Emerging HR Tech Trends Shaping the Future of Employment

​Talent needs in 2023 will vary widely by industry and location. Some companies will continue to lay off employees, while others will increase compensation and perks to attract and retain workers amid ongoing labor shortages. In both scenarios, workforce leaders will seek to deploy existing and emerging technologies in an uncertain economic climate.

One technology priority will be internal talent marketplaces, experts say. These digital platforms were among the hottest HR technologies last year and are expected to continue to gain traction in 2023. Other technology priorities will include optimizing investments in existing systems, supporting hybrid work and expanding the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

Maximizing Value from Your Current HR Tech Ecosystem

Technology analysts say shrewd business leaders will focus on optimizing their existing technology ecosystems before considering investments in new platforms this year.

"In times of economic uncertainty, organizations should lead with process optimization across the tools and resources they already have in place." - Kimberly Carroll

"In times of economic uncertainty, organizations should lead with process optimization across the tools and resources they already have in place," says Kimberly Carroll, managing principal of IA, a human resources advisory firm in Atlanta. "If net-new technologies are then determined to be needed, it should be in the context of the most valuable outcomes supporting the highest-impact HR processes."

Kara Yarnot, vice president of strategic consulting services for HireClix, a talent acquisition consulting firm in Gloucester, Mass., says a top priority for business leaders in 2023 will be effectively integrating tools they already have in technology stacks.

"Stand-alone, nonintegrated systems create manual work and increase the likelihood of errors," Yarnot says. "They also can negatively impact the employee and candidate experience."

David Wentworth, principal analyst of learning and development for the Brandon Hall Group, an HR advisory and research firm in Delray Beach, Fla., says one of the most valuable things learning and development (L&D) leaders can do in 2023 is audit their current technology systems to ensure platforms are being used to their full potential.

"Identify the current challenges L&D is facing and see which, if any, can be addressed with the tools and technologies already in the building," Wentworth says. "Is every system adequately integrated into its environment? Conversations with your existing technology providers can remedy many of these challenges without a need to look for new solutions in the market."

Enhancing Talent Mobility with Internal Marketplaces

"Investments in internal talent mobility will pay off more than ever in 2023," says David Brodeur-Johnson, a principal analyst specializing in employee experience for Forrester, a market research company headquartered in Cambridge, Mass.

To that end, companies are utilizing internal talent marketplaces to match workers with internal job openings, side gigs or projects; list available mentors; and detail learning opportunities that support career paths.

John Kostoulas, a vice president in Gartner's HR consultancy practice, says Gartner clients continue to show strong interest in talent marketplaces. "HR and other organizational leaders can benefit from data created by these marketplaces to support workforce planning and other talent processes," he says. "Employees benefit from greater visibility into work opportunities and options to build skills and experiences toward career growth. Managers or project leaders benefit from more flexible staffing and improved talent visibility."

Exploring New Frontiers in HR Technology

Business leaders will deploy more emerging as well as historically underutilized HR technologies in 2023 to enhance the employee experience, improve recruiting results and help identify key skills gaps in the workforce.

Kostoulas says "orchestrators and overlays" serve to streamline and unify the HR-related digital aspects of the employee experience across a fragmented technology landscape. "These typically include portals, micro-applications, and low- or no-code tools," he says.

Carroll says employee portals, knowledge management tools and case management tools can provide more relief to HR business partners, people leaders and employees in the year ahead.

"HR needs to move past the 'hand-holding' mindset and leverage these tools to establish a single source of truth, enable more self-service for employee requests, and provide timely and accurate responses to internal customers," Carroll says. "When properly deployed, these tools free up HR to focus on the highest-value and most-strategic activities."

Evelyn McMullen, a research manager specializing in talent acquisition for Boston-based Nucleus Research, says more organizations will benefit from using nascent AI-based tools that help identify existing skills in the workforce. Such technologies can help business leaders close skills gaps that drag down company performance.

"AI-driven skills graphs and other means of identifying employees' soft and hard skills are at a point where they can be adopted by HR," McMullen says.

Brodeur-Johnson says skills ontology software and related tools will prove increasingly important in 2023. "Tools that help you take a full accounting of the skills and capabilities your people have, as well as what they're most interested in working on, will be a huge help," he says. "We're also seeing companies apply AI-based skills intelligence tools to help them redeploy people or even inform layoff decisions."

Technologies Driving the Hybrid Work Revolution

Technology will play an increasingly larger role in supporting hybrid work as it becomes a permanent fixture in more organizations, experts say. One challenge to overcome is proximity bias, says Frank Weishaupt, CEO of Owl Labs, a video collaboration technology company in Boston.

"There will be a large focus from HR teams on figuring out how to train managers to actually manage by results," Weishaupt says. "We'll also see the evolution of productivity tracking to more results-based assessments that factor in new functions like creative departments, where quantitative data is more difficult to come by."

Suneet Dua, products and technology chief revenue and growth officer for London-based global consulting firm PwC, says there will be a greater emphasis on benchmarking tools and new methods to track productivity and performance of hybrid workers in 2023.

"Technology has to create benefits across an organization, whether it's through increasing access to data, upskilling talent to work beyond traditional boundaries, or providing enhanced learning and development opportunities." - Erin Spencer

"Benchmarking tools collect numerous data points, from measuring employee sentiment to tracking the number of employees using office spaces or training tools," Dua says. "In terms of productivity and performance, we're already seeing many companies implementing tracking methods for remote workers or developing plans to do so."

But Dua cautions that excessive employee tracking can erode worker trust. "HR leaders interested in tracking productivity should prioritize more-meaningful metrics, including the quality and quantity of employee output," he says.

Accelerating HR Processes with Artificial Intelligence

As businesses seek to do more with less in 2023, the use of AI will accelerate in areas including recruiting talent, identifying skills gaps in the workforce, analyzing engagement survey data and answering employees' frequently asked questions.

"Using AI to analyze worker data beyond traditional demographic and performance metrics will be one key in 2023," says Erin Spencer, a senior research analyst specializing in HR technology for New York City-based Deloitte Consulting. "More HR departments now view their workforce data as a strategic asset to help guide key business and talent decisions in areas such as upskilling, scheduling, staffing and more."

Companies also will begin to find real-world applications for "generative AI," such as the much-ballyhooed ChatGPT, a recently released tool from OpenAI that not only acts as a search engine but can perform such complex tasks as writing essays or computer code. Such leaps in the technology, along with a continued lack of transparency from some HR vendors about how their AI tools work, will result in more regulatory and legislative scrutiny in the coming year. For example, a New York City law that is scheduled to go into effect in April requires employers in that city to conduct an independent audit of AI tools they use for employment decisions.

"As more federal guidance is introduced, as with the recent White House Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, we expect to see increased clarity around legislation and how it's intended to enable the harnessing of AI for the good of humanity," says Eric Sydell, executive vice president of innovation at Modern Hire, a recruiting technology company in Cleveland.

Building Resilient Leaders through Technology

Experts say companies will turn more frequently to tools such as online coaching and learning platforms to help managers build the skills—and resilience—necessary to lead in increasingly challenging environments. Organizations also will introduce more AI and other automated tools to remove manual or nonessential tasks from managers' plates.

David Hassell, CEO and co-founder of 15Five, a performance management technology platform based in San Francisco, says companies will place management training center stage in 2023. "With record-breaking burnout and phenomena like quiet quitting, skilled management is today's success-defining element," Hassell says. "In remote environments, interpersonal relationships can suffer or never form in the first place. Manager training is key to helping keep people engaged, motivated and productive."

David Somers, a group general manager with Pleasanton, Calif.-based software vendor Workday, agrees that supporting and retaining front-line managers will be a top priority in 2023.

"The tight labor market and long tail of the pandemic have put front-line managers under incredible pressure," Somers says. "HR leaders will focus on ways to retain this critical part of the workforce by automating repetitive tasks such as managing payroll and labor, and by leveraging data such as schedule quality and productivity to understand managers' unique needs."

Shifting HR Strategies to Focus on Employee Experience

Employee experience is no longer just an HR strategy. More C-level leaders will make the employee experience a broad strategic objective in 2023, experts say, removing it from its human resources silo. "Employee experience has become a business strategy, not just an HR strategy," Kostoulas says.

For HR, that means aligning its technology systems with the key tenets of an employee experience strategy. In 2023, more companies will make the employee experience integral to IT, operations, finance and facilities strategies, Kostoulas adds.

"In 2023, HR leaders will leverage new technologies focused on the individual employee experience," Spencer says. "Technology has to create benefits across an organization, whether it's through increasing access to data, upskilling talent to work beyond traditional boundaries, or providing enhanced learning and development opportunities."

Revolutionizing Recruitment with Cutting-edge Technologies

Recruiters will deploy evolving AI tools to create even greater efficiencies in candidate screening and interview scheduling, use more programmatic advertising, and turn to employee-generated videos to attract candidates in what will remain a highly competitive recruiting landscape.

"With recent labor shortages and the need to improve long-term employee development and retention, improving top-of-the-funnel recruiting processes will be a top priority for HR and talent acquisition leaders," McMullen says.

She says approaches like programmatic job advertising that can strategically deliver ads to the right prospective candidates will be valuable in 2023: "That will be important as the economy faces uncertainty and employers must maximize the efficiency of their job advertisement budgets."

Yarnot says recruiters need to double down on creating an engaging candidate experience this year. "Whether we enter a recession or not, top candidates will always have choices and opportunities," she says. "Every recruiting leader should apply for a job on their career site via a mobile device to experience it from the candidate's perspective. They should then make changes to ensure that process takes less than five minutes."

Recruiting leaders also will benefit from a more strategic use of video in 2023, Yarnot says. "Authentic, employee-generated videos result in the most engagement from candidates," she says. "As such, recruiting teams should use videos in job ads, on a career site, in candidate e-mails and throughout the hiring process. The videos should communicate your values, tell your employees' stories, introduce candidates to your leadership team and explain the hiring process."

Some companies are laying off workers. Others can't hire fast enough. Yet all employers will share some common technology priorities in 2023, including the following: 1.    Optimize ROI from Existing Technology Stacks Shrewd leaders will focus on getting the best return on investment (ROI) from their existing technology ecosystems before investing in new platforms. 2.    Elevate Internal Talent Marketplaces These systems match workers with internal job openings, side gigs or projects; list available mentors; detail learning opportunities that support career paths; and more. 3.    Deploy Emerging (and Overlooked) Tech Leaders will deploy more technologies in 2023 to enhance the employee experience, improve recruiting results and help identify key skills gaps in the workforce. 4.    Support Hybrid Work Technology will play an increasingly larger role in supporting hybrid work as it becomes a permanent fixture in more organizations. 5.    Increase the Use of AI Applications The use of AI will accelerate in areas including recruiting talent, identifying skills gaps, analyzing engagement survey data and answering employees' frequently asked questions. 6.    Improve Management Skills to Address New Challenges Experts say companies will turn more frequently to tools such as online coaching and learning platforms to help managers build skills—and resilience. 7.    Emphasize the Employee Experience Employee experience is no longer just an HR strategy. More C-level leaders will make the employee experience a broad strategic objective in 2023. 8.    Deploy Innovative Recruiting Tech Recruiters will deploy evolving AI tools to create even greater efficiencies in candidate screening and interview scheduling and will also turn to employee-generated videos to attract candidates. 9.    L&D: Focus on Analytics, Personalization and VR Learning and development functions will focus on employees' learning experiences in 2023.

Innovating Learning and Development for the Digital Age

Experts say L&D functions will have three main areas of focus in 2023. One is creating more personalized, contextual and adaptive learning experiences for employees. "That's anything that can help ensure employees are getting exactly the learning they need, when and where they need it, especially at scale," Wentworth says.

Second, L&D teams will seek out software tools that make it easier to derive actionable insights from the learning data they collect, Wentworth says. "They need data analytics tools that match the data analysis skills of their teams," he says.

Janice Burns, chief people officer for Degreed, a skills-building platform headquartered in Pleasanton, Calif., says she expects to see more L&D functions introduce data science and business intelligence tools to their teams.

"L&D leaders have an unparalleled opportunity to gather a wealth of data created through digital learning to provide a dynamic overview of the skills being built in the workforce," Burns says. "Overlaid with HR and recruitment data, this can be used to determine skill gaps and spot opportunities where L&D can help businesses meet their goals by ensuring the right people have the right skills."

Lastly, Wentworth says L&D functions will continue to invest in or upgrade virtual reality (VR) technology in 2023. The confluence of lower equipment costs, increased processing power and enhanced bandwidth make VR simulation tools more practical than ever, he says.

"People need to be able to practice new skills and behaviors without the consequences of on-the-job interactions," Wentworth says. "Simulations can be leveraged for anything from sales techniques to difficult conversations to DE&I [diversity, equity and inclusion] training."

Dave Zielinski is principal of Skiwood Communications, a business writing and editing firm in Minneapolis.

Explore Further

SHRM provides resources and information to help business leaders stay informed about workforce technology trends.