Top Employers Hungary 2024: Elevating the Standard in Workplace Excellence

‍Top Employers Institute proudly announces over 2 300 Top Employers for 2024 across 121 countries and regions, positively impacting the lives of over 12 million employees globally. This recognition underscores the commitment of these organizations to fostering outstanding HR strategies and people practices globally.  In Hungary, 15 companies achieved the prestigious Certification. Find out more here.

As the global authority in recognizing excellence in people practices, Top Employers Institute Certification Programme is an extensive process involving an independently audited, fact-based HR Best Practices Survey and validation to ensure answers are truthful.

Certified Top Employers are always focused on the latest HR trends and interested in anticipating the upcoming needs in the world of work. Each year, to support their commitment to shaping a better world of work, Top Employers Institute’s Observatory meticulously examines the leading HR trends, encapsulating them in the World of Work Trends Report.

Top Employers Institute's World of Work Trends 2024 analyses the latest trends in people strategies and practices from leading organizations globally. In the report, our analysis showed five significant trends affecting workplaces in 2024. Those trends are:  

1. Empower through AI  
2. The Future Defined with Purpose  
3. Dialogue for Transformation  
4. Evolution of Wellbeing Effectiveness  
5. Broaden the Horizon of DEI  

Trend 1: Empower through AI  

The release of ChatGPT in November 2022 prompted a wave of excitement about the potential of generative AI and considerable concerns about its impact on employment. As we enter 2024, the conversation will become more grounded. Organizations will look to implement more ethical stewardship of their potential in the year ahead and start with a clear vision for human-AI synergies.   

Many organizations are still in the exploratory stages with AI, and in 2024, the discussion will shift from what you can do with AI to what you should do with AI. An ethical framework for AI adoption will, therefore, become central to HR Digital strategies – and we see this happening in three ways:  

1. Organizations take a responsible approach to how data is used to track employee behavior or sentiment. HR leaders must prioritize AI's ethical, explainable, and transparent roll-out.   
2. HR will see how technology can be used and deployed around the employee experience. When poorly implemented, AI could cause employees to lose a sense of meaning in their work.  
3. HR will look to see how AI can support, rather than challenge, the interaction between humans. Humans want to work with humans. And whilst AI offers HR innovative new routes to tracking and personalizing offerings, face-to-face contact will become a greater imperative.  

Trend 2: The Future Defined with Purpose  

Last year, in the World of Work Trends Report 2023, we predicted the growing importance of a "lived" purpose - one that comes straight from the heart of all those who work. This sense of purpose will remain a constant in their everyday decisions. More recent research conducted by Top Employers Institute shows that organizations will only see the benefits of a solid organizational purpose if they have the right leaders to bring it to life.  

Purpose-driven leadership is critical to success. So, what do employees want from their leaders in 2024?  

• On big-picture issues, they want leaders to be situated in the real world, speaking about real-world problems, just as their employees would. They should think beyond immediate business concerns to offer more to their employees. 
• Empathy is also at the heart of purpose-driven leadership. Leaders will need this trait as much as their business acumen in the coming year.   

Empathy requires a genuine two-way dialogue. Leaders must listen more - employees expect an authentic voice in important decisions. 

Trend 3: Dialogue for Transformation  

Employees who feel genuinely listened to by the organization are more likely to be engaged, and organizations orchestrating meaningful employee dialogues are reaping the benefits. Our latest Top Employers data shows that almost every HR practice encouraging employee involvement in strategic decisions helps to drive business success metrics.  

A Dialogue for Transformation has two elements:  

• On an individual level, employees need to see their input applied practically in business decisions - those who feel empowered to influence how their work gets done experience far higher performance levels and job satisfaction.  
• Beyond the individual, collective intelligence describes the alchemy that happens when diverse perspectives meet collaboratively. It represents the sum of individual intelligence and the additional innovation sparked through their combination.   

Empowerment plus collective intelligence has helped to drive new ideas for organizations, often above and beyond the scope of regular day-to-day business.  

Trend 4: Evolution of Wellbeing Effectiveness  

Many organizations need help to balance their HR budgets while still trying to enhance employee well-being. In 2024, therefore, well-being will be about getting the most suitable offerings, not the most. Research carried out by Top Employers Institute last year demonstrated that additional well-being programs provided little or no additional benefit to employees beyond a saturation point.  

Most Top Employers actively promote their well-being programs through organization-wide strategy, assessment, and metrics.  

• Organization-wide total well-being strategy. Nearly four in five (79%) organizations have a coherent overarching approach to all dimensions of well-being (up four percentage points since our last survey).   
• Well-being program assessment: Nearly three in four (72%) organizations regularly conduct an 'employee wellbeing needs assessment' to identify employee needs, interests, likes, and dislikes and adjust their offerings where appropriate (up to five percentage points).   
• Well-being metrics: We have also seen a significant increase in the use of metrics, with over two-thirds of our Top Employers consistently using them (68%, up eight percentage points), along with the accountability of over half (54%) of leaders to meet wellbeing targets (up seven percentage points).    
  
  

Trend 5: Broaden the Horizon of DEI   

In the last year, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have also come under budgetary pressure, so organizations are looking for these initiatives to impact their workforce positively. In 2024, the tight talent market will grow as employers become more open to "non-traditional" candidates.

We think DEI approaches will change in three ways:  

• The consideration of diversity will expand far beyond demographic segmentation. Whilst groupings, such as gender and race, will continue to be areas of focus, 2024 will see a shift towards a more nuanced approach to DEI. For example, expect the importance of neurodivergent talent (and its link to higher levels of creativity and innovation) to grow.  
• DEI analytics and the metrics used will become more sophisticated. Not all demographics are straightforward to capture. However, we have learned from progress in gender representation that data is critical to improvement.  
• The "majority" will be actively included in DEI strategies at some point in their career journey, with different experiences increasingly acknowledged. A more holistic inclusion strategy will likely be adopted to complement the ongoing targeted initiatives for under-represented groups.
  
  

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To read the full version of the Report and get more insights on the 2024 world of work, click on this link.   

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