New trends in personnel management

Reading time: ~5 minutes
Preface: An article for those who did not have time to visit the forum, wanted to listen to reports about HR and want to learn more about trends.

I always try to stay on top of the trend and have information about the latest technologies available to the market.
The Internet is, of course, wonderful, however, nothing can replace personal communication with colleagues from IT or related fields.

This year the event caught my attention GLOBAL TECH FORUM: DIGITIZATION OF BUSINESS PROCESSESwhich took place on September 26, 2024.

The first thing that caught my eye was good organization of the process.
Despite the large crowd of people, there was enough space for everyone, while the seats in all halls were approximately 80% filled.
To be fair, I was able to visit only 2 of the 4 halls.
It is possible that it was different in other rooms.

Of the minuses – the cafeteria’s capacity was clearly not enough 🙂
It was consistently 110% occupied, the tables were occupied and there was a line.

During the presentations, it was suggested to install an application that allowed free communication with participants and obtain information about speakers.
A link to it was also sent in the invitation cards in advance.
Interestingly, other events use themed chatbots for this purpose.

It is difficult to say which is more effective.
On the one side the application wins in UIyou can install anything and everything into it, but most likely it will be deleted after the event.
On the other side chatbot does not need to be installedin most cases, this is Telegram, which 99% of visitors to such events have.
As a result, his chance of removal is lower, i.e. you still have a channel of communication with possible consumers of services.

I was interested in performances on personnel management, training and motivationand this is one of the reasons why the event came into the spotlight.
Personnel management in a “job seeker market” is a popular and relevant issue in the near future.

And no one doubts that a “job seeker market” is coming, especially in the IT field.
There is already a shortage of quality personnel, and in the future the “staff shortage” will become stronger.
My company expects it to peak in 2026.

However, let's return to the conference.
All trends in the area personnel management and motivationIn my opinion, divided into 2 directions.

First sector of interests is an assessment of the candidate and his abilities.
In this area, employers are trying to assess how effective an employee is while already working in the company.
Attempts identify areas for employee development testing methods remain relevant today, but instead of printed sheets, they took the form of beautiful questionnaires and graphs.

It is also noteworthy that such methods are used by large companies like Rostelecom; previously such a trend existed only in international companies.
At the same time, according to the speaker, the management team is trying to “grow” and not recruit from outside.
And for this, systems for assessing candidates for positions are needed.

Such aspirations are laudable, but I assume
that effectiveness is not related to the method of “candidate assessment”.
Most likely, the matter is in “professional deformation”, which allows an employee, when moving to the next vertical position, to more effectively build lower-level processes.

Information about mechanics and processes is packaged beautifully,
but the essence of the technology has not changed.
Dull staff testing and receiving feedback from colleagues who, let's be honest, may deliberately overestimate or underestimate depending on who is taking the survey – your friend or your opponent for the position.

Second interesting direction – this is the motivation of employees.
Here we see an attempt to introduce “game mechanics” into the workflow.
I assume that this is due to the expected arrival of young specialists from the generation “Alpha”.

In fairness, I note that they really think differently – this was proven by the summer internship that college students completed in our company.
And standard approaches to their activities will probably be of little use.

The work process, including that of IT specialists, can be controlled through an application similar to a game.
It is expected that the “start working day” button will dilute the work routine and show high efficiency when implemented.

It is stated that the developer uses this system in his teams to organize the work process.
For some reason, they first asked if there were Developers in the room, and then none of them were asked for feedback on the suitability of the solution shown.
It seems to me that an independent view is never superfluous.

An interesting fact is that users can accumulate game currencywhich can then be converted into real gifts.
It’s difficult to say how this works legally, but at a glance this approach looks like an analogue of a salary in game currency.

Naturally, any undertakings in the field of control and motivation of staff must be financially justified, and offering a full-time employee to earn virtual coins to buy company merchandise is not the best offer.

This approach:
1) Or reduces staff wages and in this case financing of purchases is carried out through salary deduction
2) Either increases the company's expenses for this personneland in this case it is a regular financial motivation equal (or maybe even weaker) in strength to the usual salary indication.
To be fair, not many companies index wages at all.

In this case, the company bears the cost of gifts, and the employee receives controversial items for use.
And for some reason this is called motivation.

There is a strong feeling that idea spotted at hackathonswhere various merch with the organizer’s logo is given out as motivation.
But it’s one thing to receive a badge or sticker one time, from a specific elite event.
And it’s a completely different thing to receive a sweater or mug instead of wages every month.
Although, it is possible that somewhere this approach will be extremely effective.
The fight for Friday pizza works sometimes 🙂

If we talk about the IT direction, then it is probably too flexible for standard methods.
Employees rarely manages to maintain Life Balance (LB) with work from 9:00 to 18:00 without additional involvement in processes.
Now I don’t mean large companies in which the development staff starts from 250 people, although I think there are surprises there in the form of downed servers and off-shift work.
These are simply features of the profession that need to be accepted “as is.”

In smaller companies, of which there are tens of times more on the market,
and even more so in startups, the concept will be more applicable Work Life Blend (WLB).
Which means control “by counting hours worked” or, as it is also called in the trade, “counting matches”, should shift to the area of ​​“executing tasks”where the criterion is the task that must be completed “on time.”

There is no problem for PMs, even with average experience, to wrap such a task into KPIs according to SMART.

At the same time, for the final customer, it does NOT matter how much time the employee spent if he was NOT able to complete the task.
Thus, the task has a clear priority over the time spent.

If the Developer completed the task ahead of schedule, this is great for everyone.
RM rejoices savings internal budgets,
Customer that he received the product ahead of schedule.

Free time allows explore a new technology stackwhich will improve the employee’s skills and the company’s ability to provide services.
Let's be honest, none of the Developers wants to be a junior/middle forever,
and this requires practice and many hours of self-study.
An employer who provides “paid time” for such activity will be appreciated.

Don't be afraid that the Developer will learn and leave.
You have to be afraid that he will NOT learn and stay.

Speed ​​of work without sacrificing quality should be appreciated and encouragedand not burden the employee with additional working hours, even within the framework of game mechanics with an attempt to win a mug with a logo.
At least this is what we should strive for, in my opinion.

In total there is a strange trend in the IT market,
when employers and HR system development companies try to replace:
1) Clear goals and objectives (KPI)
2) Clear and objective labor evaluation system and goal setting (SMART)
3) Salary fee
4) Complete remote work from any angle
5) Understandable career prospects
to a game model in the RPG style.

Time will tell how justified this approach is.