The evolution of HR

Attitudes towards technology are beginning to shift from something that helps us day-to-day, to something that is now becoming entirely integrated into the workplace and indeed, our lives – in other words, it’s becoming utterly indispensable.

In this article we provide some key advice on how to fully embrace these new and exciting opportunities in some of the largest growth areas of HR, allowing you and your teams to be more productive and mindful of rapid changes in working environments to ultimately make you wiser within your role.

Remote workforces

To some, leading a remote workforce has its challenges. Managing people you can’t physically see leads to trust and accountability concerns.

However, the millennial workforce has a different set of rules. They don’t want to adhere to convention and want flexibility at work. Deloitte have predicted that by 2025, 75% of the workforce will be millennials, therefore these expectations need to be taken seriously, because the shift is inevitable. Being ahead of the curve will empower your current workforce and allow them to adapt to new technology now, and in the years to come.

Unbiased talent sourcing

During 2017 the tech industry and Silicon Valley were accused of bias within the workplace therefore an unbiased recruitment process must be implemented. This can be done only by looking at the candidate’s skillset and not letting the demographic data within their CV determine the outcome.

It’s important for unbiased recruitment to be an organisational change and needs to be communicated throughout your team.

Unbiased talent sourcing happens when you:

• Connect talent strategies with the business’ goals only – no other biased factors occur
• Ensure job descriptions only specify the exact skillset needed
• Ask candidates to not provide name, address or the name of their school or university where they acquired their qualification
• Integrate AI to screen candidates based on skills, ensuring it’s an unbiased selection
• Speak to your recruitment team and allow them to explore their own personal biases – run training courses and workshops to allow them to discover what aspects they might have unknown biases around.

Gig economy

The gig economy is redefining the way millions of people work across the globe.

In short, the gig economy is an influx of employment that focuses around shorter contracts allowing for more flexibility. Defined by the BBC as “a labour market characterised by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work, as opposed to permanent jobs”. The similarities between the gig economy and remote working is again a result of differing attitude throughout the generations. Shifting the abnormal into very much the ‘normal’ way of operating.

According to research from EY, millennials place much more emphasis on flexibility and want it to tie in with their future ambitions. ‘Gig’ workers currently represent 34% of the US workforce, and this set to grow to 43% by 2020. Therefore, we cannot afford not to acknowledge these new ways of working that are set to craft the way we work in future.

Training and personal development

Empowering your workforce to develop both professionally and personally will hopefully always be very high on any leader’s employee engagement agenda. Incorporating technology into this new way of working allows for flexibility around work and life.

Being able to take online courses remotely empowers you, and the people you manage, to be able to learn at a time and pace that suits them. Forbes reported that the new generation generally choose online learning over traditional classroom settings due to the changing nature of work.

Having the ability to take online HR development courses integrates into these new working lifestyles – and caters to this era of convenience and ease.

For more information about evolving your HR career, click here.