FUTURE OF WORK IN CHANGING BUSINESS LANDSCAPE

- SAJJA JYOTHI 17136

Curators of the New Business Landscape – The Future of Work

The future of work is a highly anticipated area of evolution within HR, which
everyone either has an opinion on or is eagerly awaiting the discovery of the next big
development. Artificial intelligence (AI), agile working and diversification appeared
to take the front seat when the panel defined the biggest drivers and disruptors to our
current working lives.

Author
Emily Sexton-Brown
Date published
July 2, 2018
Categories
1) Digital HR
20 Health and Wellbeing
3) HR Technology
4) Reward and Recognition
5) Strategy & Leadership

Diversify your workforce

Within the session, the panelists pinpointed the trends that are set to impact the
business landscape. Some fascinating insights came out of this session including
Wanda Hope sharing the need to diversify in all companies and acknowledge the
rapidly changing global demographics they cater to at Johnson & Johnson. She
highlighted the fact that minorities are now becoming the majority, “Don’t only think
internally, we need a workforce that reflects our markets. This is a value we should all
share,” she said.

Hope then went onto share an interesting statistic from a McKinsey research, she
discussed that companies within the top quartile of ethic diversity inclusion
outperformed their competitors who didn’t hold this percentage. She urged the
delegates that employees want to work somewhere they belong, “People won’t work
anywhere where diversity and inclusion isn’t a consideration and why should they?”

Kim Artherton agreed, saying: “We need an entire range of people making up our
workforces. One of the most important skills for the future is complicated decision
making, which requires experience and life skills – diversify your workforce.”

“We have a business objective focused on giving our employees their time back,
therefore we will only introduce digital options if it makes our employees lives easier
and more productive.”
The aging demographic was topical, Rosa Lee said, “We have a consultancy firm at
Bosch formed by retired people because of their experience. How do we include all
these different perspectives?” Nico Orie spoke about Coca Cola’s long term plans
prioritising diversity and inclusion and the need to continuously reflect a diverse
culture, has said: “Diverse cultures are enriching cultures.”

Lee spoke about the importance of retraining the older generation to better equip them
for the future of work, and the technological demands that will be upon them. “How
can we ensure that we are training, or re-training them?” She said.

Technology focus
Technology was next on the future agenda, which in turn led the panel to discuss agile
and flexible working.

“If you do your work at home, or in a parked car it doesn’t matter where it is, it just
matters that is gets done,” said Hope, she believes that as globalisation steadily grows
we need to allow for increased flexibility in the workplace.

For Hope, AI will make workforces naturally more agile, “It will make us have to
figure out how to help and develop the robots – it’ll be a whole new way of working,”
she said.

Orie spoke about technology in the past and how it hasn’t always delivered to the
level expected. He said, “We need to look out the foundations, and not just be digital
for digital’s sake. We have a business objective focused on giving our employees their
time back, therefore we will only introduce digital options if it makes our employees
lives easier and more productive.” He continued, “Technology has to deliver,
otherwise it’s not worth it.”

Anges Jongkind spoke about the widespread fear of job losses and the impact AI will
have on day to day lives, she said: “Artificial intelligence will decrease jobs, but
increase work.”

“Don’t only think internally, we need a workforce that reflects our markets. This is a
value we should all share.”
Generational outlooks also became a key theme discussed throughout the panel, the
aging workforce as previously mentioned but also the expectancy the younger
generation have on technology. Artherton mentioned: “The younger generation are
used to using and having technology in their work and their personal lives.”

Business demands for HR

To conclude, the panel then discussed the expectations businesses will and continue to
have upon HR, Jongkind suggested that the expectation of having the correct skills in
 place for these future roles is going to be a challenge for HR and that HR need to
develop strong feedback pipelines. Artherton agreed citing the war on talent as an
ever-existing issue for business leaders and ensuring the business is equipped with the
correct skill sets to move forward.

Orie spoke about the next for HR to step up to the changes happening every day, he
said that HR needs to be entirely evidence-based to be able to predict and adapt at a
rapid pace.

- HRD CONNECT (SOURCE)

The Future Of Work: Three New HR Roles In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence

Three new job roles in HR provide a lens into how much HR is being disrupted.
the new roles created in HR address a common vision: create a compelling employee
experience that mirrors a company’s customer experience.

What will “the new normal” look like for our HR leaders as we approach 2020? It’s been
nine years since McKinsey & Company coined the phrase, ‘the new normal,” referring to the
fundamental changes in the business landscape following the Great Recession of 2008.

We are witnessing revolutionary, not just incremental change. As Paul Daugherty said in his
bestselling book, Human + Machine: Re-imagining Work in the Age of AI, the workplace
experience is changing in profound ways. According to research conducted by Accenture and
the World Economic Forum, 87% of workers polled believe new technologies like artificial
intelligence will improve their work experience and they are willing to invest their free time
over the next few years to learn new skills to supplement their current ones. This emphasis on
learning new skills in the age of AI is reinforced by the most recent report on the future of
work from McKinsey which suggests that as many as 375 million workers around the world
may need to switch occupational categories and learn new skills because approximately 60%
of jobs will have least one-third of their work activities able to be automated.

For companies from IBM to Kraft Heinz and SunTrust, I am seeing this an interest an interest
in creating new HR roles as companies leverage artificial intelligence in the workplace.
Three new job roles in HR provide a lens into how much HR is being disrupted.
Three New HR Roles To Create Compelling Employee Experiences

These new HR roles include:

IBM: Vice-President, Data, AI & Offering Strategy, HR

IBM has taken a leadership role in creating new positions in HR aligned with Chief HR
Officer Diane Gherson’s vision of “Optimizing HR for speed, personalization, and
democratization to deliver irresistible employee experiences.” Executing on this vision has
created a host of new innovations and job roles in HR. Some of the most interesting
innovations in HR include the ability to use data to proactively retain IBMers by examining
factors such as an employee’s location, pay, skills, and job type. At IBM this is known as
Proactive Retention and leading this effort is Anshul Sheopuri, IBM’s vice-president, data,
AI & offering strategy, HR. Anshul leads a team of data scientists, people analytics
practitioners, and engineers who use data to transform the employee experience. Sheopuri
was instrumental in developing the patent for Proactive Retention which uses analytics and
machine learning to calculate the relative importance of retention risk factors, while
maintaining employee privacy. The end result is a decision support tool for managers to
proactively retain IBMers. The retention risk program has now saved IBM about $300
million, as measured by the avoiding the inevitable costs of hiring and training replacements.

The next innovation, Blue Matching, is devoted to enhancing career mobility for IBMers with
personalized job alerts by inferring their skills. This helps to boost their ability to find new
internal positions, some of which they may not even know could be a fit. Recent projections
from CEB Global indicate that employees are staying in their roles 30% longer today. This
lack of internal movement means employees are failing to get the broad experience they need
to further their advancement. And furthermore, this lack of career growth is the number one
reason employees leave their employer, surpassing compensation and the individual manager.
IBM Blue Matching has provided more than 1,000 IBMers with the opportunity to grow their
skills and land a new role within IBM.

These new IBM HR initiatives are made possible not just by deploying artificial intelligence
but by also adopting a new mindset within the HR professional, moving from focusing on HR
processes to adapting a consumer grade lens to people practices and delivering outcome-
oriented solutions which personalize the employee experience at scale.

What’s next in this journey? Sheopuri believes that HR at IBM will include more end-to-end
roles responsible for what we might think of at consumer product companies as the product
manager. In HR at IBM, this role is called offering manager and operates much like a product
manager, responsible for the launch of new HR solutions from inception through to pilot and
commercialization. This introduction of the product management discipline into HR will
continue to grow in importance as current and prospective employees demand a connected,
mobile, and personalized employee experience mirroring their last best consumer experience.
Kraft Heinz: Senior Vice-President, Global HR, Performance and IT

It’s not just IBM that is adding job titles in HR to focus on using intelligent technologies to
create a compelling employee experience. Kraft Heinz, the fifth largest food and beverage
company in the world, is using artificial intelligence and crafting new HR roles in people
analytics and data analysis, traditionally found in IT. Melissa Werneck, senior VP, global
HR, performance, and IT is re-examining the entire employee experience from recruiting to
exiting the organization. Says Werneck, “At Kraft Heinz, we believe that in order to create a
true consumer experience for our employees, we must integrate all the areas that touch an
employee from our people practices, from recruiting, learning & development, performance
management, and total rewards. Having a combined responsibility for the people and IT
functions allows us to compliment the people function with activities that are traditionally
exclusive to IT – like leveraging machine learning techniques and using sophisticated
algorithms to automate work.

To do this, Kraft Heinz has expanded the scope of Global Rewards to include a dedicated
director of people analytics who will direct a team of data scientists and people analytics
managers on how to use machine learning in HR. The initiatives underway include using data
to predict employee retention and using the same data to suggest actions that can be taken to
address possible outliers, including an algorithm that can suggest which employees in the
company are likely deserving of recognition through a merit increase. This data driven
approach to decision making espouses a core value at Kraft Heinz, of ensuring people
decisions are based on meritocracy.

Shirley Weinstein, head of global rewards, believes this new emphasis on using data to create
an enhanced employee experience is being driven by the growing importance in recruiting,
developing, and retaining top talent. And recent research reinforces this point of view. A
2018 Conference Board survey of the global C-suite revealed that talent and skills are now
the number one hot button issue for C-level executives surpassing cyber security, healthcare,
and threats to global trade. Similarly, the Deloitte Talent Report suggests the phrase Learning
Organization no longer refers to just the training department but is now a goal for the entire
organization. At Kraft Heinz the HR team used predictive analytics to identify areas of
potential attrition risk within the company. They are now formulating strategies to address the
root causes, and, using machine learning, they are identifying future interventions. Says
Weinstein, “I am seeing a premium on speed and personalization, and both can be delivered
leveraging sophisticated data science techniques in the workplace. At Kraft Heinz we pride
ourselves on being data driven as a company. We see no reason for the people function to be
any different.”

SunTrust: Senior Vice-President, Employee Well-Being & Benefits

In addition to creating new technical roles in people analytics and data science, companies
like SunTrust are developing new roles in HR to address a new employee benefit: financial
well-being. Outstanding student loans currently have hit $1.5 trillion and exceed auto loan
debt ($1.1 trillion) and credit card debt ($977 billion) And women hold two thirds of all
student debt in the USA according the American Association of University Women.

SunTrust is a purpose-driven company committed to enhancing the financial well-being of its

teammates (SunTrust employees), clients, and the communities the company serves. To better
understand the magnitude of the financial wellness issue, SunTrust partnered with Martiz and
introduced a Financial Confidence Index this year – derived from a national, ongoing
quarterly survey of 2,500 Americans, representative of the U.S. adult population. Individuals
rate their actions on five core behaviors of financial confidence: budgeting, debt
management, savings, maximizing income, and retirement planning. The results? The index
shows 50% of Americans do not have $2,000 saved for an emergency, one third have nothing
saved for retirement, and a full two thirds report feeling financial stress and this keeps them
up at night!

SunTrust decided to be part of the solution and started by surveying their own teammates.
Many were struggling with financial stress. So they set out to help teammates take steps
toward building financial confidence by developing and launching a financial wellness
program, known as Momentum onUp for Teammates. This program has the express purpose
of increasing SunTrust teammates’ financial confidence by providing SunTrust teammates
with online and face to face training in how to pay down loans, apply for a mortgage, and
improve one’s credit score.

This new focus on financial well-being led the SunTrust HR team to create a new role in HR
focused on employee well-being and benefits. Reporting to the SVP, this role is focused
entirely on financial wellbeing, bringing a deep expertise in adult learning, data analytics and
financial services to the role. Think of the Financial Well-Being Program Lead as an
ambassador for SunTrust’s financial well-being movement. And the results are impressive,
with 79% of SunTrust teammates participating to date, and with the Bank contributing $1,000
to SunTrust teammates who complete the program. So far, SunTrust has invested more than
$13 million in teammates’ savings accounts through the program.

Additionally, SunTrust HR uncovered those who complete the program are twice as likely to
stay with SunTrust after 18 months and according to a SunTrust survey of participants, more
than 80% of respondents said afterward that they now feel more in control of their finances.

What do these three roles have in common? All have been created in the last three years and
acknowledge the growing importance of a company’s commitment to create a compelling
employee experience by using data, research, and predictive analytics to better serve the
needs of employees. In each case, the employee assuming the new role also brought a new set
of skills and capabilities into HR. And importantly, the new roles created in HR address a
common vision: create a compelling employee experience that mirrors a company’s customer
experience. –FORBES.COM(SOURCE)
4 Trends Shaping the Future of Work
How will technology, demographics, and culture impact the future of work? Here are four
key trends agile organizations need to embrace to prepare for the future of work.

At a time when cars can drive themselves and robots can perform brain surgery, the future of
work hangs in delicate balance. If you take a closer look at what’s changing in the
organizational landscape, the underlying challenge is agility – the ability to adapt faster.
Although people still remain the most important asset for organizations – they are
increasingly being overshadowed by machines in a maze of technologies.

Despite the proliferation of technology in the workplace, there are certain things that remain
constant - successful organizations still rely on great leaders and employees at all levels to get
work done effectively. Experts believe that the future of work will be driven by effective
communication, collaboration, flexibility and employee experience.

Rethinking work
Before we dive into the future of work, it’s important to acknowledge how the nature of
work has changed over time. **Work today is not just a destination but it is rather a unit of
productivity distributed to people teams and companies**. Work is no longer constrained to a
cubicle or a desk, it is a construct of ideas, teamwork, and workflows. Even though
technology facilitates this new kind of work, it remains rooted in the employee experience.
After all, it is the employees who determine if a solution or tool needs to survive, evolve or
morph.

Organizations must figure out how to create, adapt and preserve company culture in the
workplace while evaluating the impact of new technologies. A recent survey on the future of
work found that C-suite executives across geographies and company sizes share a common
vision for the future of work. Over two-thirds of the executives surveyed agree that company
culture, specifically, communication will be the cornerstone of their organization’s
success in the long run.

Collaboration
Whilst the uberization of jobs is underway, leaders must evaluate how their organization
interacts with potential talent, current employees and the work itself to create an environment
of collaboration. As digital transformation continues to foster a consumer mindset in the
workplace, collaboration is key to aligning how work gets done across technologies, people
and boundaries. Collaboration efforts in most organizations are inconsistent and largely left
to chance.

To tackle this, organizations must clearly define what collaboration means for their
employees, what are the right tools to use and how to deploy them in the most effective
manner. Collaborative workspaces need to move beyond proximity-based parameters
(common areas) in order to encourage cross-geographical, cultural, and hierarchical
interactions. Think “virtual†water coolers where team members miles apart can with
each other and build relationships that translate to trust and productivity.

Flexibility
A study conducted by Ernst & Young found that 76 percent employees find it difficult to
manage personal, family and work commitments. This is a primary reason why workplace
flexibility along with compensation and benefits are the top considerations for accepting a job
and staying with an employer. With over 78 percent of millennials being part of dual-career
couples, a parent is more likely to take time off to care for their children. However,
maternity/paternity leaves are limited in most organizations, and parents cannot forego the
care of their child once they exhaust their time off. This is why flextime and telecommuting
are becoming almost a pre-condition for employees.

**Workplace flexibility today issue just a good to have perks anymore, good business
sense**. Organizational culture experts have since long maintained that employees given the
flexibility and freedom tend to not only outperform their clock-punching counterparts but are
also happier and healthier both in their professional and personal lives. By embracing
flexibility, organizations can drive productivity and also manage to reign-in the skyrocketing
cost of healthcare.

Employee Experience
With the consumerization of the workplace, the measure of an employer is now the total
experience of an employee. Company review sites like Glassdoor, where employees can rate
and review their employers based on compensation, benefits, management or organizational
culture, have made it critical for HR teams to take employee experience seriously. HR needs
to be very proactive in providing the best experience to its employees.

Moreover, organizations must ensure that their culture is conducive to creating a desirable
identity for themselves. With HR analytics enabling employers to map various touchpoints
within employee experience, employers are better equipped to predict, manage and measure
the impact of their employee experience initiatives.

The future of work has arrived, and companies can’t afford to ignore it. Substantial
changes in workplace technology, workforce demographics, and employee preference are
transforming the workplace. Employees of the future will place a significant emphasis on the
digital maturity of an organization and might even perceive working for less digitally mature
organizations as potentially harmful to their careers. By cultivating a deeper relationship with
employees through effective collaboration, communication, providing flexibility and a great
employee experience, organizations can fundamentally alter the way their employees view
work.

- HR TECHNOLOGIST.COM( SOURCE)