Key insights from Gartner ReimagineHR for current HR issues

Gartner ReimagineHR in London has wrapped for another year. Almost 2000 senior leaders descended on the InterContinental O2 to connect, share and debate the big HR issues of today.

As a sponsor of the event we hope you left more informed, inspired and equipped to take action and forge forward with new Talent transformation pathways.

So that you don’t miss out on any of the trends and topics that were shared across the two days, our on-site team of experts have compiled a handy summary of the key takeaways:

1. Build Stability, Initiate Trust, Forge Ahead and Let Go

The opening keynote revisited and re-emphasized just how busy HR leaders have been in the last three years. The keynote showed how through the extreme disruption of the past three years, organizations demonstrated remarkable innovation and experimentation. HR led the way in transforming work models, boosting accountability for employee well-being and equity, and expanding the boundaries of what leaders previously thought their people, systems and technologies could achieve. Some of the headline statistic revealed by Gartner were:

To solve for these challenges, leaders must create the conditions and foundations now to break more boundaries in the future—as disruptions are going to become bigger and more frequent. 61% of employees said they were engaged at stable organizations. Employees at high trust organizations are 53% more likely to bring innovative ideas forward—but it’s on the organization to offer unconditional trust first. Transparency was noted as essential to engendering trust.

Organizations who can regularly review their processes and let go of outdated ways of working have been shown to have richer and deeper talent pools. Ask yourself questions like: what work is best done by humans and where can AI support the business? The key here is letting go with intention and being bold in your choices. Those organizations who can become masters of dismantling legacy ways of working and being really honest about what’s not working, were shown to be 10X more innovative.

2. The Hype Cycle For Talent Acquisition Technologies

The Hype Cycle for Talent Acquisition Technologies 2023 enables HR and Talent Acquisition leaders to stay ahead of potential competitors by anticipating innovative technologies—rather than reacting to them.

While technologies like GenerativeAI and ChatGPT are located in the Innovation Trigger stage, solutions such as Talent Acquisition Suites, Interview Scheduling and Video Interviewing have now matured and are in the Slope of Enlightenment and Plateau of Productivity stages, respectively. It’s also important to understand the difference between generative AI and static AI, as this will help you apply each most appropriately into your processes.

When evaluating how technology can enhance the recruiting process, Gartner recommends to start by:

3. A Future Built on Skills-Based Recruitment

There’s no doubt that skills-based hiring was the hot topic at Gartner ReimagineHR. Organizations, today, struggle to hire quality talent. Skills-based hiring presents an opportunity to find new sources of diverse untapped talent, as well as bringing in the skills your business needs now—and in the future.

Traditional recruitment centered on simply replacing the workforce—focused on acquiring similar candidate profiles from known talent pool sources. There is now a clear movement challenging the fundamental assumptions of these traditional methods. A constantly-shifting and unknown future is forcing talent leaders to bring in the skills their business needs now but to also think-forward to what skills the business might need to pivot towards in the future to overcome unseen problems. 

For example, in the U.S., over the past year, LinkedIn has seen a 21% increase in job postings advertising skills and responsibilities instead of qualifications. In addition, according to a recent SHRM survey, 1 in 4 organizations that use pre-employment assessments plan to expand their use of them in the next five years. For the first time in the UK, less than half of employers now stipulate applicants possess a 2:1 degree, and only 13 percent set a UCAS point minimum. This signifies that employers place trust in selection tools, the universities they hire from, and are now looking at capabilities like skills to assess talent (ISE Student Recruitment Survey 2022).

Here’s a concise guide to best practices when shifting to skills-based hiring:

So there you have it—a brief summary of all of the hot topics making the headlines at Gartner ReimagineHR in 2023. If you would like to find out how HireVue is helping many of the world’s biggest brands solve these issues, please request a demo and our team of consultants will be in touch.