SLIDE 3

TIME:
Definition
New digital technologies and social media are also huge game-changers. They are
greatly impacting our profession and our areas of focus, from the nature of our jobs
and the skills needed to perform them to the nature of organizations and how we
work, recruit, communicate, and learn. Some estimate that as many as 50 percent
of jobs will change in next five to 10 years and as many as one in three jobs will be
automated or robotized, impacting not just low-skill but also higher-skill job
there is no question that the digital transformation of business will continue to
accelerate. How we work, what we do, and how computers and data inform and aid our
jobs will continue to change over time. Human resources professionals, as the stewards
and experts in people and change practices in the organization, must reinvent ourselves
so we stay relevant, valued, and strategic in the organization of the future.
Our workforces are increasingly diverse and working in more and more diverse
ways. In many countries, the most significant job growth of the last few years
has been among self-employed or contract workers. We talk now of a life of jobs
instead of a job for life. The younger generations have quite different expectations
about work. The workplace is becoming more virtual and the boundaries between
work and life more blurred. More networked forms of organization are appearing
everywhere, and what we expect of good leaders is more about authenticity and
people management skills than just about technical competence. At the same time,
we have seen a systemic shift in the growth of youth unemployment and underemployment; challenging debates about productivity growth and wages; and
growing gaps between education and the world of work.
These hugely significant contextual shifts create an opportunity for HR to really
grasp and secure its place. It is the purpose of HR to help build more agile, adaptive,
and resilient organizations, and to enable the workforce to perform and grow. So
this is our space and our time, but we need to step up.
Which then brings us to what HR is really about. What is our purpose? Surely our
wider purpose is to build better businesses and business success and to support and enable
people to have fulfilling working lives.
In todays context, we need organizations that are fit for purpose, but also clear

on what that purpose is. That means also designing organizations and jobs that
have meaning, that are of themselves purposeful, and not letting automation and
technology let our people become cogs in the machine. It means creating more
opportunities for more people to add value and to feel of value. It means creating
environments where diversity in all its forms thrives. And it means creating flexiwork options that enable many more people to balance their lives and responsibilities.
This requires an outward-looking focus and value-based mindset. It also requires
us to think of our role primarily as enabling versus controlling. We must enable
and support the workforce, including the team leaders and managers who manage
people; build engagement; live the organizations values; create an organization
and culture that drive success; and be adaptive and responsive to change.
TIME:

Background for Change

We all know that change is constant. When we look at how the business world
will evolve over the next five years, this clich becomes a reality. Just look at the
changing demographics. We now have five generations working together. By 2025,
it is predicted that Millennials will be 75 percent of the workforce, requiring us to
prepare differently for developing and retaining this new generation of talent. In
addition, the business landscape is now digital and operates at the speed of light,
and people can do business anywhere and everywhere. This constant accessibility
of the workforce requires people to be always on.
Given these changes, HR professionals have an opportunity to create new ways of
adding value to our businesses. We know what people want and have the ability
to couple this desire with achieving business objectives while creating higher
engagement and productivity. We need to create more sustainable initiatives with
clear outcomes tied to business success. People bring their best selves to work if
they are fundamentally committed to their organizations mission
TIME:

HR Goes Digital
Many of the skills and experience that will be needed from HR talent in the
workplaces and workspaces of the future are obvious. The world will be even
more digital and even more mobile. Technology will permeate every aspect of
the job. Predictive intelligence will be required of most jobs, as data mining and
user behavior match replace good old intuition in most areas. The customers of
tomorrow will want companies to know them and their tastes and preferences,
so sellers, manufacturers, content providers, and service providers will all have to
develop the capabilities in their organizations to satisfy this demand. Organizations

that do business in the older ways, without predictive and data capabilities, will
decline.
Now add in the future workforce, which will be dominated by Millennials and
digital natives who seek more wholesome life experiences from the workplace than
their predecessors. Asian and other emerging markets will participate even more
in the global economy, both as consumers and as workforce talent. Organizations
will see much more diversity in all aspectsage, ethnicity, nationality, gender.
HR professionals will need the capabilities and skills to be more data and analytics
driven. HR also has to take the lead in creating organizational environments where
work and life can come together more seamlessly using people analytics and big
data. An equally important trend will be that HR professionals will need to think
and apply more strategic thinking at all layersnot just at the top. Algorithms will
do much of what people do today, leaving strategy to be done by professionals.
How do all these changes impact our profession and the organizations we build in
HR? I suggest the changes are profound, important, and exciting
Educate yourself and reinvent traditional practices.
First, HR teams must become more educated and professionally conversant in the digital
world of business. Todays organizations are flooded with new tools and technologies for
work, new ways of working, and a deluge of multigenerational work issues. Old-fashioned
HR practices, many of which were developed around the turn of the century, simply have to
be reengineered traditional practices, which were designed to operate in top-down
hierarchies of the past, simply do not work well today. We need to reinvent them.

2.Become facile with technology, data, and research.

The HR organization of today is highly enabled and empowered by technology. This means
HR professionals must be familiar with software, data, analytics, mobile tools, and all the
vendors building innovative solutions. The days of HR technology sitting in the basement
running PeopleSoft are over. Today mobile collaboration tools, mobile recruiting tools, and
predictive analytics tools are among the most important parts of the HR ecosystem. People in
the HR function must feel comfortable with technology and be willing to learn and look at
data. One CHRO old me, I am no longer hiring anyone into HR who does not have at least a
working set of expertise in statistics. We in HR must be vigilant of new technology and
constantly research and study how it impacts the workplace and all our management
practices.
3. Turn ourselves outward into the business.

Finally, as we reinvent what we do and what we know, we have to reinvent where we spend
our time. Technology is now making more and more of the generalist function available to
people online or through a service center (e.g., managing my benefits, viewing vacation days,
etc.). Self-service cloud-based HR technology is what we call a system of engagement,
meaning it is now designed to let individual employees and managers serve themselves.This
means that HR teams must become business advisors, consultants, and expert specialists in
their domain. Our job is no longer to be a generalist waiting for someone to help, but rather
a trusted business advisor, trained with excellent skills and connected to what we call
networks of expertise (not just centers of expertise). Specialists (recruiting, OD, employee
relations, compensation) can and should be more embedded and assigned to the business, so
they must be networked and share information and skills with one another.The HR
professional of today is more likely to be a talent expert, a technology expert, and a
consultantand less likely to be an OD professional who likes to train and help people. This
is not to say that HR skills are not needed. Today more than ever, HR professionals must
focus on three categories of skills: how to recruit, develop, and manage people; how to
organize, enable, and improve the organization; and how to manage, leverage, and exploit
data and technology. I believe HR is a craft and these skills are learned over time, through
apprenticeship, and through study and research. If we think about the talent and technologies
now impacting HR, these are difficult roles to fill, so the bar has been raised for everyone in
our profession. And there is no question that the digital transformation of business will
continue to accelerate. How we work, what we do, and how computers and data inform and
aid our jobs will continue to change over time. Human resources professionals, as the
stewards and experts in people and change practices in the organization, must reinvent
ourselves so we stay relevant, valued, and strategic in the organization of the future.

EXTRA INFORMATION (NOT ON SLIDE!)

HR ROLE IN THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE: A TIME FOR REINVENTION

Josh Bersin
The human resources profession is at a crossroads. Over the last few years digital
and internet technologies have radically changed the way we work, requiring a
tremendous change in all areas of human resources. Our latest global research
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shows that business and HR leaders have three major challenges: (1) building and
strengthening the new and changing leadership pipeline; (2) finding ways to reengage employees and build a strong global culture in a world of never-ending
work; and (3) reskilling the HR function itself, which often feels behind.
If we consider HRs job as the steward of the people processes in a company,
we have to recognize that almost every part of management, capability building,
recruiting, and communication has been radically changed by technology.

The overwhelmed employee.

Today the barriers between work and life have gone
away. More than two-thirds of our research respondents tell us they are overwhelmed
by work. A National Journal poll found that more than 40 percent of all workers
today believe it is impossible to get ahead in their career without significantly
sacrificing time with their family and personal life.
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Companies are struggling to deal with this issue and know we need to simplify, help people
focus, and reduce
complexitybut how we create this new organization is still a work in process.

Transparency of all people data.

Almost all HR-related information is now
freely shared on the internet. Glassdoor holds unfiltered feedback about an
organizations CEO, culture, and benefits; LinkedIn is an open recruiting tool
that lets recruiters find and contact more than 500 million professionals at
almost no cost; and a flurry of new tools are now enabling employees to share
their salaries, rate their managers, and talk about what its like to work at their
company. Should we still have secret talent reviews and performance ratings?
More and more people resent this. They expect transparency in HR practices as
well as from leadership.

Accelerated expectations for careers.

Only 30 years ago, when I entered the
workforce, we expected our employers to give us lifetime careers. Today this

expectation has all but disappeared, and young employees change jobs every 12
to 24 months readily. In his new book The Alliance, Reid Hoffman, chairman
and founder of LinkedIn, writes that we have entered a world where workers are
like professional athletes. They work for a company and contribute for a while,
but when needs change, they move to another team, taking their skills and
expertise with them. So the concept of a job has changed and organizations
have to manage their teams in a world of a rapidly changing, mobile,
contingent working economy. Companies now have to move beyond succession
management to putting in place what we call programs for facilitated talent
mobility. But how?

New models of leadership.

One of the most important roles HR plays is the
development and support of the leadership pipeline. But leadership styles and
needs today are radically different from the traditional models pioneered by GE
and IBM in the last few decades. Leaders must be agile, globally aware, innovative,
and highly collaborative. While the top-down hierarchical structure still exists
in most companies, more and more research shows that it is empowerment and
agility that drives success in todays economy.

The enormous power of data and science.

Finally, HR must come to grips with the fact that data and science are going to transform
much of what we do. Many of the gut feel decisions made by management (and HR) are
soon to be replaced by data-driven decisions: who to hire, who to promote, what career paths
to facilitate, how much to pay peopleand even where to locate a facility, how big an office
someone needs, and what type of food we should serve in the cafeteria. All these decisions,
many of which were made by HR working with leadership, can now be informed by
data and science, making the datafication of HR a new and urgent priority.
Challenges for Human Resources in a Digital World With technologies evolving every
day, human resources professionals are realizing that the fast-paced, ever-changing
digital world impacts With technologies evolving every day, human resources
professionals are realizing that the fast-paced, ever-changing digital world impacts their
jobs and workplacesnot only today, but in the future. A global research and consulting
firm focused on learning, talent and human resources strategies, recently published a
report on the Top Best Practices for the High-Impact HR Organizations. The report noted
that overall budgets, organizational structure, and department size have less impact on
business performance than the skills of HR professionals themselves. The research also
outlined the key competencies driving results todayfamiliarity with integrated talent
management, understanding of workforce planning and comfort with social networking
and HR technology. As organizations and business leaders position themselves for the
future, the following five workplace challenges will continue to change human
resources.
1. Evaluating Early Adoption Truth be told, HR is traditionally not known for early
adoption. Case in point: the slow adoption of social media. Bill Kutik, technology
columnist for Human Resource Executive magazine, explains, HR loves talking about
social media, but so far has done very little with it. Fears emanating from the legal
department have stuck HR in its tracks. While some people will try all of the latest

options, others will want to wait until platforms have been proven. Being on either
extreme could be detrimental. Its important to evaluate each and sometimes take a
chance. Kutik says, Just like the introduction of all new technologyfrom the
telephone, to e-mail, to the Internetwhich have all scared HR to death, it will
eventually come around. One early trend Kutik believes is gaining traction is mobile.
Every vendor has either released or is about to release a mobile application for
smartphones and soon for the iPad. While much of it is a nice to have, mobile apps will
get most traction in workforce managementthe nuts and bolts of time and attendance
and absence managementwhere they perfectly meet the needs of a distributed,
mobile workforce.
2.Balancing High Tech and High Touch Being able to recognize the need for a technology
solution will be a significant business advantage. HR will have to evaluate what
functions can be automated and still provide desired levels of service. Naomi Bloom,
managing partner at Bloom & Wallace, a consulting firm specializing in the application
of HR technology, shares how companies are evaluating digital solutions. Increasingly,
HR leaders are starting with the desired business outcome and working backwards from
there to answer questions, rather than starting with the question of what to automate.
Resources to Improve Your Small Business
You should Hire a Recruiter? Bloom cited the investment that Kronos has made in going
mobile as an example of meeting a growing need by both the business and its
employees. If your business results are driven by optimized workforce scheduling, as is
absolutely the case in most retail businesses, then you must focus some of your
automation investments right there. And since the retail workforce may be young and
used to communicating via their smartphones, youd better consider delivering most of
the transactions and analytics that your employees and even those first line managers
use, directly to their smartphones. With increasing technologically advanced options,
human resources professionals will be tasked to figure out when processes should be
automated, versus when a human face or voice is the best route.
3. Information Curation Kutik says it best, We are all desperately in need of a good
editor.HR is experiencing a flood of information and it's critical to have an effective
means of filtering necessary and relevant informationthe new term in the digital space
is curation. While Kutik labels curation an awfully fancy word he does acknowledge
the necessity for picking and choosing among various information sources. Few people
remember that Yahoo began by having human editors read and evaluate sites for their
quality and determining how they would appear in searches. No more. Relying on what
our friends link to on Twitter is not going to solve the problem. Happily, people are
working on technologies to solve the problem. For recruiters, the ability to sort through
loads of informationincluding applications from various platforms and employment
datawill be a skill worth honing.
4. Training for Accountability Many of these challenges come down to being better
communicators in order to effectively leverage the digital space. As such, HR needs to
place a priority on management and leadership training to ensure line managers are
able to effectively convey expectations and outcomes. Stacey Harris, principal analyst
at Bersin & Associates, says development of line-manager capabilities should be a top
priority. Our research found there was a one-to-one correlation between the
effectiveness of an organizations line managers and the overall effectiveness of its HR
function. In simplest terms, as a companys line managers increased their management
capabilities, the effectiveness of the HR function paralleled that upward progression.

Harris explained that, on the digital front, companies need to partner with providers who
deliver excellent support and service and deep understanding of its audience's needs.
Organizations that offer completely integrated support for line managers are still
difficult to find, but suppliers are making dramatic headway. Companies like Saba have
spent considerable resources integrating social networking that can be used for
development and knowledge transfer, with learning curriculums, performance
management tools and competency maps. "Organizations such as Triple Creek provide
competency-driven mentoring programs over the web," continued Harris. "Plateau has
built on an integrated architecture introducing integrated and highly-scalable solutions
for career development, compensation, pay for performance, and employee profile
managementall which are used in line manager support."
5. Metrics and Measurement Bloom says, When it comes to metrics, the easiest to do
are very rarely the most valuable! Theres no question that HR needs to create data
structures that will deliver information on business goals not only to help the company
understand their workforce, but also to optimize their talent-related processes. Bloom
notes, The most important metrics for any business investment, including those in HR
technology, are the business outcomes that the investment is intended to achieve. If
were trying to speed up and improve the selection of quality hires, then wed better be
looking at elapsed time to productivity and quality of hire. Then the challenge, as
Harris points out, is most companies dont have a single, accurate database for storing
and accessing relevant HR information. Data that is scattered among multiple systems
and acquired in varied formats can make it difficult for most organizations to provide a
clear picture of their current workforce. Many organizations capture only limited
employee details in master data systems. Harris noted that SAP has made substantive
progress in this area, pulling together data from the HR and talent management
systems then analyzing data with the same analytic tools used in their other business
intelligence platforms. Additionally, SuccessFactors has similar analytics and planning
tools. While many advances have been made in the human resources digital space,
there are still new developments to look forward to. These advancements will bring
greater opportunities to align human resources with business goals. HR professionals
will need to remain aware of these challenges and develop their own strategies to stay
within the path of progress.