There’s a lot of speculation, or rather fear about how automation will lead to robots doing all the work. According to Indranil Roy, Executive Director of Deloitte Southeast Asia, 48% of work can be automated, but 0% of industries can be automated completely. This clearly indicates that human skills will need to be augmented and humans will still have jobs, unlike the popular belief. The shelf-life usefulness of skills has reduced from 25-30 years to just 5-6 years. This which suggests that more and more number of new job roles are is coming in the market and traditional skills and career paths are changing.

Workforce dynamics

The workforce dynamics are not just witnessing a shift in the skills and career paths; it isthey are also experiencing a huge cultural diversity along with generational diversity. Hence, such workforce dynamics push HR to change the infrastructure according to the workforce needs such as bringing everything on their devices, incorporating agile learning systems, etc. Talking about learning systems, becoming a specialist is the key to survive the bot age according to Harmeen Mehta, Global CIO of Bharti Airtel. Learning systems are important for preparing employees to stay relevant. Corporate MOOCs, mobile apps for learning, apt measurement tools and ROI measurements is are important to design the learning systems of future. 

48% of work can be automated, but 0% of industries can be automated completely -Indranil Roy, Executive Director of  Deloitte Southeast Asia

Design thinking and machine learning are becoming increasingly important and hold the potential to change the face of HR in organizations. Designing the new organizations of today is very different from what was being done a few years ago. It is very important to understand the technology and HR aspect of the business to harness the power of design thinking. While designing new HR initiatives for employees, it is very important to think like an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur lives and dies by the user expectations from the product. 

Design thinking must be deployed with collaboration, but very careful delegation. -Harmeen Mehta, Global CIO of Bharti Airtel

Same should be the case for HR leaders, they should take into consideration all the employee expectations and experiences and along the way iterate and improvise the product without spending much time on the action plan. Harmeen Mehta, Global CIO of Bharti Airtel, emphasizes on the fact that design thinking must be deployed with collaboration but very careful delegation. Business leaders must look through the crystal ball to evaluate and make decisions without the chaos, by filtering out relevant perspectives of their employees.  

Gaining insights about employees from data science

It is imperative for HR leaders to keep in touch with the on-ground happenings, unlike what used to be a case in the conventional big organizations. It is very important to understand the employees and their needs by closely studying them. Data science is another such trendsetter which can help in gauging employee perspectives. It’s not just deploying some software to the existing data, but gaining insights from the data that is passively generated or collected. This can be extremely useful in studying the hidden opportunities and potential of the workforce dynamics. 

With continuous disruption in the HR industry, it is important for HR leaders to be open to ideas and not be judgmental about anything and anyone. You can’t be a taskmaster and expect employees to think out of the box. Hence, the key is to give them enough autonomy to experiment and learn. It is imperative to let go the obsession with traditional, complex frameworks and make way for the new innovations and trends. It is important to keep the initiatives humane irrespective of the scale and extent of the technological revolution in the industry.