The Future of Human Resources: Software or People?

This week, I attended the Zukunft Personal Europe fair. I went in hoping for deep discussions about developing the human side of organisations. And, I walked into a SaaS HR-Tech extravaganza that was both impressive and, to be honest, a little unsettling.

The Software Takeover

For me it felt like 75% of the fair was focused on software solutions, while only 10-15% seemed to highlight how we, as humans, support each other in building culture, skills, and knowledge and evolving organisations. Don't get me wrong—HR tech is amazing. But my question remains:

Are we putting too much faith in software to solve our people problems?

What About the 'Human' in Human Resources?

As I wandered the halls, I kept asking myself: where are the deeper conversations about up-skilling our workforce across disciplines? About transforming mindsets and company culture? About how HR teams can collaborate across departments to understand and address future challenges?

These conversations were happening, but I felt they were drowned out by the tech frenzy.

HR, or "people teams", are and can be the architects of our work future. Sure, digital tools give us incredible capabilities—allowing us to capture, analyze, and disseminate information— but the outcomes will only be as good as the culture, skills, and decision-making processes built around them.

A Parallel with Marketing and Channel Partner Management / Workforce planning

Coming from a marketing and sales background, I couldn’t help but see similarities. In my field, we've digitized nearly every customer interaction. And for those of us in channel or partner sales managing, managing a workforce has striking similarities to managing external partnerships (which is basically an external salesforce) . Both involve understanding skills, competenticies, capabilities, and capacities.

Just like a Partner Relationship Management system won’t answer our question (how should the partner landscape of tmrw look like so we can meet our goals ) if we don’t understand our partners' competencies and future plans,

HR tech will simply amplify what’s already in place—whether good or bad.

The Fair Experience: Overwhelming and Inspiring

Now, don’t get me wrong. The event was impressive. The sheer number of talks and workshops was staggering—I wish I could have spent a week there just absorbing it all. Everyone was curious, friendly, and eager to share knowledge. I like it.

By day two, I realized I couldn’t take it all in.

So, I focused on what truly resonated with me, leading to more meaningful conversations and a more satisfying experience.

Highlights That Stood Out

1. Eva-Maria Weidner 's Talk on "Performance-Oriented and Healthy Organizations: Is it Really Possible?" The answer is yes, and it takes continuous learning and constant iteration of what works what doesn't —through enablement, education, and adaptation at various stages of company growth. It also takes the right mindset, starting from the People Team.
2. The Innovative People Lab Lounge from imu : In the middle of the noisy event hall, this cozy space provided a much-needed emotional touchpoint. I kept going back because it was a protected space where I could focus, participate and engage. It also resonated most with my interests

Key Takeaways

Several things to remember I wrote down during talks from the Innovative People Lab. I'm paraphrasing here :)

"Creativity consists of divergence (understanding) and convergence (solving)."

You can't motivate employees—they do it themselves. We create the framework and provide the tools."

Culture is the context in which people work."

Optimal input delivers maximum performance.

This last point really hit home, aligning with what I focus on in my work—maximising team performance - we need to look at the team as a system and to understand what is the optimal input to ensure maximum sustained perfomance

Final Thoughts

As I left the fair, I felt a mix of excitement and caution.

The future of HR, organisations is intertwined with software.

At the end of the day, the tools are just tools.

It's how we use them—guided by our understanding of human needs, skills, knowledge and organisational goals—that will shape the future of our organisations.

#ZPE #FutureOfWork #OrganisationalDevelopement #TeamPerformance #ZukunftPersonal