Top 5 Priorities for HR Leaders in 2022 | Gartner

In early 2021, I developed a reference, “2021 HR Priorities: A Summarized View of Nine Sources,” to help practitioners distill the various insights into one view. I linked most collective priorities to Culture, DEI, Employee Wellbeing, Digital Transformation, and Reskilling. As we enter the last months of 2021, new reports will emerge on 2022 priorities, including Gartner’s, which just published its top five. For 59% of HR leaders, the top priority is “building critical skills and competencies for the organization.” This priority emphasizes 1) Firms are basing their talent strategies around skills, not just roles, to enable a more adaptive workforce. 2) Organizations face challenges in predicting the skills needed because of the speed at which skills change. For example, nearly one in three skills needed for a job in 2018 will not be required by 2022. And while labor market and AI-based platforms can help predict needed skills, a few questions to ask at your next team meeting are: What skills are becoming more important, less critical, and obsolete in our organization as well as the external market? How do these answers change depending on different scenarios our organization may face, a point I emphasized in a written Q&A interview with HR Exchange Network. What combination of build, buy, borrow, bot strategies would we employ under each scenario, factoring in costs, speed, impact, and viability? The answers will crystalize your team’s thinking around this priority and help determine the next steps.