We live in the age of knowledge work – it means that the most important assets of a business are no longer its material resources and properties, but the aggregated skills, experience and abilities of the people working for it. This means that economic growth in general and the development of businesses individually is directly dependent on how much they invest into and how well they manage their human capital. So what are the most important trends in this sphere that you should look out for in 2019? Let’s find out.
1. The growing importance of passive candidates
Hunt for passive candidates has always been an essential part of the recruitment process, especially for large and well-known companies trying to attract the best talent. Passive candidates are the ones who don’t actively look for a particular position but are considered for it. Recruiting a passive candidate may range from luring valuable employees away from a competitor to just getting in touch with a person and offering him a job. However, today’s proliferation of technology and social media means that finding and getting in touch with passive candidates is much easier than it used to be – and it is going to grow even more in 2019.
2. Increasing rates of health investment
People are fragile creatures whose bodies get out of whack for the slightest reason – which means that even if a company does its best to attract the best talent, further develop it and retain it for itself, all this investment may be lost because of the employee’s poor health. This is why companies are paying greater and greater attention to the physical condition of their employees, from monitoring their lifestyle choices to make sure they stay healthy to assisting in getting more exotic treatments like HGH prescription drugs. Companies that no longer look at their employees as easily replaceable but strive to invest into them and protect their investment are going to lead the way in future.
3. A growing share of the remote workforce
Telecommuting is hardly a new thing – this trend has been gaining greater and greater prevalence for years now, and American companies are getting ever more accepting of this new culture. Over the last two decades, the number of employees who work at least part of the time remotely has quadrupled and reached 37 percent of the entire workforce in the United States. For business owners this means not just that they can save on office space – in addition to that, they get access to the global talent market because they can hire people living virtually anywhere. And, last but not least, these people are going to have better job satisfaction due to a better life/work balance.
4. Blind hiring
Even if a hiring manager doesn’t hold a conscious bias against any demographic group, certain pieces of data about a candidate (age, gender, race, etc.) still can influence the hiring decision, for all of us have subtle inclinations to consider certain demographic groups better or worse at particular jobs, even if we aren’t aware of it. The ever-growing tendency is to remove any demographic information from the hiring process altogether to make it purely blind and based only on talent and ability. This is going to be the standard in 2019.
These are the trends that any business owner should make sure to watch over in 2019. Most of them continue the evolutionary changes that began long ago, but it is very likely that they are going to become even more important for the next years – which means that now it’s high time to catch up!
