The Next Agenda for Human Resources: What’s So? So What? Now What?

In the last few weeks, I felt honored being invited to a number of podcasts and interviews in the annual ritual of looking ahead. Many thoughtful colleagues and consulting firms offer their views of what’s next, which reminds me of when I meet a friend I have not seen for a while. I often ask some version of the question, “What’s on your mind lately?” This query lets me listen and learn about what they have experienced (what’s so?), find meaningful today (so what?), and anticipate for the future (now what?). I find this applicable to HR reflections.

What’s so?

In reflecting on HR today, let me overview two exceptional conferences that capture what’s on the mind of many HR professionals.?

The World Federation of People Management Associations (WFPMA) sponsors a bi-annual congress pulling together the leaders of the HR associations around the world. In Singapore last May, they held their first in-person workshop since COVID. Figure 1 shows the topics for the 29 workshops.

A second multi-day conference called Horizon Summit was held this November in Amsterdam and offered 39 workshops (see figure 2).

Similar topics show up in daily posts (e.g., Nicolas Behbahani), weekly updates (e.g., Brian Heger), and monthly curations (e.g., David Green). The posts and the summit workshops suggest that the HR field is filled with great insights (theory/ideas, research/evidence, and practices/solutions).

So What?

In our work to advance HR, we have proposed a human capability taxonomy that organizes HR work into four domains (figure 3).

Applying this taxonomy, the 29 workshops from WFPMA and the 39 workshops from Horizon Summit can be classified into the four domains (figure 4 and figure 5).

The current state of the HR field focuses more on the talent domain of human capability—which goes by many terms (human capital, competence, skills, employee, labor, people, team member, or staff)—but all are focused on individuals. Current topics gaining more attention include genAI (seems like “all AI all the time!”), mental health, future of work, analytics, and transformation or agility. As noted in these workshops and posts, a great deal of innovation has occurred and is occurring in the HR space.?

What’s Next?

Given the annual focus on what’s next in podcasts and reports, I want to suggest four agendas that will evolve the profession towards creating stakeholder value through human capability (see figure 6).

Next Agenda 1: Advance that HR is less about HR and more on creating stakeholder value.

In the workshops and posts, much of the work describes innovation in human capability (mostly talent) initiatives. I have proposed that going forward, stakeholder value for all humans who interact with the organization should gain increasing attention. I wonder how many of the workshops included a discussion of how the topic of the workshop would positively impact employee performance or sentiment, executive ability to deliver strategy, board ability to oversee strategy and succession, customer share, investor confidence, and community reputation.??

I envision that going forward, business conversations that include HR participants begin, focus on, and demonstrate value to these stakeholders.

Next Agenda 2: Offer a complete human capability agenda and assessment.

As noted in figures 4 and 5, the predominant focus of human capability has been and is on talent. While agreeing that talent impacts stakeholder value (see Organization Guidance System on talent), our research found that attention to organization has more impact on all stakeholders than talent (or leadership and HR function).

The research in figure 6, and other studies, suggests that more attention should be paid to creating organization capabilities going forward.

Next Agenda 3: Prioritize using analytics and AI.

When I hear of predictions prioritizing what’s next, I wonder the source of the predictions—most often, they come from personal observations and experiences, popular views, and/or surveys of HR and other personnel. Each of these prediction sources have subjectivity, which limits prioritization.

• Personal experience may be narrowly focused and not represent broad patterns. What someone observes or believes in one situation may not be generalizable elsewhere.
• Popular views in HR may indicate trends but not priorities for value creation.
• Surveys can be limited because they ask perceptions of what respondents think—not empirically linking these perceptions to stakeholder value.??

I hope that going forward, analytics can empirically predict where to focus to deliver the most value to stakeholders. This is more than a sample of HR or business leaders reporting what they think matters and more actual empirical evidence showing where to prioritize which initiatives in human capability have the most impact on stakeholder value. Evolving innovations in AI can provide new ways of accessing information that improve decisions to increase stakeholder value.

Agenda 4: Upgrading HR professionals.

For HR to create stakeholder value through human capability, HR professionals need development both at work (assignments, roles, responsibilities) and through forward-focused development efforts. A host of training programs on the tools, practices, and policies of HR abound, but learning how to turn HR efforts into stakeholder value through integrated human capability solutions based on data will likely be forthcoming.

Conclusion

So I (and many others) will share on podcasts, posts, and reports that now is a great time to be in HR because of the impact HR offers. Hopefully annual peeks into the future will learn from the past (what’s so) to improve the present (so what) to create more stakeholder value through human capability (now what).

..………

Dave Ulrich?is the Rensis Likert Professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and a partner at The RBL Group, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations and leaders deliver value.