On the future of work…

“Our worlds are changing. One of the changes we have to deal with is to think about how we will go about our daily interface with enterprise software, whether touch or voice. We will have to reconsider interacting with enterprise software the way we have never have. We have to think about technologies and work with them.”                                                 -              William Tincup

“We have always wondered what will happen to work if machines take over. But I really think that jobs will stay – some might change, some will evolve – but I have full faith in the versatility and resilience of the humans to take the change journey, adapt, and run with it. We all are concerned about challenges that tech will pose, but that propels the discussions on adapting to the inevitable technology onslaught – we should not really worry about this but look at it with open minds, and adapt, and change.”                                                               -          Amita Maheshwari

“My view on the future of work is really rooted in the fact that we are actually going back to some basics – focusing on people and experiences. But I really think the future of work is about leveraging technology to do work, build relationships, talk to people, solving problems, and making decisions – there will be tremendous job gains if we are able to open ourselves.”   - Chris Havrilla

“Work, Working, and Workers are all changing. If we look at work, it is severely impacted by machines; when you look at the nature of jobs, there’s a huge amount of upscaling; the where, how and what of working are also changing; who is a worker has also changed – gig workers, digital migrants. There is a very uneven distribution of the future.”  -  Abhijit Bhaduri

What does the HR need to do for the future?

“We need to lead the change. Get rid of bureaucracy and inertia. The HR needs to understand that it leads a function that leads revenue and growth and that’s why taking care of people experiences and showing people how to change and learn is important to make the customer happy.”    -   Chris Havrilla 

“HR needs to get out of process obsession and build experiences for employees. The HR needs to make work inspiring and make it a phenomenal experience.”   -  Abhijit Bhaduri 

“As an HR practitioner, we have a long and arduous journey ahead and we need to move beyond the transactions. The HR needs to bring a balance between business partnering and employee championing. We need to be empathetic and prepare our managers to manage the new generation to take decisions. We need to shift gears – digitize, innovate, and remove the transactional work and focus on understanding about how the new generation thinks. We need to change our own mindsets.”     -    Amita Maheshwari       

What does the HR of the future look like or needs to do? 

“The HR needs to create joy for candidates and employees. We need to architect the experiences – think about emotions and senses and we need skillsets to manufacture those experiences. We have to think about all the people we interact with and we have to think about architecting the experiences we can create for them. Joy creates loyalty.”  -  William Tincup     

“This whole RoI obsession is wrong. Human beings cannot be measured in the way machines are measured. The whole notion of RoI obsession needs to give way to understanding the qualitative aspects like joy and happiness.” -      Abhijit Bhaduri             

“When we talk about experience, we are used to using best tech – but when it comes to employees, we give them drab and complex tech to use. The HR needs to bring in design thinking and making things simple. It is about changing mindsets and bringing innovative and delightful experience for HR itself.”   -    Amita Maheshwari 

“HR needs to talk about outcomes and fill the needs of people. That’s where design thinking helps.”        -    Chris Havrilla