The way and type of work we do is changing rapidly. By 2025, many white-collar jobs will disappear due to automation and robotization, and demographic changes will put further pressure on the workforce.
HR professionals are faced with the challenges posed by Generation Y’s new attitudes towards work, the reduced number of full-time employees and the pressure to provide quick solutions in an increasingly fast-paced and unpredictable business environment.
Among the main trends observed in the market are more flexibility at work, the possibility to design one’s own work, open and continuous feedback and diversified career models.
In the future, employees will work for more than one employer at a time – this according to studies by leading consulting firms such as McKinsey and PWC. The challenge for HR will be to efficiently manage this landscape of differentiated careers.
Global mobility will become increasingly important. Assignments will shift to short-term projects. There will be more cross-border commuters, living and working in different countries.
HR will become fully digital, not only in terms of applications and technologies, but also in the way big data will be used to understand the workforce. HR departments will work with other companies as part of a network, e.g. to recruit and share talent.
Lifestyle incentives, flexible hours and smart working will become increasingly important.
Bonus policy will lose its value, and a shift from individual bonuses to team and company bonuses will be preferred.
What skills for HR teams?
- Organizational development: ability to design new governance, organizational models and processes that are agile and adaptive to constant change, in-depth knowledge of the design principles of platform- and network-based organizations.
- Personalized deployment: developing personal career plans, acting as a career coach for employees.
- Predictive data analysis, modelling, programming, translation.
- Virtualization: building trust and an enduring culture when most teams only work virtually and/or time-bound analysis in business proposals.
- Digital HR: using digital tools and applications for most interactions with employees.
- Digital employability: ability to interact effectively with virtual machines, ability to enable employees to deal with ‘digital anxieties’.
- Change agility: being able to adapt quickly to new environments and engaging employees to do so.
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change when necessary”.
