The future of HR

A decade ago, HR was only about recruitment – a decade later, HR is a strategic partner. A decade ago the processes for HR were fairly simple, a decade later HR is integrating artificial intelligence, automation, data analytics and a lot of other functions in the same processes. This explains how HR has evolved over the time. This is the present, now where do we see HR another decade later? Let's look at a few predictions and address it as HR 2.1.

To begin with, HR will also be more social as online communications and collaborations will be a huge HR tool in future.

"All human resources-related processes - from sourcing to recruitment and from appraisals to employee benefits - will increasingly be digitally-driven. Human resources professionals will have to upskill rapidly so that they understand and absorb the latest digital tools and trends. Social media as we know today may become a thing of the past over the next few years, but the core concept will remain and take on a far more evolved avatar. Even today, social media accounts are being scanned to arrive at a holistic prospective employee profile. Until the current crop of social media platforms become obsolete, they will continue to serve as important selection tools for HR professionals. As for employees, companies will look for individuals who display alignment with the evolving social mores. A spirit of genuine inclusiveness will become a USP, and those who evince regressive mindsets on this front will find increasingly themselves off the final selection list or even phased out. Workplace morality - both in terms of acceptable attitudes towards the opposite sex as well as in business ethics - will become very important criteria for selection and retention," says Sukhdeep Aurora, chief people officer - ANAROCK Property Consultants.

To continue on the same subject, online training will also be a huge add on in future. Recent research from Towards Maturity and CIPD suggests that online learning reduces training time by 27% and cost by 18% while increasing productivity by 14%. This increased ROI will enable L&D departments to do more with their budgets and have a bigger impact at work. Nishith Upadhyaya, head - advisory services, SHRM, says "Information will be more abundant, richer and more available to everyone. Work will be accomplished from anywhere, creating a truly global talent ecosystem. New media will enable increasingly seamless global and real-time communication, creating much faster ideation and product development, go-to-market strategies that are more diverse, and shorter product/strategy durations. Organizational reputation becomes a pivotal currency in customer and work markets, and can be enhanced or destroyed in real time."

In a recent and a different survey done by the SHRM, HR professionals say that the three biggest challenges facing HR executives over the next 10 years will be - Retaining and rewarding the best employees (59%), Developing the next generation of corporate leaders (52%), and creating a corporate culture that attracts the best employees (36%). This research also explores investment challenges, talent management tactics, evolvement of the workforce, and critical HR competencies and knowledge. We agree to that but we honestly also believe that HR has already created a strong base to handle these challenges with the right KRA structure, performance management system, training and development, talent acquisition strategy, succession planning, gender equality and other important processes already in place. It will just be a matter of time before HR has the advanced strategies to handle these challenges in place too.

The last and most importantly prediction is the era of work-life balance. This is considering that by 2020, 75% of the employees will be the millennials, who will bring in new ways of working and values that would give them work-life balance. Not only the HR would have to adapt to them but also learn the retain the major talent from this gen next.

We are already in 2018, HR 2.1 predictions will soon start playing out and the best way to work with them is to be prepared in advance. So are you ready to evolve more and take advantage of all of these in your organisation?

PHASE 2.1

HR professionals say that biggest challenges are Retaining, rewarding the best employees, Developing the next generation of corporate leaders, and creating  culture that attracts the best employees

The writer is assistant general manager, SILA