Most companies still consider HR functions to be related only to hiring. While it is definitely one of the most important tasks for HR professionals, that way of thinking implies that the skills an employee brings on their first day will still be required years later. However, studies show that almost half of workers’ core skills change or become obsolete in the next five years. In industries such as fintech and crypto, where everything shifts extremely quickly, this can be especially dangerous.
Businesses today are constrained more by their ability to help employees develop quickly than by the supply of candidates available for hiring. Anna Lekomtseva, HR Director at Drofa Comms, deals with this constraint daily and knows how to overcome it. Below we share three HR Director insights derived from her experience. They how why HR’s job should be centred on developing and retaining existing employees.
How Communications Teams Should Train Staff to Use AI
In many industries, especially in services, AI is still seen as something dangerous and fake that damages a person’s reputation. Some agencies are still undecided whether they should permit the use of AI or ban it. However, 76% of PR professionals use AI tools in their work, in many cases even without approval. In practice, prohibition never removes AI from the workflow and only makes people hide it.
This, however, never leads to any positive outcomes. Instead of doing their jobs, both managers and employees get stuck in an endless cycle over the improper use of AI. Workers spend their energy trying to hide it better. Managers, meanwhile, chase after them because of it, instead of focusing on more meaningful parts of their responsibilities. In the end, people just waste valuable time and burn themselves out while performance suffers.
That’s why AI literacy has become a basic skill today, right alongside things like Excel spreadsheets, CRM systems, and other similar tools. Drofa Comms, in turn, runs a structured training programme for PR managers covering all aspects of using artificial intelligence in our workflows.
One especially important part here is learning how to verify the information you receive from AI. In fintech and crypto communications, even a single unchecked figure in a client statement could lead to damage. That is why any PR professional should possess enough of their own expertise to double-check everything.
Internal Mobility vs External Hiring: Which Is More Effective
Among the many factors that can encourage employees to hold on to their jobs, the sense of belonging and being valued is arguably the most important. One of the best ways to show a person that the firm values them is to promote them. This will show that their ideas have a positive impact. That they are trusted to do more for the organisation.
Internal mobility works both ways. It shows that there are plenty of opportunities inside the company, which significantly improves retention. It also requires far less financial investment. Data shows that external hires are paid up to 20% more than internally promoted employees, while receiving lower performance evaluations across their first two years. This is on top of the investment needed to find qualified senior specialists in the first place and onboard them.
At the same time, to actually promote people, a company should have a meaningful mentorship programme. New roles demand new skills, such as people management and client communication, which can rarely be demonstrated in junior and mid-level positions.
That’s why systematic mentorship is the main onboarding tool for junior specialists at Drofa Comms. There are many nuances — such as how to interpret a journalist’s silence or how and when to challenge a client’s request — that can only be learned from senior colleagues.
How Often Should You Update Development Plans
The final point we’ll talk about follows naturally from the previous two. Markets today move very fast, and skills that are valid right now may lose their value in some two to three years. This is a new challenge for every company, because never before have people had to learn so often and so quickly. Generations ago, it took more than 15 years for a skill to become outdated.
The most dangerous thing here is that this process usually happens gradually and almost “quietly” and only gets noticed when a client asks for something the team cannot deliver. That’s why teams need to keep learning constantly, and it also reframes what HR’s role should be.
Part of what’s needed from HR professionals today is building an accurate picture of what the team can actually do. And then finding ways to close the gap between its current capabilities and the requests clients will make in the next year.
Most organisations review their development plans annually, but that may not be enough any longer. At Drofa Comms, we run several learning processes simultaneously. Employees develop new skills, both soft and hard, continuously, and plans are adapted to new circumstances as it becomes necessary.
Conclusion
The costs of hiring new employees are generally well known to most companies. However, few pay attention to the costs of a senior employee’s skills becoming obsolete. What’s more, it is much more challenging to measure what the payoff would be from investing in training those skills. That’s why a lot of companies decide to go looking for new people when they need a position filled. That way, they get visible costs and performance outcomes almost immediately.
All of this changes the role HR has maintained for years. Today, HR professionals need to know what is going on not only inside their teams, but also on the client side of things. How their expectations and the market on the whole are evolving. Only this kind of deep business knowledge will help them identify the right skills that an organisation will need next. So it’ll help teams build those skills up.
