5 HR Practices We Need to Let Go Before 2030

We’re living in the age of AI, remote work, and constant change. Yet many HR systems still feel stuck in the past. HR practices like annual reviews, resume-first hiring, rigid attendance tracking, etc. were built for a different time, when work was more predictable and less people-focused. 

As HR leaders, we talk about transformation and innovation. But some of our long-standing practices are quietly creating stress, blocking great talent, and damaging trust. 

This isn’t about starting from scratch. It’s about taking a closer look and asking: What’s still helping us and what’s simply habit? 

Let’s explore five HR practices that won’t survive in the coming years, why they need to go, and how leading organizations are already doing things differently and delivering better results for their people and their business. 

In India, as per World Economic Forum Future of Jobs 2025 Report, only 30% of employers are looking to adopt skills-based hiring by removing degree requirements, meaning 70% are still clinging to outdated credentials as their primary filter. 

This isn’t just slow progress, it’s one the most serious, outdated HR practices and hiring problem we’re ignoring. 

The foundation of traditional hiring is crumbling under its own weight. Recent studies reveal that: 

• 64.2% of employees have lied about skills, experience, or references at least once, up from 55% in 2022.  

• Candidates most commonly lie about their education credentials (44%), years of experience (40%), and skills and abilities (37%). 

When nearly two-thirds of your talent pool is providing false information, how can we trust our hiring decisions? 

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), used by 98% of Fortune 500 companies, reject up to 75% of qualified candidates due to resumes that are difficult to understand. 

We’re not just missing talent, we’re systematically excluding it based on formatting issues and keyword optimization rather than actual capability of candidates. 

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: For every 100 job postings where companies removed college-degree requirements, fewer than four additional candidates without degrees are actually hired. We’re paying lip service to skills-based hiring while our unconscious biases keep us trapped in credential worship. 

The cost of this outdated hiring approach isn’t just inefficiency, it’s competitive suicide. Companies embracing skills-based hiring practices increased from 40% in 2020 to 60% in 2024, and 45% of companies are expected to drop degree requirements for key roles this year. 

Forward-thinking companies are already solving this challenge with innovative platforms. 

Taggd’s AI-powered Digital Hiring Platform exemplifies this evolution, providing 360-degree candidate profiles with comprehensive T-scores that reveal what traditional resumes never could. The Ready-To-Hire candidates come with interview feedback, video resumes, social footprint checks, identity verification, and validated assessments, cutting hiring cycles from months to days. 

And when every profile includes verified skills assessments and validated experience, the foundation shifts from hope to evidence. 

Thus, it is safe to say that in 2025, when 70% of applicants lie or consider lying, resume-based hiring isn’t just an outdated HR practice, it’s dangerous. Resumes worked in an era when jobs were stable, and degrees mattered more than agility. 

But the future belongs to companies that are already moving beyond resumes toward comprehensive skills validation. 

According to SHRM, 71% of companies still conduct annual performance reviews. Even worse, 69% of organizations limit feedback to just annual or bi-annual reviews, leaving 19% of employees receiving feedback only once a year. 

What should also alarm every HR leader is that: 

• 95% of managers are dissatisfied with current performance management systems (SHRM’s Performance Review Problem)

• 90% say traditional reviews don’t capture what employees actually contribute.  

When the people running your reviews hate the process, and it fails to measure what matters, why are we still following this outdated HR practice? 

Industry leaders like Accenture, GE, and Microsoft didn’t just tweak their annual reviews, they scrapped them entirely for continuous feedback systems.  

The results show that companies using continuous feedback models see employee engagement and retention improve by up to 44%. 

With 75% of organizations planning to integrate AI into performance management by 2025, annual reviews aren’t just outdated, they’re about to become obsolete.  

Real-time performance tracking, continuous coaching, and data-driven insights are replacing once-a-year conversations. 

Going forward, companies should replace annual reviews with quarterly check-ins, weekly one-on-ones, and project-based feedback. Use AI-powered platforms that track performance metrics continuously and provide managers with real-time insights.  

The goal is to improve performance as it happens, not months after the fact. 

Despite decades of implementation, employee engagement surveys remains an outdated HR practice and corporate ritual that’s failing to deliver results. 

Employee engagement in the U.S. fell to its lowest level in a decade in 2024, with only 31% of employees engaged. Even more alarming, 85% of employees are unengaged at work, and 17% are “actively disengaged”, spreading negativity to coworkers. 

Companies spend millions on engagement surveys while 4.8 million fewer employees became engaged in Q1 2024 versus Q4 2023.  

The disconnect is staggering. We’re measuring engagement more than ever, yet engagement keeps dropping. Traditional surveys capture what employees think they should say, not how they actually feel. 

The fundamental flaw? Annual surveys assume engagement is static, but rapid organizational change, hybrid work challenges, and broken performance management practices create daily fluctuations in employee sentiment.  

By the time survey results are analysed and acted upon, the workplace reality has already shifted. 

Forward-thinking companies are replacing annual surveys with pulse surveys, real-time feedback tools, and AI-powered sentiment analysis from everyday communications. 

Instead of asking employees how they feel once a year, smart organizations monitor engagement continuously through project completion rates, collaboration patterns, and voluntary participation in initiatives. 

The future belongs to companies that are moving away from this HR practice and measuring engagement through actions. 

Another one is the list of most common and outdated HR practices we still see is recording employee attendances in rigid formats.  

Despite 42% of the workforce now working remotely or in hybrid work arrangements, most companies still track attendance using traditional time-in/time-out systems designed for factory floors.  

These rigid formats measure presence, not productivity, creating a fundamental mismatch with modern work realities. The correlation between performance and office attendance is deeply flawed because it measures presence rather than productivity or impact. 

85% of leaders question the productivity of their hybrid teams, leading many to turn to surveillance software. In India, the situation is even worse: 68% of remote employees feel micromanaged, higher than the global average of 48%.  

We’re solving the wrong problem with the wrong tools, creating distrust instead of accountability. 

Traditional attendance tracking HR practice also assumes that productivity happens between 9 AM and 5 PM, Monday through Friday. But creative problem-solving, strategic thinking, and breakthrough innovations don’t follow a punch card schedule. 

Hence, attendance record keeping in formats is another HR practice that we need to let go. 

Organizations should replace time tracking with project milestones, deliverable deadlines, and results measurement. Use collaborative tools that naturally track contribution patterns without invasive monitoring. Focus on output quality, client satisfaction, and goal achievement rather than hours logged. 

Modern employee attendance policies and systems should track availability for collaboration, not physical presence. The question isn’t “Are they at their desk?” but “Are they delivering results and available when their team needs them?” 

Traditional job grading systems, another common HR practice, used by 80% of large organizations, create artificial barriers that prevent talented employees from contributing beyond their designated level. 

These fixed structures assume that skills, responsibilities, and value creation can be neatly categorized and remain static, an increasingly false assumption in today’s dynamic work environment. 

Fixed job grades stifle cross-functional collaboration and innovation. When a junior developer has a game-changing idea but can’t implement it because it’s “above their grade,” organizations lose competitive advantage. 

Broader salary bands can lead to confusion about how compensation aligns with skills and performance, but rigid grades create even worse problems by preventing skill utilization entirely. 

In a world where a 25-year-old might be more skilled in AI than a 20-year veteran, job grades based on tenure and traditional hierarchies become counterproductive. Companies report that 60% of their innovation now comes from cross-grade collaboration, yet fixed systems actively discourage this. 

Progressive companies are moving toward skills-based roles with flexible responsibility ranges. Instead of Grade 7 Marketing Manager, they create “Marketing Specialist – Growth Focus” with responsibility levels that expand based on demonstrated capability and project needs. 

Companies need more flexibility, which reflects when there is overlap between salary bands, allowing merit raises without promotions and mid-cycle advancement. 

To fix this HR practice, organizations must replace fixed grades with competency clusters, project-based role expansions, and dynamic responsibility mapping. Create career lattices instead of ladders, where growth happens sideways and diagonally, not just upward.

The goal is matching capability with opportunity, not maintaining artificial hierarchies that serve outdated organizational charts better than they serve business results. 

The future of HR isn’t about doing everything differently. It’s about doing the right things differently. 

Whether it’s moving beyond resumes, rethinking performance reviews, or adopting flexible roles, the companies that thrive in the next five years will be the ones that let go of outdated HR rituals and replace them with evidence-backed, people-centered solutions.

At Taggd, we’re helping progressive HR teams make that shift, gently, intelligently, and at scale. From skills-first hiring models to our proprietary T.Score for candidate fitment, we offer solutions that help organizations focus on what matters most: capability, culture, and readiness to perform. 

Want to know how Taggd helps organizations build future-ready teams? Let’s Talk