Election 2024: What HR should do to prepare for a change in president

Cha-cha-cha-changes. Turn and face the new regulatory landscape.

A new person will soon occupy the highest office in the land, and with them will come new regulatory priorities with the potential to impact how HR leaders pursue workplace policy and ensure their companies are compliant.

What people professionals do now, as the campaigns enter their final stretch before election day, could help prepare their organizations for a shift in priorities from inside the Beltway.

“Here’s the thing, breathe first, number one,” said Emily Dickens, the Society of Human Resource Management’s chief of staff and head of government affairs. “Number two, these things don’t happen overnight.”

Deep breath. While government leaders are eager to pursue a first 100 day agenda once they’ve moved from candidate to elected official, federal policy necessitating a change to workplace policy likely won’t happen that quickly.

“If we have a Trump [administration], part two, a lot of the things that just happened in the agency space are going to be turned back,” she said. “But you also know that it’s going to be a little while. It’s not going to start immediately.

Dickens said that the makeup of both chambers of Congress also impacts how quickly an incoming administration can confirm nominees to top posts and execute their new regulatory agenda.

Even if the incoming president aims to use their executive authority to enact sweeping changes to the regulatory landscape through executive order, either Trump or Harris would be balancing changes that affect employers and workplaces with myriad other priorities, like energy or education policy, she said.

What’s HR to do? Dickens said it’s helpful to have a clear understanding of which rules could most impact the business and then monitor for those. Employers with a large contract workforce can be on the lookout for changes regarding worker classification; those with employees earning the minimum wage can follow efforts to raise the federal minimum.

They can also ask themselves, “Are there regulations that haven’t been reviewed in a long time that would likely come up for review under a new administration, no matter whether it’s R or D?” Dickens said.

SHRM and its public affairs team, Dickens noted, follows key legislation and regulatory efforts that impact employers, and can be useful to understanding what might happen and when changes could impact HR policies at work.

All about the money, honey. HR leaders can plan ahead when it comes to budgeting. The regulatory landscape could change in the next year or two, which might impact headcount and associated costs for fiscal year 2025 or 2026.

“Be thinking about, as you’re budgeting, what the cost of implementing some of the existing regulations has been, what they’ve been in the past, and what a potential cost could be if they were rolled back or further enforced,” she said.

HR can make some budget projections based on the workplace priorities of the former president from 2017–2021, as well as some assumptions should Harris further President Biden’s work from over the last three years, if elected.

Dickens pointed to the Department of Labor’s independent contractor rule as an example. HR teams can plan for costs associated with an interpretation of that rule under Trump’s leadership and another one based on the changes implemented by Biden’s DOL.

Keep it local. Dickens also noted that while federal elections have implications for the workplace, state and local elections do, too. And those can often have a bigger impact.

“What happens at your state level actually is going to impact your life greater than what is happening here in Washington, DC,” Dickens said. “Your mayor, your governor, your state elected official impact your day-to-day much more than what’s going on up here.”