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There are many ways and keywords to describe the new currents in HR. Among them, let's briefly look at the trends through three lenses: technology as the environment that drives the speed of change, the individual as the customer who leads its direction, and HR's role as the result.
Goodbye, Email
Recently, email inside companies has been gradually losing its meaning as a communication tool. It is more often used as a formal procedural step, or as a way to make sure recipients have the content on record. As the volume of information flow grows and immediate communication and collaboration are emphasized, email is becoming an increasingly inefficient tool — one where it is hard to filter content. Even when not officially sanctioned, organization members naturally accept the most usable tool on the market. Depending on the type of team or working group, applications specialized for collaboration, communication, and messaging will replace email at an accelerating pace.
HR Inside Smartphones and Tablets
The prediction that mobile computing devices like smartphones and tablets would dominate has long ruled the business world. Laptops and desktops still hold great value as work tools, but from the user's perspective, the mobile-centric trend is increasingly hard to resist. The invisible complexity is handled by HR using technology, while users — the employees — conveniently experience various services. In particular, communication and collaboration tools, attendance and leave management of various kinds, and pay and benefits including retirement benefits — the areas employees access most repeatedly — will go mobile faster. HR and IT practitioners need to actively change their previously closed approach to information access.
Various Forms of Digital HR
HR service delivery is starting to combine technologies like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), robotic process automation (RPA), and chatbots. By experiencing customer service or field work processes through virtual reality, you can lift practical job problem-solving capability.
Chatbots are being actively used in service and technical support processes, and there is a growing trend of introducing applications that support employee onboarding processes. Using "frequently asked questions (FAQ)," you can answer HR-related questions about benefits, compensation history, and retirement — freeing up HR's time.
HR Data and Analytics
Big data and HR analytics are not unknown concepts, nor are they new. But this does not mean many people understand the meaning well, or use the analysis effectively. Companies that actually use data well or use analytical tools meaningfully are rare. If anything, there are more cases where data is lost or misused. HR has long collected data, but did not use it correctly and did not manage it.
This trend will persist until data approaches reality. It becomes a way to reduce biased decision-making and to expand positive employee experiences. Data is always incomplete and tends to clash with instinctive intuition. The starting point for traveling this long journey with interest is to identify good questions. We need to think carefully about what we want to confirm, whether "yes" or "no" conclusions can drive next-step execution, and whether this is something hard to obtain through other methods.
The Millennial Generation
Generational change is no longer a theoretical area. Most of the people entering the labor market have already shifted to the Millennial generation, and not far in the future, Generation Z — instantly connected to everything — will enter as well. The new generation favors flexibility and transparency, communication and technology, and focuses on strong values. They are more engaged when business focuses on something better than the present and has social impact. They also have a strong desire to coexist with the organization without compromising the values each individual holds.
The Emergence of "Brandividuals"
As the boundary between the real and digital worlds has dissolved, anyone can build a brand on social media and gain fame overnight. The emergence of "brandividuals" — combinations of brand and individual — has already begun to be observed. In the recent market often called the gig economy, both demand for and supply of labor are not regular. As a result, the labor market for forming multiple employment relationships based on individual expertise — like freelancing — is expanding. According to Intuit, in the U.S., contract-based workers are projected to approach 40% by next year. In Korea, the general labor market is changing with more focus on permanent employment and job security, so it cannot be directly compared with overseas. But in labor markets that supply services based on more specialized and high-end capabilities, the branding of individuals will accelerate. The capability to distinguish and manage the fake expertise hiding behind company and organizational brands from the real expertise of individuals who deserve to be branded will become HR's brand.
Job Re-Skilling
The faster the pace of industry and technology change, the more important the fit of each individual employee's capability becomes. The skill and knowledge gap between employees in particular is becoming a far more significant obstacle to organizational evolution than in the past. According to a Gartner Group survey, more than two-thirds of business leaders are now worried that their company's competitiveness will be lost if they cannot keep up with currents like digital transformation before 2020.
HR needs to manage business processes related to digital environments and, alongside that, divide and manage individual job performers' skills more granularly. The need to redistribute functions and skills to existing employees, or to replace existing processes with new workflows and train people on them, will continue to grow.
Expanding Both Individual Autonomy and Responsibility
The reasons differ slightly — being a great place to work, the trends of the times, the characteristics of the Millennial generation, work engagement and performance growth — but the movement to expand employee autonomy is steady. Now, alongside that, an enhanced standard for the individual responsibility that corresponds to autonomy is being created.
It is well known that Silicon Valley companies treat "freedom and responsibility" as a given in their employee culture. HR and managers want employees, in exchange for being guaranteed autonomy, to take initiative and maintain pace themselves.
This is focused on not wasting the intellectual capital of high-performing organizations or individuals. We are now entering an era where minor work problems are sufficiently handled by "Just google it!"
Shrinking and Outsourcing of Traditional HR Organizations
Like other functions, HR is also being rapidly automated. In addition, an ecosystem of specialized, cost-competitive external service vendors in specific areas is forming. Talent recruiting is being replaced by applicant tracking systems and search engines, and assessments through external expert groups, and outsourcing of payroll and benefits, have already expanded. As the quality of automation and process outsourcing rises, traditional HR functional organizations and headcount will shrink. This change will in turn drive the emergence of software-as-a-service offerings and create a cycle of growing demand for tailored outsourcing solutions.
Decentralized HR
Alongside the diversification of work patterns like autonomous and discretionary work, the globalization of business drives the need to decentralize what is currently centralized HR services. Batch processing will no longer be valid. Remote work, individual-centered project-based improvement activities, and collaboration between internal employees and contract specialists will accelerate the decentralization of HR going forward — and become catalysts for field-centered HR. In globalized companies, situations where three or four groups in different time zones work together also become frequent. Centralized HR and uniform programs need to change flexibly.
HR as a Partner in Employee Experience
The space left by reduced traditional HR functions will be replaced by interest in employee experience. Everything observed during the time employees work, and everything they perceive and express, becomes a journey of experience. Every stage is included — talent attraction and recruiting, onboarding, performance and growth, employee participation, and exit. Understanding employees and developing or providing new experiences should be HR's top agenda.
This not only improves employee retention, engagement, and participation, but also becomes the employer brand known externally — bringing in better talent. Conversely, it also has the effect of preventing employees with self-agendas completely different from the organization's values from staying longer than they should. Employees with no priorities beyond their own interests can also damage the experience of those around them. By securing experience data continuously through trustworthy tools — small but frequent and across various channels — you will improve insight into employee experience.
HR that coexists with technology and moves with a focus on individualized service for each employee is both a trend and a way of developing employee experience.