HR is going through a transformation. Along the way, there have been some bumps and bruises, but several HR leaders from the HR Certification Institute® (HRCI®) community foresee a bright future ahead for HR professionals who understand the critical link to business goals.
In The Rise of HR, a free downloadable e-book available from HRCI, several HR professionals answered the challenge to write about the future transformation of HR. Here’s a brief look at what they said:
HR Tool Advancement
Seth Kahan, a leadership and performance improvement authority, makes note of 12 massive shifts that he believes will change HR over the next decade. HR tools and applications, he predicts in “Twelve Predictions for a New World”, will become more advanced.
“HR workers will use more and more advanced technology to understand and deliver their work,” Kahan says. “This will include everything from more advanced employee cost calculators that can take into account knowledge and expertise to assessment design, strategy development and outcome benchmarking tools.”
HR and Big Data
Robert Ployhart, a Bank of America Professor of Business Administration at the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business, underscores three key elements underlying the “new HR”: talent, data and strategy. His insight on Big Data are especially insightful:
In the “The Reluctant HR Champion?” he says: “Big data is largely HR data, and HR leaders will need to be comfortable working with data analysts who may have little knowledge or appreciation of the ‘human’ nature of their numbers. All kinds of predictive modeling is possible.”
However, he notes, it will be up to HR to “work with data in a legally appropriate, ethical and professional manner.”
New Ways of Working
HR must embrace massive changes in the way people work, according to Ron Mester, president and CEO of ERE Media Inc., a company that provides information on talent acquisition and talent management. In his contribution to The Rise of HR (“To Usher in The Age of HR, We Need to Start By Tearing It Apart”), he notes that HR must find answers for:
“This goes far beyond putting HR technology in the cloud, or leveraging big data to drive HR decisions, or changing employee-related policies to account for the rise of social media, or any of a number of other worthy changes to consider. Instead, it’s time for HR leaders to look at HR’s DNA itself – the functions fundamental building blocks – and rearrange it to address the emerging new realities of our business environment and the way we work.”
These are just a few of the predictions and insights about the future of HR to be found in The Rise of HR, a collection of 73 thought leaders available for free to help organizations rise to the challenges of managing people in the 21st century.