We believe that the global war for talent will continue to intensify with each passing day.  By 2020 talent will remain the most crucial differentiator between winners and losers in the marketplace.  Companies may go to creative or to even extremes to secure and retain talent and knowledge as their existing workforce ages. 

Similarly, the human resources (HR) departments of the future workplace will have to revamp themselves and give the much required push to able to gel with the new workforce. While core functions such as hiring and human resource management will remain the same, certain new aspects of the HR functions and job roles are likely to be added in the near future. 

Modern-day HR personnel is increasingly asked to come up with novel technologies, manage expectations of employees and make sure that the company turns out to be productive, and for this, a much-needed upheaval is required in the domain. 

The next-gen HR department will prefer specialization compared to the archaic methodology of one-size fits all. Thus the responsibilities performed by HR manager and his/her team will have to be shared or distributed among new job roles that are going to redefine the next-gen HR functions. 

Let’s take a look at some of the new job roles that we will get to see in the domain of HR. 

People Analytics Director

The role of a People Analytics Director is already in place. Experts are of the opinion that since HR is extensively applying people analytics, machine learning, and big data into the process, the requirement of people analytics/expert director has gone up substantially.

According to Diane Gherson, of IBM, “HR is being radically transformed to mine huge amounts of data and offer more granular, customized solutions to the business.” 

It goes without saying that, IBM already has professional People Analytics Director evaluating data to recognize pre-emptive employee retention methods and to inquire the best ways to hire and engage employees at IBM.  

Employee Engagement Specialist

A growing number of organizations are in the process of revamping their performance appraisal system and archaic employee engagement processes. Thanks to new types of automated appraisal software, HR managers are now empowered to have real-time instant insights into workforce performance. There’s no need to rely on annual performance review sessions. HR departments of the future would require experts specializing in employee management with a sound knowledge of such software, who will be essentially responsible for bridging the gap between employees and leaders. Such an individual will have to run frequent surveys and collect feedbacks to assess the health and happiness of employees. 

Talent Manager

The next new HR job role in line would be the talent manager. While the actual task of talent recruitment may be the sole responsibility of a recruitment manager or executive, a talent manager will help in developing and maintaining strong relationships with top staffing firms and at the same time ensuring affiliations with industry communities. An individual who will find out about transformative and cutting-edge trends within the talent market have sound knowledge about hiring and recruiting, in-demand skills within the market and others. This is how the HR department can be expected to perform in the future. 

Manager/Director of Learning

Highly successful organizations are always in an endeavor to spruce up their existing talent to enhance the quality of their organization. They invest in training and skill development of their employees so employees can perform better. Here comes the importance of the director of learning. A manager or director of learning will be responsible for the development of the employees. Offering them the required skills and grooming them up for the next levels. 

A lot of times training programs at workplace turn out to be sluggish and fail to engage employees fully. Here, the manager or the director of learning would appear in the scene and conduct such events that turn out to be engaging, beneficial and at the same time, add a fun element to it.

Diversity Officer

In present times, diversity at a workplace is on the rise and moving forward, the requirement of a diversity officer seems inevitable. Several studies have confirmed that a diverse workforce eventually leads to a successful organization. So, a diversity officer will be responsible for ensuring that the workforce of an organization is an absolute mix of talent from various walks of life. Further, a diversity officer will coordinate with employee engagement executive/manager and the director of learning for developing training programs that will help in strengthening the understanding between different types of professionals. 

Thrilling Times Ahead of the HR

The way technology is driving the vast human resources domain and how organizations are functioning, may bring in numerous new exciting job roles. A specialized HR team will be in place and gone will be those days, when HR was referred to as a bootless department. Instead, it will be responsible for driving a whole new sphere of positive work culture globally.