I was recently invited to an HR conclave to discuss about 'Bridging skill gaps' to enhance the employability of budding talents.
The demographic dividend of India is well poised for a revolutionary future, constituting about 25% of the world's workforce by 2020 – just four years from now! No doubt, this is a great news, however the fact remains that there is a lot desired on the quality of the workforce to be globally deployable.
I was intrigued to see some of the industry trends that could drive the future of work, the organization and its HR strategy. PwC, a global HR consulting firm conducted a global survey to unleash some of the upcoming trends. Blue world, Orange world and Green world – in their own words – is the categorization of work in future.
The Blue world is where large corporates rule the industry and compete for scarce resources. The Orange world is where job seekers prefer to brand themselves as independent consultants and sell their skills to relevant opportunities. In the Green world organizations attract talents that have the right behaviours and attitude and are compatible to their value and cultural system. Here there is a shared vision amongst the employer and employee on environment and sustainability.
What would HR look like?
In the changing scenario some of the requirements that I see of HR are:
Never before focus on HR analytics:
If we were measuring time to hire, cost of hire or training investment per employee, such metrics would give way to correlation between education qualification and job performance. Big data and analytics would be the new normal that the HR would need to deal with.
Diversity:
On the one hand we need globally deployable skills. On the other hand, sheer demand for talent would force the industry to deploy dormant talents that were traditionally not part of the main stream work force to be gainfully employed. For instance, second-career seeking new mothers or telecommuters would form part of the workforce. HR needs to gear up to be able to support such diverse workforce and their unique needs.
Performance and rewards:
Metric driven performance would be a given, with a pronounced high performance work culture. Rewards could be based on softer aspects such as demonstration of organization values and behaviours that support an organizational citizenship.
Role of technology:
There would be a huge virtual collaboration in support of reducing the carbon footprints and encouraging remote working from the convenience of our drawing rooms. Technology would be a huge differentiator to leverage on disparately available talents.
The exponential rate of change thus necessitates us to keep running, atleast to remain in the same place!
