The other side of the HR(human resource) coin: shaking hands with the future

On a rainy-day evening, watching the fluffy clouds and sipping her hot coffee, Saru takes herself back to her 15-year corporate journey of facilitating employees in the people management department (Human Resource). Flashing back, she embraced all the hats she wore, serving multitude of roles during this remarkable journey. Carrying more than a decade of wealthy experience in the field of human resource and holding a higher rank in her current organization, Saru felt a strong urge to bring in a transformation amongst her people’s division: a transformation worthy to be persuaded and imbibed in the genes of the Human Resource Department.?

The next day, walking down the aisle, Saru called for an ad-hoc meeting. All the employees, as usual, started cribbing about such authoritative ad-hoc meetings where the regular payrolls, recruitment drives, talent mapping matrices, and other monotonous HR activities are to be kept at rest.?Saru clears her throat and starts addressing a crowd of 50 employees, all from within her department, with a fresh morning gesture of greeting the employees.

She starts with a question, How as a team we could bring in value to the company? From culture to strategy, payroll to innovation, recruiting talent to driving change at workplace. How do we, as a people’s department, adapt to change that the organization is going through?

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The employees in the front leaned closer towards her, forgot about the deadlines that were to be achieved, and gave a concentrated gesture to the speech.?

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She continues. Leadership, technology, consulting, and problem-solving are evolving as the future of human resource management. A young woman, who was already inspired by the few words she spoke, asked, What about payroll and recruitment? Why are these not on the list? Saru smiled and replied, These are going to be replaced by ever-changing technology. That means, am I going to lose my job?, an old man asked with despair. Saru sensed that the employees were in the right direction of understanding the need of the hour. Now that she has gained the attention of the crowd, Saru pitches her thoughts in a way that employees could envision the future of the HR department, i.e., the human resource transformation.

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Ending is the new beginning! No one has ever lost a job until one adds value to solve what the company is struggling with. If I say value, it means, value in terms of accommodating technology to day-to-day work, bringing in strategies to hire, especially the exceptional talents – which can be a competitive advantage to the company, identifying the gaps in the recruitment and building the leadership tree. If I could sit and explain what each of this means, it will be an unending?monologue that will bore everyone of you. While I decided to keep this meeting short, I would like to plant this seed of thought in everyone of us that, today's human resources should be capable of driving tomorrow’s need.?

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Everyone held their breath when Saru, the vice president of the HR department, delivered something intriguing that had never been spoken about in the past 6-7 years in the department. She then scratched the surface of what her thought process is towards driving change in the department and eventually in the organization, and she continued to embark on the voyage of onboarding each 'human resource' that is present in her vicinity to align with her transformational vision.

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Saru, who is a leader herself, directed her speech to touch base on a few of the impactful essentials that the department has to shift the focus on for the forthcoming years.?

?Let's understand how we align technology with HR management. You may ask me, what our department has to do with technology. Very well! Let me shoot it to you straight. The next generation technology brings in gaps during recruitment. Finding the right person-job fit for the moment is a cake walk for the recruiters because we are all blinded off by the myth that the recruitement is momentary. Little do we know the impact of right individual for the current role will be a long term liability to the company. During the long run where employees tend to take up new roles and responsibilities within the organisation with changing technology, the “person-organisation fit” plays a major role leaving behind the reason why that particular employee is recruited years ago. We, as a door to the employee to enter the organisation, have to ensure that the individual is fit for a change that is yet to hit the organisation. Tracing the employee behavioural pattern and predicting the future trends by inculcating the latest updates in the tools we use for recuitement of an employee makes organisations stand out from finding the right fit for the organisation, not just the current job role. These predictions drive the need for us to upgrade our policies and procedures on how the recruitment of one single employee hits the company's revenue, if you could visualise in a broader picture! It is high time for us to shift the recruiting patterns as per the technological demands, both in day-to-day work as well as in the technologiacl business needs.?

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The employees nodded their heads as Saru progressed to her next target entity.

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We need people to drive these technological shifts. A change that is adaptive or transformational needs methods that onboard leaders to step in for the right cause. Talking about leadership, we always make reference to the greatest leaders of all times, be it in sports, politics, religious movements, or industrialization, who once started as pioneers to adapt to the circumstances and drive in masses (a larger audience) to bring out a revolution. Today's pioneers are tomorrow's leaders. Building a space where speaking up, taking responsibility, and driving smaller innovations will act as a canopy for aspiring leaders. In any organization, surprisingly, no one is designated as a leader, and the irony is that organizations look for leaders to take over the changes that the firm anticipates facing in the near future. It is a common belief that all managers are leaders. But it is never always true! Leadership in organizations is underestimated and is not given enough emphasis. As a HR department, we need to focus on human capital and culture-oriented leaders and shape the realm of leadership by providing rigorous training on situational leadership, developing stakeholder scenarios, and much more that predict the future decision-making situations that leaders face. Every leader can be a good manager, but every manager may or may not be a good leader. So the responsibility of redefining the recruiting methods that try to test the emotional quotient of an individual and developing an atmosphere for generating future leaders is on our shoulders.

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The entire conference room is stirred with a spirit of oneness to address the future of the HR department. Saru grabs some water in between, and meanwhile, there are unheard murmurs among the employees.?

?The last essential weapon that could take our department to newer levels is providing consulting and decision-making services within the organization. The evolution of HR management has always been people-centric and will always be people-centric. Post-pandemic, it is always speed-to-solution that drives the decision-making process. This speed sometimes backfires on revenues when wrong decisions are taken during the need of the hour. The HR department holds the responsibility for the decision-making capability of business leaders, or, for that matter, any team in an organization. The onboarded talent has to be rightly trained, and leaders have to be guided in talent mapping, which has always been a challenge for organizations. HR professionals have to perform rigorous data mining operations to address this challenge and act as a decision-making mechanism to provide consulting to business leaders. Regular talent reviews, developing metrics to retain top talent, and driving value, purpose, and culture through talent are in high demand. Researching the past and the existing data on the cultural shift of employees and the dynamic changes that the organization faces helps in decoding the urge to meet business needs. Having said this, if there is no proper understanding of the employee market and the list of anticipated challenges, it would be evidently difficult for us to connect the dots between HR management and business continuity.?

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Marking the end of her long thought process at the hour, Saru, as a leader, could see the enlightenment in the faces of the employees.?

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We shall discuss and brainstorm in groups about our new vision statement and project a plan that would cultivate the transformation of people's department. Everyone of you is an asset to the organization, and I look forward to working with you to see this transformation in action.

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With this note, Saru concluded the gathering, and there was a new sense of motivation that hopped into the minds of the employees to work for the future.