The Future of Work will be based on the Low Effort, High Impact model, in a bid to enable better business performance. New realities such as technological advancements, globalization, consumer-first, and experience-focus are challenging the way we work and impacting organizations as a whole. Talent management is no exception; HR leaders are being forced to rejig the talent strategy to low effort-high impact, to drive effectiveness and efficiencies. Moreover, HR is at the receiving end of double edged sword- organization-level changes, and employee-level changes like changing workforce psychographics and evolving career expectations etc. HR must, therefore, transform to be future-ready and contribute strategically to business growth and performance. For this to happen, HR leaders must understand, accept and embrace the Future of Work for HR. 

(The disrupted workplace presents new opportunities for the HR function. Prepare for the new challenges waiting for you in 2020. Participate in The HR Transformation Study 2019-2020 that will have insights to facilitate the changes in HR, leading to an HR function driving organizational change and success.)

The Future of Work for HR: What does it entail? 

We are seeing a distinct shift in the workplace. Employees are expecting consumer-grade experiences; they are aspiring for careers without walls. Automation and Artificial Intelligence are compelling human workers to be equipped with the skills to increase efficiency. Employees are already working alongside intelligent computers; soon they would be actively working along with them. The SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) revolution says it all- we are more connected, more informed, and more flexible, ushering in a fundamental change in the way we work. Working across time zones and geographies is already a norm, taking data-backed decisions is fast becoming an essential one. HR must realize that the employee experience of today and tomorrow is centered on these fast and fundamental changes. HR must adapt to create a future-ready talent and organization to outpace these changes to create the Future of Work.

Do you know what Future of Work has in store for you? Participate in The HR Transformation Study 2019-2020 and lead the future.

How to Reinvent the Future of Work for HR

Change is creating immense possibilities for HR to create business value: 

Start with the basic, the HR Service Delivery Model: While reimagining something for the future, it is important to build a strong base. Defining an HR Service Delivery model which drives agility, will help align with the Future of Work. HR leaders must apply outcome-based thinking to clearly outline how they shall achieve greater integration and provide a better user-experience to employees. Areas of improvement for streamlining service delivery are performance, learning and development etc. 

Carve a digital employee experience: Young employees such as millennials and Gen Z are craving a day-to-day consumer-like experience at the workplace. An organization which digitally enables its people may be able to better attract and engage tomorrow’s workforce. HR must invest in technological tools for employee self-servicing, so as to overhaul the employee experiences to align with digital expectations. 

Empower people using technology: The Future of Work lies in Low Effort-High Value models. HR too must adapt to this by investing in technologies such as automation, artificial intelligence etc. When HR professionals themselves are able to do more value-adding work because of transactional burdens being reduced, they will extend the same value to the customer. HR must invest in tech-upskilling and tech-infrastructure. Process automation, machine learning and chat-bots are likely to see the maximum growth when it comes to robotics adoption in APAC. Also, the consolidation of HR platforms will help drive future collaboration. 

Propel data-backed governance through analytics: Governance for agility must go beyond the rudimentary HR councils and HR leadership meetings. To drive business outcomes, governance should focus on critical decisions regarding fiscal discipline, risk management and policy creation. HR experts foresee a huge scope in bringing the analytics-advantage to HR, especially in performance, capability, productivity and retention. To feed this scope, much needs to addressed - HR teams’ core analytics capabilities as well as their ability to link analytics to business outcomes 

Building capability: Much of future-success will be dictated by how future-ready HR itself is, as a business-enabler. The performance lens for HR must change, with KPI-driven views being replaced by a strong focus on outcomes that matter to the business. Not only must HR build capability on technology, data & analytics, automation, etc.; but also, on softer areas such as collaboration, agility, learnability, and experience-curation. 

Building change-readiness: The ability to “navigate and manage changes within the HR organization as a result of transformation” has been recognized as one of the top six enablers for organizations. The Future of Work for HR definitely entails becoming more change-resilient and futuristic in thinking. HR leaders must not only manage the change, but spearhead it from the front. Seeking executive sponsorship and buy-in on the Return on Investment (RoI) and outcomes is a critical future skill that HR must learn.   

Only when HR leaders reimagine their own roles in line with the above outcomes, will they be able to reimagine the overall organizational ethos for superior talent and business outcomes. The time is now, for HR leaders to take the baton in their hands, and prepare to not just navigate change; but predict, preempt and proactively foster change towards better business outcomes. 

What will drive the transformation for the HR function? The study ‘The State of HR Transformation 2019-20: Adaptable by Design', will bring the focus of talent professionals on the current status of the HR function, and the challenges and the opportunities HR teams should be aware of. Participate in the study now!