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Employees are the most important asset of any organisation; they are the face of your company, ambassadors for your brand and hold the keys to positive relationships with your customers and the marketplace.

Finding, hiring and retaining good people is a big job. It requires an ability to constantly monitor internal operations for improvements and look externally to track trends. From identifying talent and putting together a compelling benefits package to understanding the value of DEI and anticipating the impact of AI, HR professionals have to be on top of just about every aspect of what makes a company tick.

Our post-pandemic workplace and a volatile job market have made the job even more complex. How are HR teams handling the changes?

We decided to go directly to the source to check out the state of HR. In a May 2023 survey of U.S. HR professionals¹, we learned about the state of their business: what they feel optimistic about, their concerns and their thoughts about the most important developments facing their organisations. Read on to learn more.

HR teams have had to navigate dramatic changes to the workplace, a conflicted and emotional workforce and unpredictable market pressures. That’s why top companies develop highly skilled people teams and hire C-level HR leaders who have a seat at the executive table. For these companies, HR is the lifeblood of the organisation, an integral part of decisions and an added value at all levels.

But it’s not the same story everywhere. In our study, we found that HR were split on how they were perceived and their ability to make an impact. Just over half (53%) of HR professionals said that leaders in their company viewed HR as vital to the culture of success. The remainder said that company leaders perceived HR’s role as strictly operational.

Take, for example, the impact of HR on shaping company cultures. Over two-thirds (67%) of HR professionals overall said that their organisation played a leading role in making decisions that had an impact on the work environment, compared with only 32% who said that HR only had some influence.

But when you look at the split between companies where HR was seen as vital and those where it was seen as operational, this gap widened dramatically. At the companies where HR was seen as vital, 72% said that HR played a leading role in shaping the work environment, compared to 61% at companies where HR was seen as merely operational.

Alternatively, look at the increased importance that the pandemic placed on HR teams. While 67% of HR pros overall said that they had been playing a more significant role in the employee experience since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, this figure was far higher in organisations where leadership recognised HR as vital (73%) and lower in those that did not (61%).

Similarly, almost seven out of 10 (68%) of HR professionals overall cited higher expectations from leadership since the pandemic, and that number reached 73% at companies where HR was seen as vital.

Despite HR playing a larger role, companies risk lagging behind when it comes to supporting employees. One in five (19%) HR professionals said that their company did not invest enough in employees.

Almost a quarter (24%) of HR pros at companies where HR was seen as operational considered the investments in employees to be insufficient. This number was much lower (15%) at companies where leadership viewed HR as essential for creating a culture of success.

What matters to HR? Everything. In our study, five out of seven metrics rose to the top, pointing to the fact that HR pros can’t let a single ball drop. From recruitment to engagement and from training to retention, HR needs to ensure that all parts of the employee lifecycle are functioning in a way that delivers good outcomes.

In our study, 46% of HR pros ranked employee performance management at the top of the list. This was closely followed by recruitment and retention (45%); however, there were other equally important HR measurements that respondents cared about.

The split between HR organisations seen as vital vs. operational was in full display in these results, as well.

In companies where HR was considered vital, two metrics stood out as being particularly important. Training/course feedback and employee performance management both topped the list of vital measurements at 51%. At companies where HR was considered just an operational function, these two areas ranked lower than average, at 30% and 41% respectively.

Recent years have been tough for employees as well as HR teams. The reckoning of the pandemic, a massive market adjustment and layoffs in key sectors, such as tech, have shaken businesses of all sizes.

It may seem surprising that many employees are working with purpose. In a May 2023 CNBC|SurveyMonkey workforce study conducted among 8,874 workers in the U.S., a whopping 91% of employees said that they found their work meaningful. In addition, 85% of employees reported being satisfied with their jobs and almost three-quarters (73%) said that they were well remunerated. These figures are consistent with previous studies, indicating that despite the churn, employees report that they are content.

HR teams clearly see a different side. Employee turnover continues to be an issue for companies, and HR teams have real concerns. Only one out of three (32%) HR pros said that their company had been “very successful” at addressing turnover.

There are many reasons for turnover and these vary according to the role of HR at a given company. Overall, remuneration tops the list, with over a third (35%) of HR pros citing it as the reason for employee turnover.

However at companies where HR was seen as vital, burnout was the top reason, coming in at 36% compared to 22% at companies where HR played an operational role. A lack of recognition was also twice as high at organisations where HR didn’t play a vital role.

The voice of the employee is alive and well at the majority of companies. HR pros ask for feedback consistently and, in the main, frequently. In our study, 85% of HR pros agreed that their companies had programmes in place that allowed employees to provide feedback on a regular basis, with 45% of HR teams reporting that they collected feedback quarterly. For a small percentage of companies (10%), feedback was seldom collected, if at all.

That feedback is put to good use. A third (33%) of HR pros said that employee feedback drove decisions about the employee experience. In our study, employee feedback carried an equal weight in decision-making when compared to decisions being made by leadership (34%) and managers (32%).

Employee engagement (48%) was the top reason for collecting feedback and this was even more important in companies that valued HR (59%) than in those that didn’t (35%).

For all HR teams, collecting feedback has its challenges. While the majority (59%) of HR pros believed that they received the right amount of employee feedback, over a quarter (29%) said that they didn’t receive enough.

There were various reasons for this, but engagement, siloed information and a lack of insights were the top challenges.

HR pros were also concerned about getting true feedback. According to our study, 72% of HR pros said that they doubted the authenticity of employees’ feedback about their experiences at work. This was more of an issue at companies where HR was not vital; 80% of these HR pros were concerned about candid feedback, compared to 64% of companies where HR played a vital role.

Remuneration will always be important for attracting and retaining top talent. Salary and benefits speak volumes when it comes to attracting talent and retaining employees.

But for HR teams, there are a few more important areas to invest in. According to our study, employee training surpassed remuneration in importance for HR pros at all companies.

Over half (55%) of HR pros believed that training was the most important area of investment when it came to the employee experience. This was closely followed by remuneration (54%) and work-life balance (51%).

Amongst companies where HR was considered vital, work-life balance was the most important area where companies should invest in employees, with 56% of these companies placing work-life balance at the top of the list, edging out training (55%) and remuneration (53%).

In our May 2023 CNBC|SurveyMonkey Workforce Study, we found that employees in the U.S. were split regarding flexible workplace options. More than five years after Covid sent workers home, 56% of workers said that they expected in-person employees at their company to have better career opportunities, which was almost 10 points higher than it was in the optimistic days of October 2021.

Almost half (49%) of HR pros said that being able to offer remote or hybrid work has had a significant impact on their company’s ability to hire.

This was even higher amongst companies where HR played a leading role; 58% of those HR pros said that hybrid or remote work was important for recruitment, compared to 44% in companies where HR was considered operational.

These takeaways have far-reaching implications for HR teams who are trying to retain high-quality employees, but also for recruiters. The lure of big salaries that often drives acceptance decisions for prospective employees is no longer the only tool that HR teams have at their disposal.

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) has made it into the mainstream consciousness of most company leadership teams. Fortunately for them, HR got there first.

At many companies, HR teams have been incorporating DEI best practices into all areas of the company, from recruitment to remuneration and retention. And for good reason, because there are a lot of DEI issues to contend with and more on the way.

Here are just a few of the stats from our May 2023 research conducted among employees in the U.S.:

These stats paint a somewhat bleak picture for HR teams; even if equity exists, employees’ perceptions of inequity are front and centre for many different groups. However, our study also uncovered some good news.

Recruiting top talent is an important metric for HR pros and DEI plays an important role in hiring. There’s never been a more important time for companies to ensure that they are building a workforce that is intentionally diverse and inclusive of a range of attributes. Companies need to find employees with different skill sets and of different genders, ages, ethnicities and identities.

Almost half (48%) of HR pros said that DEI has had a significant impact on hiring top candidates. This figure was even higher at companies where HR played a leading role; 55% of HR pros said that DEI has had a significant impact on hiring.

The extent to which companies ask for input on DEI varies and HR teams are somewhat split on whether it’s a regular best practice or somewhat haphazardly implemented. The findings also differ significantly depending on how HR is perceived at a company.

One out of five (20%) HR professionals said that their company did too little to address employee feedback about DEI in the workplace. Female HR professionals were much more likely than male HR professionals to say that their company did not do enough to address employee feedback about DEI (24%, vs. 17% for men). Male HR pros were actually more likely to report that their companies did too much for DEI compared to female HR professionals (28% vs. 15%, respectively).

About a quarter (26%) of HR pros said that their company always asked for employee input when it came to determining DEI priorities, and about the same amount (23%) said that they seldom or never asked. At companies where HR played a leading role, the “always” number rose to over a third, or 34%.

One of the more interesting stats might actually point to how data is handled, rather than some bias for or against DEI. Only 66% of companies that reported their data was siloed or scattered said that their company asked for DEI data, compared to 81% at companies where employee insights were funnelled into a unified view of the employee experience.

AI has struck fear into the hearts of many employees, who are concerned that their jobs will become obsolete or less important or be completely eliminated. In the CNBC|SurveyMonkey Workforce Study, we found that:

With so much conversation around how AI could be used in hiring, performance evaluations and more sensitive HR tasks, we wanted to find out what HR pros actually thought.

We were surprised to learn that the majority of HR professionals have embraced AI, with most viewing it as an important tool for their role.

Six out of 10 (62%) HR professionals have used AI for human resources tasks at least on a weekly basis within the last three months. Just over half (53%) said that AI was more important to their HR strategy now compared to the during the previous year.

Where will AI have the biggest impact? HR pros pretty much answered “everywhere”. In our study, HR teams expected AI to affect all areas of HR at similar levels, with none of the areas falling far behind the leading use case.

Only two out of 10 (19%) HR pros reported that their jobs were being replaced by AI; in fact, the large majority (59%) said that AI was helping them do their job better.

When it came to using AI, HR professionals were most excited about productivity boosts: almost four out of 10 believed that it would help them to focus on higher-level tasks (38%) and 35% expected AI to automate repetitive tasks.

HR also had high hopes that AI would not only make their jobs easier but also help them to perform better by providing access to more data. Over a third (36%) hoped that AI will provide them with a data-driven understanding of employee performance.

Despite the hype for AI, HR professionals also expressed concern about AI’s impact on HR, most notably their lack of knowledge about how to harness the power of AI.

Over a third (37%) said that a lack of knowledge about how to use AI effectively was their main challenge when working with the technology and 24% were concerned about not having enough data to feed into AI tools. Plus, on a personal level, 28% of HR pros feared for their job safety due to AI.

One thing that HR was not as concerned about was bias in the recruitment and hiring process. Only one out of four (25%) thought that bias introduced by AI was a major problem. Most thought that it was a minor problem (45%) or not a problem at all (31%).

Methodology: SurveyMonkey research was conducted between 25 August and 5 September 2023 among 269 human resources professionals. Respondents were selected from an online non-probability panel.¹