As the fourth quarter gets underway, HR and business leaders already have their sights set on one thing: 2023. The coming year is sure to be another challenging one for HR professionals, as the COVID-19 pandemic lingers on and employers work to keep up with the seismic shift it has brought to their businesses, including increased turnover, new demands for flexibility and an accelerated reliance on technology.
With HR at the center of all of those transformations, the time is now, say a handful of HR leaders we spoke with, to gear up for 2023. While the four CHROs HRE recently interviewed about their priorities for next year represent different industries and organizations, their laser focus on the employee experience—particularly the new expectations around EX that have emerged in recent years—is universal.
Here’s what they had to say:
Susan Tohyama
CHRO, Ceridian
This coming year, Tohyama—who took on the top HR job at the HCM technology company in March 2020, just weeks after COVID-19 was declared a national emergency, says her HR focus will be on three primary areas.
Her first priority is, naturally, on Ceridian’s people. “I want our organization to continue its focus on talent, leadership development, career development for employees and more,” she says.
Beyond that, diversity, equity and inclusion will be top of mind. Tohyama says she’s eager for the organization to continue to show “demonstrable movement” on DE&I.
“We’ve made great progress, but there is so much more work to do,” she adds.
Ceridian will also be strategizing for the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic—particularly as a global company.
“We need to make sure that we continue to understand what it truly means to be a virtual company, as leaders, managers and employees,” she says. “We also need to continue understanding what flexibility looks like for each employee in every function—each person is different, and we need to honor that in how we show up and care for our employees.”
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Lisa George
CHRO, Help at Home
Like all organizations, recruiting and retention will be top of mind in 2023 for George, who joined the provider of senior caregiving services this summer. Hand in hand with those goals, she says, are plenty of opportunities to help deepen support for the organization’s 50,000 caregivers, which will be the main priority in 2023.
“The most important thing will be to continue to upskill, professionalize and enhance the experience of our caregivers,” she says. That will take a number of forms: utilizing new technologies to increase efficiencies and streamline processes and ensuring the field support center—the company’s home office—has the right structure and capabilities to support caregivers working in the field.
“We want to make sure that, no matter what we do, when we roll out new programs, policies or processes, that it’s something that creates value and impacts the employee experience, as well as the care we’re providing for our clients, in the most positive way,” George says.
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Stephanie Soto
Executive vice president, CHRO, Breakthru Beverage Group
Soto came on board the beverage distributor—an industry leader, with 7,500 employees in North America—this summer and quickly determined that she aimed to bring a “people-first” mindset to her work as CHRO. With that, she intends to approach 2023 with a sharp focus on the experience of all employees—or, associates, as Breakthru calls them.
“I’m really interested in looking at the associate lifecycle—from the beginning all the way through to someone who’s been here for their full career,” she says. “There are different touchpoints along the way for people at all stages of their career where we can really make that an amazing experience.”
That includes everything from employee recognition to performance management to simply “how it feels every day to come to work and be an associate.
“This people-first approach in every aspect of what we do is where I’m starting my focus,” she says.
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Robert Gamma
Senior vice president, CHRO, AMD
Learning and development has moved to the top of the priority list for many HR executives concerned about arming their workforces with the skills needed for the future of their organizations. AMD—a provider of high-performance and adaptive processor technologies, which started as a Silicon Valley start-up in the 1960s and has since grown into a global company—is placing a particular emphasis on L&D in 2023, given its hypergrowth in the last few years.
“In-person training and development took a big hit during the pandemic and now that we are coming out of that,” notes Gamma, “we plan to focus on offering more in-person options to ensure we continue to train and develop our employees and leaders.”
Gamma notes that this and other goals—including building capacity and capability across teams, enhancing efficiency and continuing to strengthen the employee experience—will all involve the alignment of people and organization strategy.
“As an HR team we continue to drive and listen to the business, flexing and adjusting as needed,” he says.
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