Top 10 Challenges Strategic CHROs Face in 2024

1. Running a successful hybrid work model

CHROs who successfully build a flexible, hardworking hybrid culture will not only raise productivity but also have a hybrid work story that can help attract and retain talent—a critical asset in a market where, according to LinkedIn’s 2022 Marketing Jobs Outlook survey, 87% of employees want to remain remote most of the time.

Here are three steps that can help CHROs create a successful hybrid work model.

• Seek employee perspectives. Hybrid work puts different pressures on different employees. For example, remote employees enjoy flexibility and freedom from commutes but can feel isolated from company culture and overlooked by managers— 62% of whom, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), feel remote workers are less involved and easier to replace than onsite colleagues. In-office workers, on the other hand, can feel their days lack the flexibility of their remote colleagues.
  
  CHROs and their teams should proactively solicit employee feedback through surveys and feedback sessions, then use that feedback to help create a culture where both remote and onsite employees can thrive.
• Stay flexible to widen your talent pool. In 2024, use the flexibility of remote or hybrid work to expand your talent pipeline into new geographies. If you’re having difficulty filling a full-time role, explore less-competitive talent markets and use the prospect of remote work to attract new candidates. Also, consider whether a position could be filled by a part-time worker or a contractor. Be willing to rethink a position’s structure and adapt it for the right person.
• Communicate clearly with executives and employees. Part of a CHRO’s job is to provide well-researched work policies for fellow C-level leaders so they can communicate with their teams about what’s expected. For example, is the best hybrid work policy three days in the office and two at home? Whatever arrangement makes sense for an organization, CHROs should set it in writing and let people know. All policy announcements will likely get some blowback, but in the end, it’s less stressful to manage these changes when executives and staff know exactly what’s expected.

2. Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion

By now, most CHROs know that diverse perspectives make for better ideas and stronger teams. And their experience is backed by a recent report from for the 2022 World Economic Forum meeting, which suggests diverse teams significantly outperform homogeneous ones over time in terms of profitability and employee engagement.

The challenge in 2024 is to make diversity endemic to the organization. For that, a CHRO will need good data on workforce diversity, including analysis on how diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) affects talent acquisition and employee attrition and retention. To acquire these kinds of insights, CHROs will need human capital management (HCM) software that helps them understand their organization’s DE&I status. More than tracking ROI, it should also make it easy to show compliance with local and national regulations around DE&I and help the organization create a DE&I culture that attracts and retains workers.

3. Developing organizational culture

In 2024, potential recruits will look beyond compensation to the culture they’ll be joining if they sign on. In this environment, the employee experience can no longer be a by-product of talent strategy—it must drive talent strategy.

CHROs should look to build organizations that foster deeper connections among employees and recognize their hard work and their social impact.

• Make it easy for employees to find each other. One key way to accomplish this is to help your employees find or form affinity groups.
• Recognize achievements. A vibrant program for recognizing performance at work can help inspire a positive culture. According to 68% of HR managers in a recent SHRM survey, it can also improve retention and recruiting.
• Help employees tell their stories. Provide a place online and content expertise to help employees share their positive experiences at work in their own words.

4. Hiring and retaining talent

One of a CHRO’s chief responsibilities is to find and keep the right people in the roles needed to meet an organization’s goals. But recruiting challenges are growing and competition for labor remains fierce. Economists polled by Reuters found that going into 2024 there were still 1.74 jobs for every unemployed person in the US.

To keep pace in this competitive environment, CHROs need to reach beyond traditional hiring and recruitment practices—such as internal recruitment, job postings, and college outreach—and explore new methods.

For example, more HR organizations are embracing remote recruitment events and hiring practices. Virtual hiring events are particularly helpful for reaching large groups of people. And since enabling hybrid and remote work is also a best practice for 2024—according to researchers at Wharton—virtual events allow the HR team to reach less-competitive markets where untapped talent may live.

A good enterprise recruiting system will help the HR team promote online events, track registrations, and prescreen attendees to help identify great candidates. Their human capital management system should give HR teams a platform that helps them interact with new talent and pass promising applicants through to hiring and onboarding platforms.

5. Upskilling, reskilling, and developing employees

According to a report by remote staffing firm OutStaffer.com, analysts believe the global skills shortage will continue through 2024—with 75% of employers continuing to report challenges finding skilled and qualified employees to fill vacancies. One solution: Develop talent internally. Give employees a path to learn new skills and the resources to succeed.

Upskilling and training managers can have the greatest pay off in terms of employee happiness and retention. Leaders and managers must be trained and empowered with tools and strategies to help them build a positive, supportive workplace. These can include simple things such as regular check-ins with team members or facilitating learning and growth opportunities. An HCM platform can serve as a knowledgebase for managers that guides them to relevant learning and development opportunities—for themselves and their team members—both within and outside of the organization.

6. Engaging employees

CHROs know that engaged employees are the backbone of an organization that performs well; an engaged workforce can lead to 17% higher productivity and 21% higher sales, according to a recent Gallup poll. And 2024 is the year organizations stop waiting for things to “return to normal” around the office and start building an HR organization with remote and hybrid workers in mind.

When an employee is engaged at work, beyond merely satisfied, they’re emotionally invested in their own performance and that of their team. In short, they’re willing to go the extra mile to serve their colleagues and customers. Here are three ways CHROs can help employees, whether they’re remote, in the office, or in the field.

• Simplify core HR functions. The organization will benefit from anything CHROs can do to build a simple, efficient onboarding process that provides new employees with the support they need to complete assigned tasks and reach scheduled milestones. Expecting new employees to navigate complex onboarding procedures without guidance and support sends the wrong message about how your organization views their time.
• Encourage feedback. Often remote employees don’t have casual conversations with team members who can help them know if they’re doing a good job or give them the inside track on team dynamics. CHROs can help by encouraging managers to hold more-regular teamwide meetings to connect with employees and help them understand how their work supports broader company goals. They can also help by providing an HCM system that enables two-way communication through multiple channels, such as individual and team pulse surveys, check-ins, and tools for recognizing accomplishments.
• Promote remote growth. When a remote employee feels like they’re growing professionally or personally, they’re much more likely to stay at their organization and go above and beyond for colleagues and customers.

7. Reviewing HR processes and hiring workflows

As social and work environments continue to evolve in 2024, CHROs must help their HR teams adapt. Improving remote hiring processes and workflows can help organizations overcome the ongoing skills shortage. The CHRO should help their HR teams design and implement hiring processes that avoid practices such as adding unnecessary assessments, judging gaps in an applicant’s job history, and posting unrealistic role requirements, all of which can result in needlessly turning away promising candidates—or deterring them from applying at all.

From hiring to assessing performance, through the entire employee experience, an enterprise human capital management platform can help a CHRO redesign the HR function around best practices. It might, for example, guide an HR team to seek candidates based on soft skills rather than undergraduate degrees or re-examine roles to see if traditionally in-person jobs—a field technician, for example—could complete paperwork remotely. The HCM application can also guide the interview process, helping schedule interviews with candidates, from early “job fit” interviews to deeper skills test interviews, and providing transparency with regular communication along the way.

8. Discipline and Dispute Management

If recent history is any indication, CHROs will continue to grapple with challenges and uncertainty in 2024. HR leaders can take proactive steps to deal with uncertainty and create processes that ensure stability for their organization. Here are two ideas for how a CHRO can help their organization ride out uncertain periods.

Use data and analytics to make quick decisions. A CHRO with a trusted analytics team can combine business intelligence, market research, predictive analytics, and even employee feedback to understand which sources yield the best candidates, how long it takes to hire a candidate, and what it costs to attract, select, and onboard each new hire. And thanks to technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, which are often built into enterprise HR software, a CHRO has an unprecedented opportunity to be proactive, rather than reactive, in uncertain times.

Ensure employees are engaged and ready to think on their feet. CHROs are expected to provide continuity and respond with agility to ongoing change. But incomplete, complex, and siloed systems prevent visibility, slow decision-making, and make it difficult to roll out businesswide changes. A single, comprehensive solution in the cloud can provide a full view of the business and give HR teams the ability to make changes quickly, tailor the system to meet employees’ evolving needs, and access new functionalities when they need them.

9. Choosing and onboarding new technologies

HR teams use a lot of software, from a selection of modules in a core HCM platform to separate best-of-breed software packages for project and document management and many other functions. Before new technology can begin paying off, however, it needs to be onboarded and accepted by the organization.

The CHRO should be at the heart of the process. Start by defining exactly what the module or piece of software must do and make sure it does it. Next, engage employees who will be using the software, and consider creating a task force of team members to help you identify any customizations required to meet the needs of specific business functions.

Once the software has been implemented and the task force members are satisfied, it's time to get buy-in from the rest of the organization. This step will take time and persistence; consistent messaging, official training, ambassadors who can share their experiences, and, eventually, recognition and even awards for regular participation can help fully embed the technology throughout the organization. Only then can the CHRO start measuring and celebrating the ROI.

10. Preparing for succession

According to a late 2022 survey of HR benefits managers by BenefitsPRO, the competition for talent will continue in 2024. As a result, more employees at every level are weighing their professional options and, in some cases, choosing to move on, sometimes with very little warning. As the head of HR, the CHRO plays an integral role in identifying promising individuals and preparing them to assume leadership roles.

In 2024, the CHRO must balance several factors when forming a succession plan, such as understanding workforce dynamics in remote teams, developing criteria to evaluate potential successors in different geographies, and gaining leadership buy-in. With a well-rounded strategy and transparent procedures, businesses can ensure smooth transitions and find candidates that are ready to fill executive positions now and in the future.