HR has been evolving a lot as a function in the recent times. The talent pool has been increasing, and as a consequence organizations are looking at HR as a strategic role more importantly than before.
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In a recent survey done by the Society for Human Resource Management, HR professionals say that the three biggest challenges facing HR executives over the next 10 years are :
- Retaining and rewarding the best employees as in Talent Retention.
- Developing the next generation of corporate leaders as in succession planning.
- Creating a corporate culture that attracts the best employees and creating a talent pool as in Talent Engagement.
So if we look at the upcoming 10 years of HR, here is what will be different and dynamic :
HR will be flexible
As per a recent survey of SHRM, providing flexible work arrangements will be a top priority for organizations. 9 to 5 work culture may move to more flexi timings, as young professionals are looking for places where they can have the chance to take time off to be creative, be able to take a break without being monitored, or even work from home with pre-assigned objectives.
Employees want greater flexibility and will excel in their performance if they are allowed to adjust both their work and personal lifestyle. HR is starting to understand that, we see many startups and MNC’s implementing such methods and the next 10 years will only bring more of this.
HR will be more social.
Intranet, internal social platforms, and many other ways of promoting online collaboration and communication across the company will be part of HR responsibilities in the future. HR can use social tools to predict behaviors in office performance by giving extra benefits to high performers of the month or give incentives to employees who are great performers and represent the organization. The work experience will be taken live and will bring a stronger social component to organizations and their culture.
HR will be mobile
We all know that mobile is the new hot trend in almost every industry; HR is no exception. HR can be app based out of your smartphone in the future (organization specific) .You will want to leave comments, assign tasks, and when arriving to the office have your team already working on such tasks. You will want to able to check, while having a coffee before entering an individual performance meeting, what comments were given during the last meeting. You will want to be able to check how you’re performing in terms of workforce happiness, to check the latest stats on your mobile and give a report to your CEO.
All in all, the lifestyle of an HR person will not be desktop-based. It will be wherever they are, whenever they want and in fact mobile / on the move.
HR will be about data
How many days does it take to hire a new person? What is the best quarter to hire specific profiles? When are people the happiest throughout the year? Who are the most performing people and why? What are the trending skills we need to acquire in the next hire? These and many more questions are all connected to the hot topic of big data. But data is meaningless without interpretation and context. HR will have a great deal of responsibility in analyzing the data, interpreting it and making the right decisions in order to ensure the right acquisition, training, development and retention of talent, all a part of people analytics.
HR will be integrated
HR will be composed by tech savvy people, data scientists, and recruitment experts. People that are able to do copywriting, for job descriptions that correspond to the company culture. People that are able to read and interpret data and forecast trends. People that are on top of the latest technology and can solve problems or bring additional benefits to the company. People that are connectors, socially active and can attract more talents to the company. HR will be about diversity of skills.
The next decade is crucial for HR to evolve and become a key role in any organization. HR might no longer be a single department in the future. HR might be part of something greater in the years to come.
