People management is more complex than ever before. Human resource will need to spend more time focused on people challenges arising from new work practices, skills and talent shortages, new employment legislation and many more.
HR is evolving at a rapid pace. As technology and regulations continue to evolve, in-house HR teams will get leaner, generalist roles as we know them today will cease to exist. This will be made possible by outsourcing HR and changes in technology among others.
They include;
An increase in outsourcing
There will be an increase in human resource outsourcing in most companies in the future. In-house HR departments will reduce in size due to new software and its consequent employee independence.
Self-service portals will become all the rage with employees doing much more on their own. Most employees will work with data systems to automate processes.
So many roles will be outsourced to specialists. These specialists also include specialized cloud HR software that can simplify transactional tasks such as providing payroll or managing engagement.
HR outsourcing will assist in payroll processing and employment law compliance for organizations. They will also be required when hiring new employees. That way, it will be easy to make contract and employment documents.
Change in core HR competencies
HR has become an absolute strategic business partner since 2020. CHROs are now included in making business projections along with understanding long term goals. Along with that, metric analysis is an integral part of core HR functions.
A prediction made for future HR is that HR professionals will be involved in business operations and strategy. This is true for most global enterprises where strategic planning will become a core HR competency.
How Will HR Change in the Future?
Technology to manage remote employees
Even before COVID-19 hit the world, companies had recognized the need to adapt to remote working. Today, managing remote work motivation and culture is the number one HR issue.
Working time and productivity are being measured through technology. HR is now expected to produce more result-based performance analysis compared to earlier times.
Focus on industry adaptations
Covid-19 has forced HR to rethink all the ‘best practices’ they knew of so far. The business conditions are highly different from ever before and most predicted trends have become non-existent.
However, this is a lesson to be learned for HR while moving forward. Current HR heads must learn everything about the industry, competitors, and business operations to fully evaluate the future.
Remote work practices
With an increase in remote working, the new HR will have to adapt to the diverse work situation. Training and development practices will become much more personalized and available through remote devices.
Data and AI
This is probably one of the biggest trends that will change the shape of future HR. Despite concerns that AI is going to replace humans, HR will largely benefit from this technology. Big data helps to increase the value and efficiency of the CHROs.
Hence, HR Chatbots are becoming a vital part of the HR departments every day. They can analyze and organize people-centric data for seamless attendance management, pay slip generation through conversational interfaces.
Inclusive culture and gig economy
The gig economy works on short-term contracts or freelancers as compared to long term jobs. This is becoming increasingly rampant in every industry across the globe.
For that reason, HR will have to look at its current practices to form a more inclusive and diverse culture.
People analytics
Global organizations are also now recognizing the need to apply data to:
Evaluate recruiting methods
Identify gaps in skill sets
Assess the demand and supply of talent
Employee experience
In the future HR will highly depend on employee and user experience. Conventional employee engagement tools will be reimagined to make the employee experience a competitive advantage.
However, large scale implementation of employee experience platform is correlated to the organizational business outcomes.
Focus on cyber security
Cyber security will be one of the major challenges for future HR due to the increase of data use. New cyber security policies will be formed to curb issues such as data confidentiality and employee privacy.
Having a secure remote infrastructure has never been more important. Companies with large remote workforce may open themselves up to Ransom ware attacks. Large employers will need to setup strong cyber security practices.
Work from Home leading to Work from Anywhere
The upcoming generation of workers will not only log in to their Human Resource Management systems from home. They will also be able to log in from anywhere.
There is a revolution coming in the facilities and infrastructure domains that will enable solutions to a permanently mobile workforce. That way, it will be easy for employees to work at their own comfort zones.
Absence of face-time
It is true that body language and our interpretation play a big part in communication. Remote working has now forced the absence of this critical signal to interpret intention.
How Will HR Change in the Future?
Unless handled carefully, this may lead to a rise in misunderstandings and communication breakdowns. In the future HR has to create policies that ensure communication best practices in the absence of visible body language.
HR Jobs to Expect In The Future
HR Business Director
It will be challenging to resume to business practices after COVID-19. Workplace safety will be a primary concern for both on-premise and remote employees. HR business director will lead the HR on creating safe work environments.
Head of WFH development
Working from home culture has set into motion several changes in:
Organizational processes: A complete business transformation to remote workflows and HR operations automation
Policies: Development of dedicated WFH policies and modification of all existing policies
Technology: Embracing the latest HR Tech such as Slack, MS Teams and corresponding apps has never been more important.
So it is an important job role as maintaining remote workers’ motivation and satisfaction will be under his/her purview.
Head of Skill Design
This is a crucial in continually developing skills for a diverse workforce. The focus will help on adding to existing skill sets as well as identifying new strategies to analyze future work requirements.
Head of Human-Machine Integrations
This role will help in creating a bridge between people and machines.