Digital HR | Deloitte | Human Capital

A Continuously Disrupted Environment and The Future of Work

In his 1930 essay, Economic possibilities for our grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes foretold a future of “technological unemployment” and 15-hour workweeks. While this doesn’t seem like a realistic scenario, there’s no question that work, the workforce and HR is changing fast, and will continue to change. Furthermore business leaders are grappling with unprecedented change, driven by digital technology that is disrupting business models that puts new demands on organizations to be agile and adaptive.
Demographic shifts, social changes, and technological advances, like robotics and cognitive automation, are driving these changes, and HR needs to develop accordingly to stay relevant.

The Opportunity For Human Resources
HR is in the middle of these disruptions. This is an opportunity for HR to take the lead and model how the rest of the organization can thrive in a continuously disrupted environment by ‘Being Digital’.

HR should ‘Be Digital’ first and meet the expectations of the business and of the workforce by enabling the organization to ‘Be Digital’ themselves in the face of continuous disruption.

As such HR needs to undergo profound change. Once viewed as a support function that solely delivered employee services, HR is now expected to drive the organization’s wider digital transformation. We see this change taking place in three areas:

• Digital workforce: How can organizations drive new management practices, a culture of innovation and sharing, and a set of talent practices that facilitate a new network-based organization, and a workforce that includes both employees, contractors, contingent workers, robots, crowdsourcing, etc.?
• Digital workplace: How can organizations design a working environment that enables productivity, uses modern communication tools and promotes engagement, wellness, and a sense of purpose?
• Digital HR service delivery: How can organizations change the HR function itself to operate in a digital way, use digital tools and technologies to deliver solutions, and continuously experiment and innovate?

This shift is happening rapidly, as HR leaders are being pushed to take on a larger role in helping to drive the organization to “be digital,” not just “do digital.”