A glimpse into the future of HR

NEW US RESEARCH into the future of HR management has found that the HR profession will have to avoid being caught unawares amidst rapid economic and business changes.

It will also have to be quick to recognise and respond to trends as they unfold in order to gain and maintain a competitive advantage.

The report, entitled 2015: Scenarios for the Future of HR Management, looked at possible models for the workplace in ten years time.

These scenarios, based on business competition and the availability of talent and organisational structure, could help prepare HR professionals for what the future may hold for their businesses.

They could also define the key HR competencies required to help companies succeed.

Developed by The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the report recognised that while it is impossible to predict the future, it is possible to consider what the world may look like and how companies will need to adjust.

“It’s largely acknowledged that the workforce and competitive market environment of tomorrow will hold little resemblance to what we have today,”said Susan Meisinger, president and CEO of SHRM.

“While we do not know for sure what is ahead, we can plan for what may happen,” she said. “Identifying possibilities and what organisations will need to do to thrive in each scenario puts the power in the hands of the HR professional to prepare for the future and lead their organisation to continued success.”

The report identified two main uncertainties as most important in considering future scenarios for HR management.

The first uncertainty concerns the availability of talent and whether it will be scarce or abundant. A scarcity could result in a tight talent market, led by employee demands for generous benefits and other concessions from employers.

Alternatively there could be a talent surplus because of greater offshoring and automation resulting in downsizing.

Secondly, changes to organisations because of new IT and organisational structures could create the potential for flatter, self-organising companies. Whether this will make organisations more or less democratic is not clear.

There were four possibilities for the role of the HR professional in 2015. Each included the different challenges and opportunities for organisations and their people strategies.

In the first scenario, HR managers will act as casting directors amid talent shortages,and self-organising firms as organisations are increasingly based on ad-hoc networks of workers around a small core.

“Like actors and crew on a motion picture, the right talent [will be] assembled for specific projects and then diffused again,” the report said.

In the second scenario, HR will operate as global dealmakers due to a surplus of labour and decentralised organisational structures. HR will have to manage relationships among a workforce spread throughout different geographic regions and across international lines.

“The organisations that remain viable in this environment are those that have been able to successfully manage diffused workforces.”

In the final two scenarios HR will be either caregivers or systems integrators. In the former uncertain times may lead to the return of centralised, hierarchical structures with the organisation acting as parent to its employees and HR working to protect and provide for them.

“Employees [will] have aligned themselves with tightly centralised organisations as they look to the organisations to provide shelter from the storm,” the report said.

In the latter, “innovations in biological computing and robotics have led to machines that can truly replace humans for all but the most complex tasks”.

These technological advancements could result in layoffs and “jobless prosperity” in certain economies.

As a result, HR will have to work closely with IT to maximise human-machine performance and help employees adapt to dehumanising change.

Each scenario demands a different set of competencies and skills for success. These scenarios consistently foresee an important role for HR managers and reveal different directions the professional will have to take, the report said.

However, SHRM acknowledges that the skills required and structure HR roles will take in the future could be quite different to the four models presented in the report.

“The focus in this report is much more on the uncertainties of the future,”the report said. “The goal of scenario planning is to come up with a set of alternative futures; several very different stories about the future.”

Among the trends expected to be the main drivers of workplace change are the relentless advancement of technology and volatile world affairs.

Technologies for communications and coordination, for example, could create the opportunity for more networked organisations, possibly leading to diffused organisations with a small core.

As a result these flexible relationships could benefit workers in countries where jobs have been offshored. Improvements in robotics and other forms of automation, IT and organisational processes will lead to higher levels of productivity.

Rising protectionism worldwide, triggered by terrorist or conflict activity, could also result in workers seeking the shelter of a centralised corporation.

As a result, HR professionals who consider strategic imperatives such as current capabilities of their organisations and whether their businesses would be able to thrive in each of the scenarios, will be better prepared to help.

They would also need to consider what new capabilities would be required to succeed in each of the scenarios and how they could continue to meet the demands of their existing businesses while preparing for the future.

“Ultimately, the scenarios that unfold between now and 2015 could reshape the whole concept of human resources.

“As long as companies involve humans and require effective management of resources, human resources can be expected to continue to play a central role.

“But how this role is carried out and the skills that are needed could be quite different,” the report concluded.