Trends that will shape the future of human resources

The technological revolution made lots of changes to everyone's lifestyles. Internet, social media, artificial intelligence, robotics, etc, are influencing a lot for the transformation of the world. 

How organizations are reacting to the major challenge of technological change. Following are the challenges that will shape the eventual fate of organizations and HR divisions around the world:

A dynamic, modern, and network organization 

Many organizations are making progress toward a more adaptable and dynamic revamping, and deserting the past hierarchical structures to have the capacity to react rapidly to changes in the market. Organizations are being organized around small workgroups or teams that are set up rapidly, cooperate for maybe a couple years, and afterward proceed onward to different tasks or projects inside the organization. As businesses make this change, they find that smaller groups are a distinctive path for people to work".

Employees are learning all the time 

An employee's career may last 3 to 4 decades. Anyhow, considering the speed of technological change, how are we going to get ready for coming decades? The best and appropriate solution is learning continuously. We can no longer content ourselves with going to campus and constructing our future profession on what we learn during those years; our career has turned into a journey of consistent learning. 

Talent acquisition 

In a knowledge and human capital-based economy, talent acquisition is vital for any company. Immersed in the great technological revolution, companies are constantly on the look-out for professionals specialized in new areas of economic activity that emerge almost overnight. 

To recruit (and then retain) the right people, human resources leaders are using social networking, new cognitive technologies and big data. The use of videos (with platforms such as HireVue), online forms, social networks (not just LinkedIn) and Skype interviews (the last step) has spread like wildfire, speeding up recruitment and reducing costs. 

Enhancing the employee experience in the company 

Human resources leaders are striving to maintain the corporate culture of companies, improve employee motivation and engagement, stay abreast of the demands of the new Millennials and offer better learning opportunities to employees. The quest to enhance the employee experience (from recruitment through the career journey) aims to increase employee satisfaction, improve companies’ reputations (in an increasingly demanding environment) and facilitate the transition towards a more dynamic, agile and flexible organizational model. 

 

New ways of appraising employee performance 

The way to achieve a promotion within the company or a raise is changing. Experience, seniority and examinations are no longer the primary method of appraisal and there has been a shift towards a faster and more flexible model. Human resources departments are looking for new appraisal models based on well-defined targets and continuous feedback; hundreds of companies (including Adobe, IBM and Goldman Sachs) have been successfully experimenting with new ways to appraise and reward employee performance. 

New leaders 

And if times are changing, so too are the leaders. Companies around the globe are looking for a new type of leader, one that can adapt to the economic and social changes taking place. The trend is towards younger and more diverse leaders who can run businesses the digital way. Their ability to manage small, agile and dynamic teams is in high demand by companies, together with an interest in continuous learning and development throughout their career. While the quest to find new leadership should involve the entire company, human resources leaders also play a key role in steering their company in the right direction. 

Digital human resources 

As the organization becomes digital, human resources departments must also follow suit. The department’s responsibility is to roll out new digital initiatives to the entire workplace, implement new mobile applications (Slack, Workplace, Microsoft Teams, Gamelearn, etc.), software and tools that help change the way the company works.

On this point, even chatbox services that use artificial intelligence for recruitment have found a niche in the most innovative companies. This shift is happening rapidly, as HR leaders are being pushed to take on a larger role in helping to drive the organization to ‘be digital’, not just ‘do digital’. 

Big Data at the service of human resources 

Today, more than ever, numbers are power. And human resources are not being left behind in the big data revolution. More and more, companies are using data about their employees to improve staff recruitment processes, increase company productivity and detect logistics errors. These new trends have led to the coining of the popular term “people analytics”: the intensive use of data to make decisions that affect people at work (who to hire, who to promote, etc.). 

Promoting diversity and inclusion 

As companies strive to become more global, digital and transparent, the issue of diversity and inclusion cannot be overlooked. Employees attach increasing importance to these principles, and consumers (and the public in general) have become more exacting in their demands for respect for cultural diversity and gender equality. Promotion by the human resources department of a policy that fosters diversity and inclusion among employees will not only make companies more efficient, innovative and productive, but it will also improve their brand image and reputation. 

Striking a balance between machines and workers 

New technologies pose a new challenge for all employees, and for human resources leaders. What kind of jobs can be replaced by machines and what ones should be performed only by people? The answer to this question calls for a redesign of jobs, the organization of companies and, indeed, the future of the company itself.