From Great Resignation to Great Aspiration - Trends in HRtech and Future of Work
During my sabbatical leave in Berlin I spoke to entrepreneurs and business leaders from the HR and HRtech space and checked some publications on the Future of Work. With this article I would like to share my two cents with you.
The need for speed and teams
·The pandemic and VUCA world have shown the need for greater agility of businesses
Speed and ability to adapt will remain key to stay on top of change
A critical factor which defines success or failure are teams with a high diversity of perspectives. This is particularly true for complex problem solving and innovation.
Off the back of the pandemic, the Great Resignation seems here to stay. ¾ of CEOs rank labour and skills shortages as the biggest challenge. Globally, 36% of millennials and 53% of Gen Z respondents planned to leave their employers within two years, according to Deloitte’s 2021 Millennial study.
Despite better pay and a more impact-driven workplace culture, younger generation talents increasingly have a higher desire for flexibility and variety. This is further fuelled by the emerging gig and creator economy.
Look inside
As external hiring gets increasingly difficult, companies look inside to accelerate productivity and performance with internal talents.
Employee Experience (EX) is the new Customer Experience (CX)
In order to retain top talents, companies will have to empower employees to choose opportunities that are important for the organisation and relevant to the people.
It will therefore be important to align employee capabilities and aspirations with the company’s operational and strategic ambitions.
Choosing your own work increases employees’ motivation and agency — the perceived ability to influence your future.
Skills, skills, skills
To embrace more agile and fluid work models and make best use of their workforce, companies need to better understand the skills, personality profiles and workstyles of their employees
Many skills and experiences remain unused as companies still struggle to understand which skills are actually available within their workforce («If only we knew what we know…»)
Illustration: Interpretation of trends
How technology can support
Technology can be of massive help to support businesses in making best use of their talents
One trend in HRtech has caught my particular interest: Talent or opportunity marketplaces
On such (mostly internal) platforms, the enterprise offers its workers defined opportunities for projects, gig-like assignment, mentoring etc.
Empowered workers, in turn, can choose to pursue those opportunities they most value and are in line with their interests and strengths.
Such platforms help to break down silos and enable efficient and fair allocation of talent to concrete opportunities and challenges.
This allows companies to redeploy people faster and leverage their capabilities best (by putting them in the right place). So the land of scarcity could become the land of plenty.
As the technology should prevent unconscious bias in the matchmaking (assuming the technology itself is built in an ethical and unbiased manner), this is also interesting from a diversity, equity and inclusion perspective (including disability inclusion)
The on-the-job assignments (either as full time or as side project) let people explore different functions, pick up new skills and work on a variety of projects and thus be an active part of their career development while being at work (instead of just participating in trainings).
Along the way, such marketplaces can provide an organisation with actionable data and analytics, which can help it become more efficient, valuable and productive.
When leadership embraces technology
Technology can be implemented quite rapidly. But for many organisations however, this represents a true cultural and structural workforce disruption.
Open mindset and senior leadership support are therefore at the centrepiece to make these new technologies work as part of a cultural change.
My conclusion: Exciting times to be in HR(tech) these days
If interested to dig a bit deeper into some of the topics discussed above, here are some interesting reads and publications:
1. Fortune/Deloitte CEO survey (2022) From Great Resignation to Great Reimagination https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/human-capital/articles/the-great-resignation.html
2. The Deloitte Global 2022 Gen Z and Millennial Survey https://www2.deloitte.com/global/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/genzmillennialsurvey.html
3. Harvard Business Review Article 2022 Workers Don’t Feel Like a 9-to-5 Job Is a Safe Bet Anymore https://hbr.org/2022/03/workers-dont-feel-like-a-9-to-5-job-is-a-safe-bet-anymore
4. McKinsey & Company 2022 Blog Article Money Can’t Buy Your Employee’s Loyalty
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-organization-blog/money-cant-buy-your-employees-loyalty
5. EY 2022 Work Reimagined Survey https://www.ey.com/en_gl/workforce/work-reimagined-survey
6. Accenture Fjord Trends 2022 The New Fabric of Life https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/PDF-169/Accenture-Fjord-Trends-2022-Full-Report.pdf#zoom=40
7. Accenture 2021 Future Skills Pilot Report https://www.accenture.com/tw-en/case-studies/consulting/future-skills-pilot-report
8. MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte 2020 Opportunity Marketplaces https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/technology-and-the-future-of-work/enabling-workforce-agility-and-enterprise-growth-in-a-crisis-with-opportunity-marketplaces.html