What is happening in the world of HR? This question resulted in the directors of i-Cap arriving in Mumbai, India to attend the 19th World HRD Congress with 750 delegates from 89 countries. To try and sum up all of the contributions to this congress over three days with four parallel tracks, would be an impossible task, however we will share some of our key learnings from the congress.
So what is the future of HR? The first observation is that the future is, as always unpredictable and seems to arrive at our doorstep ever faster and more unexpected. By the time we have made a forecast, we already know we were wrong in every way since the world has changed in the mean time. Massive and unexpected changes in markets, politics, technology and social trends all contribute to make the future of HR challenging and exciting at the same time. Our current linear planning methodologies are no longer relevant in this environment and we need to shift towards predictive methodologies such as sustainable business modeling, scenario planning and risk management.
In this rapidly changing business environment, the concept of a practice becoming a traditional 'best practice' no longer applies. The definition of a best practice is changing to become a practice that is relevant and effective only at a particular point in time.
HR can only remain relevant by understanding how value is created in the organisation and by making sense of the impact of events in the macro world. This approach implies a different type of thinking and requires HR professionals to be skilled in lateral thinking and constant innovation. What HR professionals learned at university becomes outdated and obsolete very quickly, so we need to find a sustainable capability model to remain competent. Innovation should be an important driver of HR skills to ensure that the function remain relevant and adds value.
Events, such as those unfolding in Egypt and Tunisia, is challenging our paradigms about leadership. Leadership in the future is better defined as an energy created by people coming together as opposed to the qualities or competencies of one individual.
Managing the generational diversity in organisations is a new challenge for HR as many organisations are now employing more people from the younger generations. The expectations and values of these age groups are so different that HR cannot get away with 'one size fits all' solutions any more. Employees expect to have choices and to be empowered to define their own working conditions on a more personalised basis. Some of the emerging HR concepts resulting from the attempts to offer a more personalised employment experience include talent segmentation and building a talent pipeline that is aligned to different work environments, conditions of service and work patterns. Individuality and choices for employees will become a core competitive advantage to attract the best available talent.
Social media rules! The underlying principles and concepts of social media impact on all HR processes. Transparent, open communication practices and technology is now seen as a fundamental requirement to retain talent in the organisation. Some of the examples include:
- 360 surveys with transparent results, open to all participants
- Recruitment and selection influenced by information from social media
- Employer branding and reputation
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New technology has a profound impact on the HR function in organisations. Many HRprofessionals are still trying to solve today's problems with yesterday's tools. New generations of employees and the latest technology is changing the work environment and therefor HR's role in it. The extent to which HR takes advantage of these technological changes in the work environment will determine the function's perceived value to the organisation in future. The advances in technology also create new possibilities for innovation and different HR service delivery models. Constraints like geographic locations and language differences become more and more irrelevant to how we deliver HR to the organisation.
In conclusion, for HR to remain relevant in the future:
- HR must be able to make sense of the macro world and craft appropriate and timeous responses to changes in this world (technological, generational, political, economic, etc.)
- HR must understand the business model(s) of the organisation - how does my organisation create appropriate value? With this understanding, HR interventions will always have a strong business case and be aligned to business objectives.
- HR must be able to design and build sustainable organisational capabilities that can stand the test of time.
- HR has to find ways to make the employment experience more individualised and create meaningful choices for employees to select from and create their own personalised work environment.
- HR needs to be very aware of social media and make use of communication technology to stay ‘tuned in' to employee needs and to manage the employer brand.
Authors: Gordon Day and Steve Kgatuke |
