Hiring Happiness: The Future of Hiring

The Talk

When most people talk about the future of HR in the late 2010s, you tend to hear mentions about robots replacing human labor, or people having to work with robot co-workers or even having to report to robot bosses. If not robots, you find this paranoia about Artificial Intelligence taking over work, organisations and the world. Then you have those folks who are a little closer to reality, that will talk about the need to revisit competencies and the increasing importance or necessity for technical expertise.

The Reality

We are hitting a technological threshold where what the mind can conceive, technology can execute. Take for example Brain Computer Interface and 3D-Printing. You imagine an object, such as a mug, and the 3D-Printer automatically produces it at your thought.

Anything that is routine, linear or quantitative can and will be done automatically, without human labor. That includes cleaning, security, production, statistical work and even logistics. Most types of physical work will not require human labor anymore. All thanks to technology.

Technology itself will be self-managing, self-updating and self-upgrading. Intelligent technology, evolves itself, and that is coming. That will render a lot of your human IT workers irrelevant within the detailed organisational chart. In fact, technology will be so advanced, good and easy, most people on earth will not require any tech competency at all, to do just fine, at using technology to do amazing things not possible for them to do in the 2010s. And that precisely is Industry 4.0 that we are heading into. And it will be a reality before the 1st of January 2030 and perhaps as early as the 1st of January 2025. We are racing there. We are technologically leapfrogging every single day. In short, do not be mistaken, all this is not too far away.

The Future of Human Labor

Since the advent of the internet our access has been growing and accelerating. This has been rendering us better informed as well as aware. This in turn has been rendering us more capable. It has even allowed us to get smarter and wiser. Along with this evolution in us, we have been expecting more, of others and ourselves.

Technology replacing humans in many jobs in the near future will neither be an option nor a luxury. Rather, it will be a necessity. We are fast approaching a future where teenagers will refuse to work as waiters or cashiers, finding more meaningful or creative ways to earn their pocket money instead. Like it or not, you are going to need robotics and Artificial Intelligence.

Technology also has limits. If it is not linear, it cannot be automated. If it is beyond numbers, it cannot be automated. If it is not routine or patterned, it cannot be automated. Think creative. Think conceptual. Think dynamic. That is where human labor will remain irreplaceable, indefinitely. And in all that, technology will also empower human labor, to do increasingly more.

The Future of Organisations

Organisations will remain staffed by human labor. The human workers, will just be doing different work, and they will be doing work differently, from before. At the core of human labor within any organisation, will be creativity and innovation. This would be to survive in the new market or business reality, where you either disrupt, or get disrupted.

The sustenance of creativity and innovative ability within any organisation will be contingent upon the ability of employees to learn.

Future Employees

To constantly keep learning and to keep up in an environment of non-stop endless change, employees of tomorrow will have to be Autodidacts and Polymaths. To be and to remain so however, they will need the conducive environment, at work.

The Future Workplace

A conducive environment for learning, inquiry, growth, exploration, discovery and innovation, is a happy one. The future workplace will therefore have to be a happy one. And that is only possible, if the employees are happy. It will not be a good to have, but a business necessity.

Hiring Happiness

In a world where an unhappy workplace could mean organisational failure, losses, disruption and having to sellout or fold, it will become a leadership and HR prerogative to ensure that the workplace is happy. And a workplace can only be as happy, as the people working there.

While the hiring will still have to be based upon the education of the individuals being hired, to measure their propensity to contribute towards the organisational objectives, where different types of contributions are required, what HR will have to look at ahead universally when hiring, is happiness.

The Challenge

You can't demonstrate happiness, at least not accurately, on the resume or on a LinkedIn profile. In fact, no online profile can be accurate in assessing how happy a person is, or even if a person is happy or not.

Believe it or not, the trickiest part will be defining happiness, which I offer to do here:

The contentment in a person, with himself or herself, where he or she is at peace with the self and therefore is able to thoroughly enjoy the present moment, genuinely.

Where it gets tricky, is that this state of being can change, for infinite reasons. The trick, would be to hire an individual who is in such a state and is capable of maintaining himself or herself in such a state, in most normal circumstances. Where it gets trickier, is that happiness can be feigned, like many other competencies and attributes.

Grouches of course won't like reading this because if this idea prevails, which will have to for organisations that want to thrive in Industry 4.0, they could end up unemployed and more miserable than they already are.

The Process

The next question is, how do you seek out, identify, recognize and assess both happiness as well as the ability to be happy, in a candidate, for a job?

While it is thoroughly and entirely easier said than done, it is matter of tweaking the process. The actual tweaking and implementing the process to hire happy people to build and maintain a happy workplace is far more difficult, than it is to imagine or talk about.

For a start, conscious effort needs to be made to interview for happiness.Then a simple great idea, would be to complement interviewing for happiness, with psychometric testing aimed at assessing happiness. And then HR, or the whole organisation rather, needs to be resilient enough, against the trap of weighing other factors, in hiring decisions, either more or equally, against happiness. To hire effectively, for happiness, the greatest weight-age, in hiring for happiness, will have to be given to the happiness factor. Happiness will have to be the top priority.

Happiness being the top consideration when hiring, does not equate to compromising on required knowledge, skills and other attributes or educational qualifications. It does mean however, that the happiness factor, is not compromised.

The Case

Technology will enable new economic and business models. They will take tedious tasks away from human workers. Technology cannot ensure human happiness. Humans, happy ones, can ensure human happiness. Happy humans, can work well. In the foreseeable future ahead, it is the human worker, that will determine an organisation's competitiveness and success.

When competitiveness and success depends on the ability of the workers to be creative and innovative, because they are able to learn and adapt a lot, rapidly, the importance of the workplace environment logically becomes second to none. The primary motivator for people to work well and loyally at that, is happiness.

Happy employees are not dissatisfied, disengaged or disgruntled employees. Happy employees are not eager to seek greener pastures elsewhere. Happy employees are dedicated team players. Happy employees give their best. Happy employees are good subordinates, good co-workers and good leaders.

Have you tried to be creative or innovative when unhappy? It doesn't work.

The hiring is not the end. It is a necessary start however, to create a happy workplace.

Harish Shah is Singapore's first local born Professional Futurist and a Management Strategy Consultant. He runs Stratserv Consultancy. His areas of consulting and Keynote Topics include EmTech, Industry 4.0, HR, Digital Transformation, Marketing, Strategic Foresight, Systems Thinking and Organisational Future Proofing.