“Speaking of employee experience, a difference has been identified between what employees truly want and what they are offered by companies. While the quarter of respondents believe that employees are not satisfied with the degree of autonomy in the decision-making process, they are most frequently offered a pleasant working environment as a way of enhancing employee experience instead,” says Martina Schiestlová, HR Director at Deloitte.

Education is the second important trend in human capital (83%). Compared to the global results (83% and 86%, respectively), the first two places are switched in the Czech Republic’s ranking. This relates to the growing demand for employees in the Czech Republic as well as the lack of qualified workforce on the labour market. Exactly half of Czech respondents and 46% of global enterprises are prepared for this situation.

Leadership for the 21^st century has been identified as the third most significant trend by both Czech (82%) and global (80%) respondents. As opposed to their foreign counterparts, Czech leaders pay by far greater attention to building agile and well-functioning teams.

The “top 5” human capital trends in the Czech Republic also include talent mobility (77%) and talent acquisition (69%). The study revealed that new technology will be increasingly involved in the recruitment process. Nevertheless, their potential has not yet been fully utilised by Czech businesses. Czech respondents reported that most of their recruitment activities are still to be carried out predominantly by humans. In the global ranking, talent mobility placed fourth, followed by HR cloud (74%), which is in the sixth position in the Czech environment. Although seven of ten Czech business use cloud solutions, this technology has not yet met expectations in the area of HR.  

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) already influenced human capital trends in 2018. In the Czech Republic, eight of ten respondents believe that that CSR impacts on their companies (vs. 71% globally). A total of 93% of survey participants are aware that their public approach to social issues may have a positive impact on recruitment and employee retention. Besides, more than a third of Czech respondents anticipate the importance of corporate social responsibility to grow in the future.  

“The participants perceive the increased pressures of economic, social and political issues, which force them to be more socially responsible enterprises and to focus on human approach towards employees. Therefore, companies start to focus primarily on five main areas: meaningful work, ethical and fair behaviour, personal development, cooperation and relations, transparency and openness,” adds Pavel Šimák, Director responsible for human capital advisory and global shared corporate services centres at Deloitte.

The survey results indicate that 63% of Czech companies plan to grow in 2019. Almost half of Czech firms (49%) intend to increase their investments in HR in the coming 12-18 months.

2019 Human capital trends in the Czech Republic and globally:

The Deloitte 2019 Global Human Capital Trends is available here.