Real or fake? 3 HR trends to keep your eye on in 2022

Keeping up to date on HR trends is a great way to ensure your people & culture policies stay relevant and cater to the immediate needs of your employees. But not every HR trend is a diamond. Sometimes what may seem like the latest and greatest people & culture hot take is just a storm in a teacup, making a mountain out of a molehill, much ado about nothing. Or to put it simply - fake news.

To help you separate fact from fiction, we’re taking a closer look at three trending people & culture topics; quiet quitting, stay interviews, and just-in-time learning, to see if they’re the real deal.

Let’s get into it!

Real or fake? 3 HR trends to keep your eye on…

#1 Quiet Quitting

Coined in 2009 and made popular via TikTok in 2022, quiet quitting has business leaders panicked after a Gallup survey identified that quiet quitters make up at least 50% of the U.S. workforce.

Despite the name, quiet quitting has nothing to do with leaving your job and, contrary to the opinion of outraged bloggers and LinkedIn influencers the world over, is no landscape-altering human resources catastrophe.

Quiet quitting is simply the act of working entirely within the constraints of your job description. That means performing the tasks laid out in your employment contract within standard working hours. And nothing more. No giving 110%, no going above and beyond. Just doing your job.

Whilst many employers view quiet quitters as underperformers who lack motivation, proponents of the quiet quitting philosophy argue that what we're seeing is simply employees setting reasonable boundaries at work to avoid emotional and occupational burnout.

Quiet quitting is referred to as the antithesis to hustle culture - the toxic social-media fuelled state of overworking as a lifestyle. It’s a natural response from employees feeling they’ve given too much of themselves to their employer for too little in return.

Realistically, quiet quitters are just employees who aren’t engaged with your organization, and there are a whole host of things employers can do to remedy this, especially in the onboarding phase.

So - what’s the verdict? Quiet quitting may be a trend, but as far as we’re concerned, it’s a fake trend. Employers worried about quiet quitters need to take a good look at what they’re doing to motivate their people to go above and beyond.

Our verdict on quiet quitting? Quietly going away.

#2 Stay Interviews

Stay interviews are the act of proactively sitting down with your team members to have an open and honest conversation about how they experience their role within your organization. It’s an opportunity to see what’s working, what’s not and where improvements can be made.

They’ve been described as the antidote to exit interviews, which often fail to provide managers with actionable feedback due to most leavers' wish not to burn bridges in the final moments of their employment.

Stay interviews have been around for years, albeit informally, but they’re making a big splash recently as HR leaders scramble to turn the tide on record resignation figures.

Paylocity senior director of enterprise talent strategy Kate Grimaldi, who has been encouraging her managers to incorporate stay interview methodology into their regular one-on-ones, had this to say:

“We're now seeing happier employees who are eager to come or log in to work and contribute. And managers have become more effective because they know what employees care about personally and professionally, and what really motivates someone to remain with us.”

The big benefit of stay interviews it would seem is the ability for managers to spot potential opportunities for improvement before employees disengage and start looking toward greener pastures.

A good stay interview should ask the right questions and, according to isolved chief people officer Amy Mosher, should “not be structured, long or random or scheduled only when there is a problem.”

Good questions to ask during a stay interview include:

• What is something you look forward to every day?

• Do you feel that you are being set clear, achievable goals?

• What do you enjoy about working here?

• What could we do better to support you in your role?

• What is something you do not enjoy about working here?

• Do you have the ability to balance your work and home life?

So - what’s the verdict? Stay interviews are definitely the real deal. Ultimately, the process is little more than the systemization of one-on-one well-being catchups that prioritise empathy and learning - who doesn’t want more of that?

Our verdict on stay interviews? Here to stay!

#3 Just-in-time Learning

Just-time-time learning is a training strategy designed to provide your employee with the information they need when the need arises, rather than through pre-scheduled sessions that occur regardless of the immediacy or scope of need.

At its core, just-in-time learning is an on-demand training system comprised of a library of modules, each of which focuses on training the viewer on a specific task or idea. You log in, select a module based on your immediate needs, learn what you need to know and apply your learnings in real time.

Most just-in-time learning advocates will caution that the strategy isn’t a replacement for all your training needs, some things are just too complex or important to be delivered reactively. But for more general, day-to-day instruction, many swear by the immediacy of the approach and digestible nature of just-in-time’s bite-sized content style.

So far so good right? Sure, but what about the setup? 

In reality, just-in-time learning systems can be incredibly difficult to implement, maintain and deliver. Organizations looking toward the strategy for learning leverage will almost certainly need a tool to host the system, an extensive internal review of the type of on-demand training team members require, and a solid plan for updating and maintaining what will quickly become a large learning library. On top of this, the success of a just-in-time learning system relies much on employees knowing where and what to look for - so you best have a rock-solid comms strategy in place if you want to get things off the ground.

So - what’s the verdict? Ultimately, this is one we’re not sure about. Is just-in-time learning the next big L&D innovation? Or is it more effort than it’s worth? Only time will tell!

The takeaway?

HR trends come and go with only the truly innovative sticking around for the long haul. You can’t jump on every bandwagon, so it’s important to do your research and find out which trends best suit your organisation’s goals, resources, and people strategy.

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