Top 10 HR challenges in 2024 and how to solve them

Dramatic changes in the modern workplace left HR managers with new, complicated challenges that, if unaddressed, threaten to tank employee morale and hamper productivity. But if people teams meet the moment with the right tools, they can create more inclusive, engaging, and resilient work environments—all while transforming their HR arm from a purely administrative function to a strategic endeavor that has buy-in from the C-suite. 

This article dives deep into the biggest HR challenges of the day. It also unpacks how companies can solve every last one of them.

10 common HR problems in 2024

Here we’ll look at the major challenges of human resource management. Then we’ll unpack actionable solutions. 

1. Employee retention

One of the biggest challenges facing HR professionals is employee retention. High employee turnover comes with a significant financial cost. Estimates for the average cost of replacing a salaried employee range from 33% to six to nine months of an employee’s salary. Some experts claim it can cost three or four times the employee’s salary to hire a replacement. Financial cost is not the only downside. Employee turnover may mean a loss of institutional knowledge and can negatively impact team morale and performance. 

How to solve it

• Offer competitive compensation and benefits packages to attract top talent. 
• Tailor career development paths to individual employees and offer ongoing training that allow employees to grow within the company. 
• Set up a rewards and recognition program to motivate and make employees feel valued and appreciated.   
• Build a culture that values inclusivity, transparency, and open communication to foster an environment where employees feel connected and motivated. 
• Allow flexible work arrangements to accommodate remote work and hybrid schedules. 
• Provide mental health support to help with workforce stress and burnout, and conduct regular check-ins via surveys and employee feedback forums to identify and address concerns before they lead to turnover.

2. Employee engagement and motivation

Employee engagement is a top concern for many organizations. A big factor in employee retention is making sure that employees feel motivated, satisfied, and committed. 

Employees who feel connected to company goals and to their teammates are more likely to stick around and invest themselves in their work. Dissatisfied employees, by contrast, may underperform and dampen team morale.

How to solve it

• Be transparent about business goals and strategies by communicating clearly and consistently to all members of your team. 
• Create a performance management system that ties an individual employee’s performance to corporate objectives so that everyone feels like they have a role in the company’s success.
• Invest in leadership development programs to empower leaders to inspire and engage their teams effectively.
• Implement formal and informal recognition programs that acknowledge and celebrate employee achievement to boost morale and motivation. Celebrate wins together. 
• Ensure that employees are equipped with the technology and tools to communicate, collaborate, and do their work effectively.  

3. Managing remote work

Especially since the pandemic, the need to balance remote, hybrid, and in-office work is a significant human resources issue that companies continue to wrestle with. The main challenge is making sure remote teams have the tools to communicate and collaborate effectively with their teams—while feeling connected to their organization and its culture. 

How to solve it

• Make sure the company’s IT infrastructure supports secure and reliable access to corporate networks and cloud-based resources for remote work. Enable employees to use platforms like Slack, Zoom, and Figma so collaboration among teammates is easy.  
• Develop policies that ensure fair treatment, access, and opportunities for all employees regardless of whether they work remotely or in-office, and establish clear, measurable performance metrics that are aligned with company goals and aren’t focused on time in the office. 
• Provide training for managers on how to effectively manage remote teams and foster team cohesion and motivation across different work arrangements.
• Organize virtual team-building activities and celebrations of milestones alongside regular check-ins to cultivate a sense of community. 

4. Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)

Today’s HR teams need to foster inclusive workplaces that accommodate different backgrounds, cultures, perspectives, and experiences. Additionally, job seekers and employees consider a diverse and inclusive workforce to be an important factor when assessing whether to join a company. A critical HR challenge is making sure that a company demonstrates a commitment to diversity. 

How to solve it

• Implement comprehensive diversity training to raise awareness of unconscious bias, promote cultural competence, and build empathy and understanding across diverse groups. Also, make sure leadership is aligned and educated in these principles. 
• Expand recruitment and hiring practices by removing biases from job descriptions, using diverse interview panels, and implementing blind resume screening. 
• Provide an inclusive culture that creates spaces where employees feel safe to express their ideas and opinions, like forming ERGs (employee resource groups) organized around shared identities, interests, or backgrounds. 
• Make sure to set measurable goals so you can actively track your company’s progress toward diverse and inclusive workforce goals. 

5. Employee training and development

HR professionals also need to help companies support their employees’ learning and growth. If employee training is ineffective, employees may not be best equipped to do their jobs and may even seek out another position at an organization with better opportunities.

How to solve it

• Leverage technology to deliver customized training directly to team members via a learning management system (LMS). 
• Use software tools to monitor engagement levels, completion rates, and post training performance to refine the training process on an ongoing basis.  
• Organize mentorship programs and peer learning sessions so employees can share knowledge and make valuable connections. 

6. Compliance with employment laws

As the workplace evolves, the legal landscape of employment is changing rapidly to accommodate new ways of working, including remote work. 

A top HR challenge is maintaining compliance with laws and regulations—especially when facing the complexity of global operations. Organizations face a vast array of local, national, and international laws that govern employment practices, data protection, health and safety, and equity in the workplace. These regulations are subject to frequent change, and because non-compliance carries a risk of severe penalties, HR departments must stay on top of the latest regulations to stay up-to-date with business compliance. 

How to solve it

• Consider delegating compliance to a PEO within the US or EOR internationally—so you have trusted experts monitoring adherence to relevant tax and employment laws on your behalf.
• Leverage compliance management software to track changes, automate compliance tasks, and check whether your HR processes abide by relevant laws.
• Implement security measures to meet the requirements of legislation like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

7. Performance management and feedback

HR managers are also facing the current challenge modernizing their performance management. An outdated review process doesn’t provide the flexibility a modern workforce requires which leads to a disconnect between employees and organizational goals.  

How to solve it

• Adopt a multi-pronged approach to performance management that includes goal setting, skill development, and cultivating career growth opportunities which align employee development with broader business goals. 
• Shift to a continuous feedback process through regular check-ins and real-time coaching. 
• Utilize performance management software to help managers track progress and facilitate communication across distributed teams.

8. Mental health and employee well-being

Burnout, driven by high workloads and stress, has become the watchword of the day within human resources management. Among human resource issues, employee burnout is a big challenge that affects employee retention, employee engagement, and ultimately the bottom line. 

How to solve it

• Promote a supportive culture that encourages open discussion about mental health and well-being.
• Institute work-life balance practices like flexible work hours and remote work options. 
• Implement wellness programs that offer a variety of options including mental health programs and access to counseling services, fitness programs, and financial wellness resources among others. 
• Conduct regular surveys and assessments about the efficacy of these programs to help adjust them to the needs of employees.  

9. Human resource management and automation

In today’s workplace, HR managers need to play a strategic role in organizational success. A key challenge for many companies is making sure that the HR department isn’t overleveraged by administrative tasks so it has the bandwidth needed for bigger picture strategy. In fact, 45% of HR leaders say they spend more than half of their time on administrative work. 

How to solve it

• Improve efficiency and accuracy with HR software and automation tools to streamline processes and reduce administrative burdens. 
• Utilize data-driven insights to enable constant iteration of programs and processes that align with employee and company needs. 
• Employ automation to help monitor compliance with regulatory requirements and improve data security. 
• Prioritize HR initiatives that offer the highest return on investment, such as employee engagement programs and training.

10. Conflict resolution and workplace dynamics

Conflict resolution is a thorny challenge for HR professionals because of its complexity and potential impact on a workforce. Conflicts can involve disagreements between employees, employee-manager incompatibility, interpersonal issues, and divergent work styles. If these conflicts escalate, they can lead to increased turnover and create a toxic work environment that lowers morale and productivity. 

How to solve it

• Create a culture of open communication and transparency. Not only is this vital for ameliorating conflict before it gets out of hand; it’s also essential for maintaining a healthy workplace dynamic. 
• Empower HR professionals to mediate between conflicting parties and offer a safe space for expression. 
• Provide ongoing training for managers in conflict resolution so they can address conflicts within their teams. 
• Establish mediation or training programs to help employees and HR staff identify root causes. 

Frankensystems and their dangers

While software can help you meet today’s HR challenges, not every system is created equal. As an influx of tech has infiltrated HR processes over the last few decades, most HR teams have been forced to use a hodge-podge of unreliable, siloed systems that sabotage their strategic work. These Frankensystems wreak havoc across the entire HR lifecycle. 

Frankensystems refer to a set of apps or systems that should work together and share data to accomplish tasks but instead don’t sync easily and create roadblocks to efficient work.  

Frankensystems come in two models. 

There are Frankensystems of multiple apps, where a company has cobbled together a litany of different point solutions. And then there are the “all-in-one” Frankensystems that are sold as unified solutions but are simply a patchwork of dozens of poorly integrated parts.

Regardless of which Frankensystem you’re wrestling with, the HR silos they create between candidate and recruiting data are the same (and they’re most likely costing you more than you think). 

Here are three HR problems caused by a Frankensystem you should look out for:

#1: Hiring managers are blocked from key data

Hiring managers dealing with point-solution Frankensystems often have no way to access the pipelines, reports, or data that they need. Usually, this is because they’re using a standalone ATS that isn’t connected to their HRIS. If you have a point-solution Frankensystem, chances are that it’s working off static permissions which are frequently out of date and require constant manual upkeep. 

As a result of this incomplete data, many HR teams will limit access to their data altogether, making it difficult for hiring managers to access the resources they need to close offers with top talent.

#2: No single source of truth

Hiring is one of the most cross-functional processes in a company, spanning finance, recruitment, HR, IT, and all the hiring managers requesting new roles. When every stage of your hiring happens in different systems, you have no single source of truth for your data. 

This can have far-reaching consequences—like leaving stakeholders all over your organization with more questions than answers. For example:

• How many roles has Finance approved? 
• When can they be hired? 
• How many candidates have signed their offer letters?
• Do new hires have the right laptop and software?

Without a headcount source of truth that stretches from applicant to fully onboarded employee, teams spend hours downloading, filtering, and verifying recruitment metrics. As a result, it takes several extra days or weeks to get offers approved and processed.

#3: The data entry treadmill 

As candidates move through the hiring process, HR often has to re-enter data over and over again into every tacked-together application. 

All-in-ones have tried to solve this, but as a result they often offer very rigid and generic pipeline stages and candidate templates. Neither type of Frankensystem can scale.

To solve these problems, different hiring managers tend to adopt different processes. This creates an inconsistent candidate experience and makes it impossible to effectively measure and report on your recruiting effectiveness.

How to fix your Frankensystem

These three issues may seem merely inconvenient, but they’re only symptoms of the real damage Frankensystems can cause. When left unchecked, Frankensystems rot your organization from the inside out by attacking your most valuable asset: your people.

With HR playing a constant game of whack-a-mole with admin tasks, data errors, and out-of-sync systems, there’s often no time left to be strategic.

Overcome HR challenges with Rippling

Ready for an all-in-one HR solution that brings together everything you need to effectively address any HR challenge in today’s business environment?  Rippling saves HR departments time and enables them to focus on more strategic initiatives by automating routine tasks, mitigating compliance errors, and providing employees with access to the information they need for their work. 

Rippling automates the entire employee lifecycle, from onboarding to offboarding. Set up new employees with everything they need—from devices and training to benefits and role-based permissions—in minutes. Employee engagement tools, performance management systems, learning management systems (LMS) are robust and can be personalized to each employee. 

Customizable workflows and approval chains as well as extensive reporting and analytics capabilities streamline the HR operations. And, Rippling stays up to date with the latest labor laws to help companies maintain compliance with federal, state, and local laws. Automatic compliance audits ensure  legally-required forms and documents are in order. 

Rippling offers an advantage that outperforms most other HR software options. While many HCM providers build their full-suite by acquiring products and stitching them together, Rippling builds all of its software in-house, on a single source of truth for all business data related to employees. HR applications function seamlessly, making it easy to build workflows and pull reports across modules.

HR challenges FAQs

What are the three biggest issues in HR today?

HR is dealing with many challenging issues today but three of the biggest human resource issues are: 

• Talent acquisition and retention: HR teams must prioritize an efficient, inclusive recruitment process, provide career growth opportunities, and set up feedback mechanisms to gauge employee satisfaction. 
• Corporate culture and employee engagement: Human resources is responsible for creating a fair, inclusive, and resilient culture. HR must set up performance management processes to ensure that employees are connected to company goals and feel their work is challenging, manageable, and rewarding. 
• Employee support: HR teams must recognize employee needs and offer competitive compensation, robust benefits, and wellness resources. 

What is the biggest mindset challenge in HR?

As HR continues to play a vital role in the business success of an organization, HR professionals need to turn their focus to strategic thinking. This is challenging when human resources personnel deal with mountains of day-to-day administrative work.

[H3] What tools can help HR professionals manage HR challenges?

HR professionals can leverage several tools to manage challenges, including: 

• Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS)
• Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)
• Learning Management Systems (LMS)
• Payroll software
• Performance management software
• HR analytics tools

This blog is based on information available to Rippling as of November 11, 2024.

Disclaimer: Rippling and its affiliates do not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide or be relied on for tax, accounting, or legal advice. You should consult your own tax, accounting, and legal advisors before engaging in any related activities or transactions.