Backed by the latest HowNow and Lattice research, this episode takes you through four realistic HR trends for 2024.

No gimmicks, just proven tactics for more impact in the year to come.

Here's where you can learn more about HowNow and Lattice.
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Timestamps‍

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0:00 Intro to HowNow and Lattice
4:26 The issue with career conversations
10:54 Having better career conversations
18:19 Flexible working in 2024
29:03 The shift from hiring to upskilling
38:54 What AI means for HR and L&D
42:34 Recapping 2024 HR Trends
43:28 Putting this into practice
50:26 Q&A
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Five key lessons from Data-Backed HR Trends For 2024

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1. Creating effective career paths and conversations has to be high on the 2024 agenda.

75% of employees would prefer to advance at their current company but only 48% currently see a path.

But when Lattice asked 1,000 employees a list of which 14 factors were offered by their employers, career conversations, career paths, and development budget came bottom.

And while it might look like career conversations ended up on the back burner, it could simply be a case of HR having to prioritise other areas.

“It's not that it's no longer important in the business, but with everything that's been going on in the world, HR teams have had to index on areas that needed additional focus.

“HR teams are trying to grapple with the development of a high-performance culture in the workplace, but they've also got to support teams through factors like the cost of living crisis or the fact that they need more flexibility to be able to achieve a balance between work and home.” - Jules Strong, VP Marketing & Insights, Lattice

According to some upcoming Lattice research, half of HR leaders stated that talent development would be a key part of building a high-performance culture in 2024.

“As we go into 2024, there's a real opportunity to simply make growth part of our DNA and to make it part of the day to day business.” - Jules Strong, VP Marketing & Insights, Lattice
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2. Employees need flexibility to do their best work, and we need to refine that in 2024.

In Lattice’s research, flexibility came second in the top five factors employees need to do their best work.

The flexibility conversation might have kicked into gear around 2020 and COVID-19, but it’s still very much a work in progress and constantly evolving for many companies.

“Flexible working is still very much evolving, and it is absolutely linked to trust and autonomy; autonomy for the employee and trust within the business.

“And that also played out in the research. So feeling trusted by managers was actually the most significant motivating factor for employees over flexible working, which is really telling.” - Jules Strong, VP Marketing & Insights, Lattice

So, even companies that feel they have a handle on flexibility need to be agile and focused on creating the right environment for flexible working to work in 2024.

Jules’ best tip? Pivoting to a results-oriented culture. Rather than evaluating performance on the number of hours people work or how present/visible they are, make output the focal point.
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3. Visibility is critical to trust, autonomy and preventing burnout

“It's really, really important that managers and execs have visibility into individual and team performance. I think when managers feel like they're in the dark or they don't understand what people are working on or what they're achieving, that's a ripe breeding ground for mistrust.

“And it's also a ripe breeding ground for employees feeling like they need to respond to messages quickly. They need to be always on, always available, and that's just such a big factor in burnout.” - Jules Strong, VP Marketing & Insights, Lattice
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4. 2024 should see a shift from hiring to upskilling

Udemy’s top seven surging skills for workplace and human resources were dominated by recruitment and hiring, meaning content on those topics saw the biggest increase in consumption.

But we’re in a period of talent shortage, with six open roles for every qualified person - so although we need strong hiring skills for the competitive landscape, we can’t put all our eggs in one basket.

Jules shared a CBI stat that 30% of businesses said they couldn't grow over the last 12 months because they didn't have the right skills.

They could see the demand, but they couldn't go out and capitalise on it because they didn't have the right people and skills in the right roles.

“If you have a strategy and a path in your business to upskill your top talent, your highest performers, that's naturally going to drive more motivation, more satisfaction.

“And those people are going to feel more committed to their roles and to your company because you're investing in that area. And that's just such a natural tie into a high performance culture.” - Jules Strong, VP Marketing & Insights, Lattice
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5. HR needs to use AI intentionally and to solve real problems

People across your business are already using AI. The challenge is working out how and where and understanding where AI can solve real business problems.

“The additional component is how HR can use those AI tools in their own day to day work. And I think there's a huge amount of potential there for improving productivity, for taking away all of those manual and repetitive tasks that we know can creep into an HR leader's day.

“To take away some of that time wasted in starting blank sheet projects… there's many potential applications there. What we're hearing from HR leaders is that AI is never going to be a way to replace people and programs, it’s all about optimisation and efficiency.” - Jules Strong, VP Marketing & Insights, Lattice

More than three quarters of the HR teams that Lattice recently spoke to said that they were discussing AI and looking at ways to use it. But only about a third of them have actually started evaluating solutions. 

Highlighting that we’re really still in that early phase, and how impactful AI can be will really depend on each team and the problems they need to solve.

At HowNow, we’re on a mission to empower people with the skills, knowledge, and mindset to be successful at what they do. 

And our company values underpin that. They’re the foundation for how we do things at HowNow and will be crucial as we continue to grow.

In the early days, the company values were founder-driven. 

Today, they’ve been shaped by our people. Here’s the story of how we did it and the values we built together.
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Shaping our values as a team

In September 2022, HowNow’s Mumbai and London offices came together for our Turkey Team Retreat - a week that gave us time to unwind and build stronger relationships.

Together, we ran a workshop in which we collectively identified the values and behaviours we associate with ourselves and see in each other. 

We kicked off by writing down the traits we admired about our teammates on sticky notes and giving them out, moving into small groups to build out a pitch for our company values.

Everyone got a fair chance to present their ideas and were able to discuss them as a group.

That process created the seven core values below:

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From creating processes and giving rewards to decision-making and recruitment, our goal is to build those values into every single thing we do. The idea of creating them together was that we could hold each other accountable to living by them. 
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What those values mean to our people

Fast forward to 2023, with lots of new people in the building, we felt it was the right time to speak with the team to hear what the values meant to them and ways that we demonstrate them in our day-to-day work. 

Every new HowNow’er will have demonstrated that they align with our values during the interview process - it’s our way of strengthening our company culture as we scale and ensuring that you’re right for us, and equally, we’re right for you 🫱🏼‍🫲🏿

We also feel that demonstrating these values produces the best outcomes for our customers and will continue us on our journey of making a market-leading learning platform. 

If our values resonate with you, take a look at our open opportunities here.

Backed by the latest research, Nelson and Gary take you through 5 realistic L&D trends for 2024. No gimmicks, just proven tactics for more impact in the year to come.

From using AI intentionally, aligning with your organisation’s goals and upskilling people for the future, you’ll want to hear this conversation.

‍Download The 2024 L&D Trends Report here

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Five takeaways that'll help you prepare for L&D impact in 2024

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‍1. L&D teams need to get closer to company goals.

Between 2021 and 2023, the number of L&D teams who said they were aligned to the organisational and people priorities dropped from 77% to 67%.

And we can absolutely empathise with busy L&D teams who are jumping from dealing with drastic change or a big fire to be put out.

But is that causing us to focus on easy output rather than business impact?

“So I think that, under the pressure, we're leaning on doing the easiest things to do rather than the things that are going to have the biggest impact. 

“And that's actually making the problem worse because the company looks at it and thinks you're not adding any value. And therefore we're either going to cut your budget or we're going to push your budget.” - Nelson Sivalingam. 

‍2. Skills-first L&D works, just ask Deloitte.

Nelson shared a recent story from Deloitte, who moved from content-first learning to a skills-first approach.

“They saw a 37% increase in employee retention. Why? Because what employees want to know is whether they are building the skills they need to be able to progress in their career? 

“And the reality is you talking about content completion and time spent learning doesn't answer the question they need to answer. Skills, however, allows us to align directly to the business objectives.” - Nelson Sivalingam.

Why? Because we can look at the business objectives and ask these questions: 

• Does the business have the skills required to achieve that business objective? 
• Which skills are missing? 
• And now how do I align that learning to the skills that we need to bridge that gap?

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‍3. If you don’t help people build skills, they’ll do it elsewhere - even at their own cost

In a tight economic market, we’d normally see higher unemployment rates but that hasn’t happened this time.

We’re actually seeing some of the highest demand for talent we’ve ever seen.

So, if people aren’t growing and progressing at your company, they’ll take their talents elsewhere.

“Now is the best time for the people with the right skills if you're not supporting their career growth. Because they can keep walking until they find a company that is going to support their growth. 

“And because there's so much opportunity out there, it really puts the pressure on companies to help them build the skills they need.” - Nelson Sivalingam.

And if you don’t help them grow, get out the way because they will do it themselves:

In the last 12 months, 57% of employees paid for external learning content out of their own pocket (edX).

“How can it be that we've got to a situation where employees are spending outside of the organisation to build their skills and go elsewhere?

“McKinsey found that only 12% of employees reported using any of the skills they got from internal L&D, and that shows a lot of wastage. 88% didn't acquire any relevant skills as a result of what was on offer. 

“So, as L&D teams, we really need to ask ourselves some serious questions about whether what we’re doing helps people build skills and drives impact!” - Nelson Sivalingam.

‍4. Forget about ROI, think about COI = the cost of inaction

By not doing anything and not helping your people build the skills they need, you might find your best talent leaving. 

We can put a cost to that!

If those people leave or we haven’t helped them build the right skills, there’s the cost of missed opportunity.

What about the cost of lost knowledge? Or the cost of re-learning that?

“Picture that cost of not doing anything versus the cost of getting a solution in place to solve that problem, the cost of the solution is going to be a fraction. 

“Many L&D professionals tell me they sometimes find it hard to build an ROI story. Well, what I recommend to get your business case through the organisation is to talk about the cost of inaction to the business.” - Nelson Sivalingam.

‍5. Time is still a barrier to learning, here’s why…

Employees aren’t saying they don't have the time to learn, we know they’re learning outside of work.

They’re saying that they don't have time to learn for the sake of learning.

“They just haven't got the time to learn because you say it's important. And they want to understand what's in it for them…” - Nelson Sivalingam.

If they understand that, they’re more likely to be engaged.

If you start creating content with that skills-first approach and context in mind, you’ll deliver learning experiences that feel relevant and can be applied in the flow of work - breaking down time as a barrier.