Here's what the new era of HR will look like
The issues that HR professionals are dealing are a result of the demographic, technological and social changes that are changing the world of work. Hence, it is imperative for HR professionals to shift from merely managing employees to enable, empower, and engage them. All of this calls for an end to old practices, adopt new approaches, and to rethink their role.
Here is what HR needs to know to lead change:
1. Displacement and opportunity for new roles:
Of late, there has been a lot of buzz around automation and AI-based job disruption. But one should not overlook the fact that AI and automation has the potential to create new jobs. With advancement in AI, Robotics, and the Internet of things, organizations will evolve and require new expertise to work on new projects. Also, employees will be expected to pick up skills in emerging technologies in very short span of time.
To support this shift, HR should empower and enable its workforce by transforming their role from that of a referee to a coach. They need to motivate employees to embrace a digital mindset to face the future challenges. And help employees stay abreast with information about latest technologies.
2. No longer limited by the physical world:
The physical world no longer defines employees today. With the unprecedented evolution in technology, the workplace is becoming a digital-augmented world. From e-mails and virtual meeting tools to chatbots and social media tools, the digital workplace has overcome barriers and has improved the employee experience. However, the practical implementation of digital workplace is a challenge for most of the organizations.
Today’s workforce needs to adapt to working in new situations. HR would need to bring a change in the attitude of employees to create a self-driven workforce who are ready to learn new things and adopt new ways of working and embrace a digital mindset.
3. Move from describing, to predict, to prescribe:
Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data has strengthened the decision making capability of the organizations. This demands employees to imbibe data analysis capabilities to perform their jobs better and make improved decisions. The goal here is not to train your staff on how to use technology but make them understand how to use this technology to impact the business positively.
For starters, the need to understand the importance to using data and leveraging it to make people related data. HR needs to move from only using guts to make hiring or performance related decisions to a more data-enabled prediction methods.
4. Understand the untethered nature of the workforce:
The ubiquitous connectivity has brought tremendous flexibility to the way people work. People no longer have to be at their desk and perform their role. However, this is posing a challenge for managers who are required to keep the workforce motivated, productive, and satisfied. Today, employees are demanding more flexibility at work, and HR needs to balance flexibility and productivity while finding new ways of engaging their workforce
HR needs to play the role of a connector between the manager and employees. Remote working is still a blue ocean but ensuring that the employees are motivated and engaged will have positive consequences on the productivity. Recognize their work, reward them and celebrate their moments like birthdays and anniversaries.
This article includes insights by a presentation by Marc Mossberger, Infor on the same topic