“The world of human emotions is colliding with the world of data and technology,” stated Aarti Thapar, Director, Customer Success, Talent Solutions- APAC, LinkedIn as she kick started her session on “the future is human" at TechHR 2019. This technology is taking up jobs, challenging our significance and requiring us to embrace attributes that are uniquely human such as empathy, decision making and creativity. 

The 4rth industrial evolution is impacting teams and organizations. The world of work is changing fast and the world of emotion is colliding with the world of data and HR professionals need to understand how to embrace the beauty and benefits of both the worlds and navigate these collisions. 

Here are the trends that are shaping our world of work-

• New jobs are emerging and existing jobs are transforming and declining

Emerging jobs are jobs with the fastest growing jobs titles in the last five years. India is a technology hub and tech jobs are rising. India has the highest penetration of AI skills in the workforce. Hence 4 out of the top 10 emerging jobs in India relate to AI. However, there are also jobs on this list that require understanding of human behavior such as customer success manger and sales recruiter. And the skills required for these jobs continue to evolve. For us, this means we need to think how do we hire differently and grow a new set of skills in our existing workforce. It also requires a cultural transformation where learning new skills and adapting to changes needs to be in the DNA of the organization and its employees.

• Every company is becoming a tech company

With greater digital adoption, we are seeing a blurring of industry boundaries and everyone is vying for the same talent.  Effectively, it means we are chasing the same talent. Talent with AI skills is in demand and has enormous best leverage and the best way to deepen your skills and secure a pay increase is through changing jobs. 

• There is more than one gap

As demand for AI skills expands across a growing number of industries, we are seeing that both the gender and equity gaps are going to widen. We are seeing an increasing gap in male and female representation in AI professionals. 22% of AI professionals are female. In the past four years we have seen men and women gaining AI skills at about the same rate. Which essentially means that if current trends continue, men will continue to outnumber women in the AI community, thus there is a risk that gender gaps will deepen in sectors that are traditionally male dominated such as hardware, manufacturing. As HR professionals, we need to think about closing the gender and equity gaps. First they need to ensure they are unlocking greater talent role and creating economic opportunity for every single member of the workforce.

The other gap is the network gap as access to opportunity is not equally distributed. The power of a network cannot be overestimated. But what happens if you are not born into opportunity or do not have the network to secure the job that’s important for you? 

So how can HR leaders address these challenges? Here are three ideas suggested by Aarti for the same-

We need to change our approach to talent strategy

People analytics skills are rising. Globally people analytics skills have grown more than 80% in the last year with exploding use cases such as workforce planning to employee experience. This highlights the criticality of data to drive the talent function.

Create an environment for people to do their best work

The success of an organization is fueled by the success of its people. And collectively organizations spend billions on employee benefit programs. A new approach is needed that creates organizational habits to allow to do people their best work. This transportation represents a move from people management to people success. There is an increasing realization that talent is not there to be managed. We need to move to people success and understand that solving the happiness and engagement problem will be able to drive better results.

Adapt a plus one mindset

Adopting a plus mindset and bringing humanity into the workforce is the third step to solving the engagement challenge. For organizations to be successful, we need to tap into all pools of talent and create an environment where everyone can succeed. Each of us can drive talent inclusion and closing the network gap by reaching out to someone you don’t know or does not have the same access to opportunity as you do. You not only share time but also talent and network as you adopt the plus one mindset and help them on their career journeys. Because when we connect people, we unlock a world of opportunity. 

Hence as the world of data collides with the world of humans, HR professionals need to be at these points of collision and navigate them to ensure we are maximizing the power of AI and technology yet embracing what is uniquely human in the workforce.