Over 14,000 survey respondents in 95 countries identify internal constraints as the top barrier to making meaningful progress against top human capital trends

• Human performance - the mutually reinforcing cycle of business and human outcomes - shows that instead of prioritising business issues at the expense of human outcomes, organisations should take a human sustainability approach to improve outcomes for workers, customers, and society more broadly.

• Most leaders understand that focusing on human performance is key to building thriving organisations, but they need to close the gap between knowing that issues should be addressed and doing enough to make meaningful progress.

• Organisations should evolve beyond outdated constructs for our boundaryless world. By leveraging different data sources and technology, they can find new ways to measure and enhance human performance, building human capabilities at scale to take advantage of technologies like Generative AI.

Deloitte's annual "Global Human Capital Trends" report has its finger on the pulse of the most pressing issues for organisations, leaders and workers. The 2024 report, "Thriving Beyond Boundaries: Human Performance in a Boundaryless World," identifies seven trends that showcase how a combination of business and human outcomes plays a role in organisational success. This year's analysis reveals that organisations making meaningful progress on these key issues are nearly twice as likely to achieve desired business and human outcomes.  

Understanding human sustainability

Prioritising human sustainability - the degree to which an organisation creates value for people as human beings, leaving them with greater well-being, employability and equity - can drive better outcomes for humans and businesses. The interaction of these outcomes leads to human performance, a measure that reflects the expectations of today's workers and the rapidly shifting marketplace.

• While 89% of executives say their organisation is advancing human sustainability in some capacity, only 41% of workers say the same.

• Less than half (43%) of workers say their organisations have left them better off than when they started. Workers identified increasing work stress and the threat of technology taking over jobs as the top challenges to organisations embracing human sustainability.

Defining new metrics for human performance

Given work's current dynamic, cross-functional, and less quantifiable nature, traditional productivity metrics like hours worked and time on tasks may be inadequate to capture human performance. Technology and data collection advancements are leading to more meaningful metrics for organisations. As data increases, organisations may have to consider what information should be transparent to their workers.

• Half (53%) of respondents agree that their organisation is in the early phases of identifying better ways to measure worker performance and value, and only 8% say their organisations are leading in this area.

• Organisations that build workers' trust in transparent data practices stand to benefit: When workers are confident that their organisation is using their data responsibly, they are 35% more likely to trust the business, but only 37% say they are very confident their organisation is using data in a highly responsible way.

Bridging the gap from knowing to doing

This year's research also includes several trends that focus on how organisations can evolve their mindsets and approaches to meet new challenges. One of the specific challenges highlighted is the rapid advances of artificial intelligence (AI) and Generative AI, which are putting a spotlight on the importance of workers honing their enduring human capabilities like curiosity and empathy to spark imagination.

• Most (73%) respondents note ensuring human imagination keeps pace with technological innovation is important, but a mere 9% are making meaningful progress toward achieving that balance.

• To close the imagination deficit, organisations should encourage innovation through digital playgrounds - which give workers the psychological safety to explore intentionally, tapping into their capabilities as they experiment with new technologies.

In addition to having the opportunity and tools to experiment, today's workers also want the freedom to build microcultures tailored to each team's needs, while still staying true to broad organisational values. To support these more autonomous and diverse teams, HR will also need to build "people expertise" capability throughout the organisation to provide these skills at the point of need, rather than acting as a standalone function.

• Seventy-one percent of respondents say that focusing on individual teams and workgroups as the best places to cultivate culture, fluidity, agility and diversity is very or critically important to their success.

• Leaders also recognise that changing an organisation's approach to HR can be very challenging - 31% of C-suite respondents identified it as one of the three most difficult trends in this year's report.