HR must put people at the heart of the future of work

As Voltaire observed, work keeps us from the three great evils of bore­dom, vice and need. And work which we enjoy, devel­ops us and has a pur­pose, can be engag­ing and a pos­i­tive force for good. But it’s clear­ly not always the pos­i­tive force it should be and this impacts many eco­nom­ic as well as social out­comes.

We can see many areas of change in the world of work. New organ­i­sa­tion­al mod­els and ways of work­ing are emerg­ing, and the work­force itself is chang­ing in its diver­si­ty and expec­ta­tions.

Despite polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty, we are in times of high employ­ment and many organ­i­sa­tions report skills short­ages. Skills needs will change as automa­tion and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence advance, but already there is greater focus on the human skills that are becom­ing more and more impor­tant, such as cre­ativ­i­ty, col­lab­o­ra­tion, adapt­abil­i­ty, judge­ment and empa­thy.

What is HR for? 

Human resources exists to under­stand and sup­port the peo­ple side of busi­ness. From find­ing and attract­ing the peo­ple organ­i­sa­tions need, to devel­op­ing, reward­ing, engag­ing and improv­ing how they are per­form­ing. The pace of change around us means we have to cre­ate agile busi­ness­es where we can access new sources of tal­ent, and effec­tive­ly upskill and reskill our work­forces.

These have been the tra­di­tion­al areas of focus for the peo­ple pro­fes­sion, but the future will need to encom­pass a broad­er role in shap­ing the jobs, organ­i­sa­tion­al struc­tures, oper­at­ing mod­els and cul­tures that are sus­tain­able and adap­tive. The future of work is shap­ing the future of the peo­ple pro­fes­sion and its vital role in enabling and sus­tain­ing work, work­forces and work­places that are a pos­i­tive force for good, for indi­vid­u­als, organ­i­sa­tions, economies and soci­ety.

Get­ting the best out of peo­ple clear­ly takes a lot more than just work­ing hard­er. How peo­ple are man­aged, sup­port­ed and trained are all crit­i­cal to improv­ing per­for­mance, as is the nature of the work itself. Many sur­veys show there is much to be done in improv­ing how peo­ple feel about work and how this con­nects to the chal­lenges of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and dri­ving inno­va­tion.

HR’s job is to ensure people are at the heart of work 

Areas such as per­son­al well­be­ing are cen­tral to good work. Peo­ple also want to feel includ­ed at work what­ev­er their back­ground, to have a voice and have influ­ence over how they work, to use and devel­op their skills and tal­ents, and have fair pay and con­di­tions. All these are dimen­sions of the qual­i­ty of the work and roles peo­ple per­form that enable pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, engage­ment, cre­ativ­i­ty and inno­va­tion.

HR should be at the fore­front of improv­ing the ways we man­age, devel­op and sup­port peo­ple, and in how we shape jobs and organ­i­sa­tions to deliv­er sus­tain­able and respon­si­ble out­comes. We need to move beyond the his­tor­i­cal man­age­ment philoso­phies of con­trol, with too many rules and inflex­i­ble process­es, and beyond the siloes of the past, to work close­ly with oth­er key func­tions in shap­ing the future of our organ­i­sa­tions.

Like every busi­ness func­tion, HR should become more evi­dence based, using good data and under­stand­ing sci­ence and research to shape prac­tices, and under­stand real out­comes not just inputs. HR also has to invest more in itself, to utilise emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies to become more effi­cient and effec­tive, and to build new capa­bil­i­ties in areas such as ana­lyt­ics as well as strength­en­ing areas like job and organ­i­sa­tion­al design. HR should cham­pi­on bet­ter work and work­ing lives, and togeth­er we all need to make sure that peo­ple are at the heart of the future of work.