Ways HR Leaders Can Prioritize and Reprioritize Talent Initiatives | Gartner

HR Effectiveness

HR teams are well underway in executing their organizations’ 2023 talent priorities. However, priorities can change quickly as business needs and circumstances shift. One recent example of how the needs of the business can shift is the layoffs and job cuts that several organizations have announced since the beginning of the year—something that I have started to track in this 2023 Layoff and Job Cuts Tracker. 

As HR leaders and their teams face decisions to reprioritize talent initiatives throughout 2023, this Gartner article titled— Build a Winning Talent Strategy for the New Talent Landscape— includes a talent initiative prioritization matrix (p.8) for making these choices based on two factors:

  1. The potential business impact of the talent initiative on creating organizational value.
  2. Complexity and investment — the level of coordination and support required (complexity) and the degree to which the initiative requires resources or adjustments to team responsibilities (investment).

From these two factors, four types of initiatives emerge—ranging from Actionable Initiatives to Parking Lot Initiatives. Although many HR teams are unlikely to shift priorities this early in the year, they can refer to this prioritization tool (and incorporate other decision factors unique to their org) when faced with those choices.

In case you missed it from Decemberhere is my one-page summary of 2023 Workforce and HR priorities according to seven sources.