Shifting the gears — from content to context

4IR can be described as a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, and impacting all disciplines, economies and industries. It is no longer about change, but about the speed of change, the challenges it poses to the IT world and the various approaches to cope, excel, innovate, and understand. 

Today, we are spending most of the time interpreting profiles on social media, automating sop’s by way of having bots answer, Machine Learning applied for hiring, succession planning etc. In reality, the society has become a lot more individualistic while ‘the connect’ with humans has reduced by far across all ages. There is a growing need to provide an experience and responsibility. As they say there is no time for spectator sport – participation is the key to make it meaningful. If we are aware of what is around us, then we are being perceptive and if we acknowledge it then we are building momentum towards a positive direction and adding the zing aka the intensity to it. The level of experience depends on the level of intensity with which we do something/anything.

To take an example, in the evolution of IT over the years, the revenue growth has come down from the stratosphere almost plateauing with profit margins shrinking. The foundation of this industry is cost, talent and data which continue to remain. With this background, it becomes increasingly important to seek for opportunities and avenue for growth which introduces cognification.

The Technology stack which would progressively be used by HR is as listed by Zinnov in June this year at its confluence is:

While this continues, for HR to deal with MOI (mountain of information) will become a reprieve. Technology has made us superhuman in capability, however, the key to maintaining sanity is by being inclusive. We can all use modern science and technology to create what we want, and this has constantly evolved, not in its fundamental format but in a way to be presented and expressed — it has to evolve because generations of people are different in their mindset and understand.

The innate outcome of use of technologies is always timeless because though our lifestyles or the external may change, the essential human being will always remain the same. Focus will be on experience and meaning which will impact the quality of work and business we do, for example, people talk about stress as if it is a new phenomenon in the IT industry, but stress is not new. Even the caveman 10,000 years ago was stressed when he did not eat for the day. But how you cope is different given the exposure.

So, the ability to handle technology and its side effects has intensified. It’s all about shifting gears from the content to the context. The powerfulness of the experience is so deep that people naturally carry it on from one to another. If you put together 2 parts of Hydrogen and 1 part of oxygen – you will make water, similarly, technology will always be relevant – just that the way the oil (i.e. data) is used needs to remain focused. But we can make life significant only if we enrich personalized experience beyond the psychological and emotional framework.