The HR function is always future-looking

My 11-year old niece is a typical child of the new generation, I believe. Why? She spends a considerable chunk of her time fiddling with new technology and WhatsApping her friends. That’s right, an 11-year old on WhatsApp. At a family lunch one afternoon, as I watched her fingers fly across her smartphone’s keypad, I realized that “twiddling thumbs” in my childhood held a completely different meaning to what it does today. She isn’t alone. Imagine my surprise when my 3 year old nephew tried to unlock my smartphone with the combination to his iPad? As an HR professional, this fascinated me, because I knew that future-proofing an organization just got more complicated. They are the future, and their generation may make us rethink everything we think we know about our potential employees. Are we ready for them?
OK, the line above may have made the future of our workforce seem like an alien race about to land, but it isn’t so. In an ideal world, the HR function is always future-