In the last year talent management has been turned on its head. Remote workforce management, flexible scheduling and hybrid models are here to stay. The economic uncertainty created by the pandemic has caused many companies to reconsider or pause major investments in enterprise technology for human capital management (HCM) as many companies have shifted to remote work indefinitely. As we have seen from previous economic downturns, HR will inevitably fall victim to the recessionary environment if it hasn’t already – emphasizing the need for efficient, effective and less expensive HR technology tools.

The unprecedented events of 2020 took everyone by surprise. Everybody had to quickly adapt to the circumstances of Covid-19, including me as a college student at Salisbury University who had to adapt to on-line learning. Workplaces had to endure one of the biggest transitions for businesses than ever before. Remote work clearly existed before the year 2020, however, not for everyone.

2020 was an unprecedented year for virtually every industry. We incurred a lot of sudden change back in March, and things never really slowed down from there. Despite the uncertainty we all felt at times last year, we certainly learned a lot. Now that we are coming up on a year living with the pandemic, it’s a great time to look back to see which lessons we should carry forward with us into 2021. Specifically, here are a few of the top engagement trends coming out of 2020.

A strong people development strategy is centered around coaching employees and guiding them toward growth as people and professionals. Once you’ve fostered a team of core contributors and high performers, you will want to make sure you make a conscious effort to keep them! Here are three strategies for retaining your business’ top talent in 2021.

As a member of the Customer Success Team at Truvelop, Juliana Withers works directly with our customers and end users and is constantly looking for ways to improve the overall user experience. During one of her weekly calls, a customer recently asked about Rater Reliability and best practices for ensuring that her managers were consistently conducting fair and objective evaluations. And just like that, Carreen Kouts, HR Director of R2integrated, LLC inspired Juliana to add a new resource to our Knowledge Center.

Our customers certainly took advantage of Truvelop’s technology last year to adopt a modern, continuous approach to performance management and development. In fact, our customers recorded the highest number of evaluations completed in a month and delivered the largest number of Sparks (real-time feedback and observations) in any 30-day period since launching the product in 2019.

Two years ago, in December 2018, we were preparing to launch our commercial product designed to help businesses revitalize their performance evaluation process. In 2021, we will celebrate our second year in the market. Our very first customer to adopt our continuous performance management and development methodology was First Financial Credit Union. We’re proud to report that we’re still working together to this day and we wanted to take some time to revisit and celebrate our fantastic journey together!

This past year has undoubtedly been an unexpected way to kick off the new decade. Amidst everything that made 2020 such an unprecedented year, we certainly learned a lot. Many aspects of our lives and businesses changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but we feel stronger because of it! After living through our “new normal “ for nearly a year, it’s the perfect time to look back on our experiences to distill critical lessons that we can take with us as we move into 2021.