Article: Forward to future: What will HR be like in 100 years?

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Forward to future: What will HR be like in 100 years?

Looking into the future of HR and finding out how it would be in the corporate world, 100 years from today
Forward to future: What will HR be like in 100 years?

An inherent curiosity to look into the future is a human tendency that has made astrology a very popular science that most people turn to, in times of difficulties and otherwise.  Gazing into a crystal ball and trying to find out how HR would work 100 years from now is a part of the same exercise.  

Some of the HR predictions for the future would probably happen as follows.

Technology and Robotics

Society is definitely going to look and behave differently a hundred years from now.  If the current trend continues into the future, technology and robotics would be automating a lot of everyday tasks.  The world of work would obviously look very different too, from what we know of it as of today.  Would this be a world that you might want to live and work in?  Maybe not.

Wearable and even perhaps implantable technology of the workforce will enhance the mind and productivity, while sending out real-time biometric data to those who control them.  While technology and robotics might be doing all the hard work, managing and analyzing highly personal data and filtering employees based on brain wave patterns would be the responsibility of the HR Department.   

Automation

Automation offers wonderful possibilities.  It is estimated that this process can save up to 12 workers’ lives a day.  But what would that make of us? How would companies end up looking?  A set of intelligent machines?   Would there be a need for humans at all?  HR would be managing these systems and upgrading them from time to time, to perform the ever increasing tasks.  The “H” in HR will cease to exist and mechanical resources will only be taken care of.  People might have enough time to lead a hedonistic life and pursue the arts or whatever their heart desires.

Doing away with manual time-sheets

HR Systems would simply detect the presence of each employee as they go in and out of the office and clock them in automatically.  Proximity technology where beacons and GPS are used to find out where people are, are already being used today.  Why wouldn’t the same technology be used to evolve into a far superior process?

Weird locations

An international workforce is being managed as if they are in the same building as you.  Strange working locations like ocean cities, underground bunkers and other planets in space like Mars are likely possibilities.

Managing your workforce on Digital Scrolls

We are only a few years away from having a tablet rolled up like a scroll.  In a hundred years, we might be able to fold up our computers and put them in our pockets.

There could be another way of looking at 100 years down the line.  Technology might not move so fast that everything will become automated in just a century.  HR might become a public service where they manage and monitor a population for its wide ranging skills and using them as per the needs of society.

There is a lot of potential for change and we have to gear ourselves up to nurture the future that we want to create for ourselves.

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Topics: Watercooler, Talent Management

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