinion. Scientific research is valuable for challenging assumptions about workforce management and suggesting ways to improve workforce performance. But never do something solely because someone claims it is based on science. Nor should you accept the claims of any single researcher as being representative of their entire field. This includes academic professors who arguably spend more time marketing themselves than they do conducting actual research.

8) Making effective use of HR forecasts depends on how you approach the challenge The intention of this article is not to question the value of reading HR predictions and trends. Quite the contrary. After all, I do not just read these predictions, I also write them! The goal of the article is to enable better use of HR forecasts to guide business decisions while guarding against risks caused by their inherent limitations and biases. With that in mind, here are five specific suggestions on how to get the most value from HR trends, forecasts, and predictions:

• Start by identifying issues facing your own organization that deserve greater attention.  Before you read other people’s opinions about what they believe you should be thinking about, identify the most important issues currently facing your company. One way to do this is to list issues affecting your organization relative to each of the seven perennial HR challenges:  1) Are our jobs and organizations designed appropriately for the future? 2) Do we have the right processes in place to fill job roles with the right people?  3) Are we able to ensure employees can build the skills they need to meet our business needs? 4) Are we able to keep our talent engaged and focused on executing our business strategies? 5) Do we have the tools we need to manage current and future security and compliance risks?  6) Do we have the processes and technology we need to keep HR operating costs under budget?  7) Are our HR methods effectively supporting our core cultural goals and values?
• Cast a wide net when gathering forecast and trend data.  Never rely on a single organization or person’s view about the future of HR. Gather HR forecast data from different companies and consultancies. Try to collect forecasts from organizations that are competitors or have different, potentially conflicting perspectives on the market.
• Constructively challenge predictions. When appropriate, ask the authors of forecasts how they arrived at their conclusions. If they cite survey data, ask them for details about who completed the survey. Consider whether your organization was well represented in the data in terms of geography and industry.  The goal is not to challenge the accuracy of forecasts, but to determine whether the forecasts are likely to generalize to your company.
• Do not be afraid to ignore forecasts.  The main reason for reading HR forecasts is to inform HR strategies. A key part of setting a strategy is prioritizing some things as being more important than others. Just because an HR trend or prediction exists, does not mean it makes sense for a company to devote resources to address it.  For example, one company’s HR leadership team made an explicit decision to ignore trends focused on generational differences.  Their view was that although this was a big topic of conversation in the market, it was not the most important things for the company to focus on.
• Commit to doing something differently. HR forecasts help us imagine the future and think about how we need to adapt. No company could or would take action to respond to the thousands of HR predictions generated each year.  But every company should take action in response to some of them.  The question to ask when reading HR trends is not, “are there things we should be doing differently?”.  The question to ask is “what should we be doing differently based on the needs of the company and the shifts happening in the broader market?”

 Last, when thinking about the future of HR do not be afraid to challenge business leaders whether the way they managed people in the past is the right way to manage them in the future.  Are we doing things because they are effective, or simply doing them because they are familiar?  One benefit of HR forecasts is they can help leaders embrace the reality that companies must continuously adapt their HR methods or they will not have a future. 

[1] With the exception of extremely well-researched topics such as goal setting, procedural justice, or performance feedback.