Structure of Work
1. There will be an increased focus on infrastructures—such
as social networks and wikis—to support building strong relationships and collaboration.
2. The structure of work will become more adaptive, more
informal and less focused on formal structure and static design solutions.
3. (tie) "Agile" organizations will have survived rampant
aggregation and consolidation, and all organizations will be developing greater
agility.
There will be greater demands on HR professionals to
be businesspeople, with competencies in finding and retaining talent and in managing
contract and freelance workers.
Organizations will have the ability to personalize the
employee value proposition, helping employees find value in the work they do based
on how they interact with the company. Some employees will be full time and long
term. Others will be short term and part time.
Flexibility will no longer be optional. Employees will
expect to utilize both short- and long-term flexibility options to meet their needs.
The most successful organizations will have a performance
culture or meritocracy and will demand extraordinary effort from those who wish
to achieve leadership positions.
8. Technological progress and the evolution of virtual
networks and social vetting—that is, using networks such as LinkedIn to establish
trust and research people’s backgrounds—will increase workplace flexibility. The
trends will increase the use of emerging work structures that involve engaging professional
and social networks through means such as "crowd sourcing"—when an organization
invites the public to help solve a problem.
9. Organizations will work across internal and external
boundaries, connecting and customizing internal actions to external customers and
investors.
10. The talent market will look a lot more like eBay than
Monster or Yahoo HotJobs. Candidates will put themselves up for bid for specific
work, hours and duration and will name their minimum price, including benefits and
perks. Employers will contract with each worker for what will be delivered.
Global Business
1. Companies will need to balance the need for a unified
global culture with local strategic and cultural differences and make core global
values locally relevant and easily understandable for all employees.
2. (tie) The business world will continue to be flattened
by globalization, changing demographics, the ubiquity of technology and regulatory
compliance. Conducting business on this level playing field will require a change
in mind-set, strategies and operations.
Operating in a global economy will create even more
demand for leaders with global experience. This means it will be more important
for key talent to have expatriate experience.
4. (tie) Companies will find their best people anywhere
in the world, so successful workers will be willing to work outside their home country.
The concept of offshoring will cease to exist. Talent
will exist globally and companies will go where the talent is. The purpose will
not be to get the lowest-cost labor, but rather the highest-quality talent. This
will be especially true with technical and creative workers.
Global companies will become more adept at managing
a global enterprise on a 24/7 basis, with more management and technology systems
in place to allow work to be easily passed around the world.
There will be a more progressive use of partnerships
and alliances across functions, organizations and customers to build more collaborative
and innovative ways to compete and win market share.
8. The hunt for inexpensive labor will continue, but the
evolution of economies from low cost to high value will be quicker, and increasingly,
a low-cost labor strategy will be more difficult to sustain.
9. Organizations will master the paradox of managing both
large global companies and micro units at the local level. They will meet the challenge
of being global even as they react to local conditions.
10. Organizations that leverage supply chain efficiencies
on a continuous basis globally will flourish. Organizations embedded too deeply
in any single geography will be at an increasing disadvantage.
Work and Society
1. Societies throughout the world will focus on work as
a more important crucible for social progress and values. The memory of today’s
financial crisis will leave a legacy of greater scrutiny and regulation of issues
such as fairness, pay differentials and ethics, particularly in traditional Western
economies.
2. Millennials will redefine work, doing work at home
and taking home to work. This means blurring the boundaries of life and work. More
workforce mobility will allow people to work from home and at different hours.
3. There will be more emphasis on collaboration and using
technology to support it.
4. As the generation born around 1980 takes its place
leading major global organizations, the formative events in those workers’ lives—such
as aging parents, the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and the 2008 financial
crisis—will lead to greater C-suite emphasis on corporate social and environmental
responsibility.
5. Flexibility will be an expectation of employees.
6. There will be a significant problem of retirement in
the West. With people living longer and fewer people in the workforce, retirement
will have to be redefined.
7. Balance will still be an issue. Work practices in the
most successful firms will have had few changes. Technology, and especially ubiquitous
connectivity through wearable devices such as eyeglasses with built-in computer
screens, will continue to blur the distinction between working and not working.
8. For nations such as India, where a large number of
young employees are entering the workforce, there will need to be a major shift
to address their needs and concerns. These are people who may frequently ask, "What’s
in it for me?" Organizations need to show that they have the flexibility to adapt
to these changes while being able to maintain a strong culture.
9. (tie) Generation Y issues, such as the perception that
Gen Y employees will require greater workplace flexibility policies, will have had
far less impact on business reality than predicted. Talented people, willing to
work very hard, will flourish in most organizational settings.
Corporate responsibility and serving the wider community
will be an integral part of an organization’s business strategy.
Recruiting and Workforce Development
1. Recruitment and development will increasingly be seen
as part of an integrated workforce-supply optimization process. Both will become
virtual, global and just-in-time, but they will also be transformed through an increasing
emphasis on optimization, differentiation and return on investment.
2. There will be a continued and increased demand for
top talent. The gap between the best and the rest will be greater. There will be
more demand for creativity, innovation and thought leadership.
3. Employers will compete as intensively for workers as
they do for customers. Branding an organization as a place for workers will be as
important as branding for consumers.
4. Firms will become adept at sourcing and engaging transient
talent around short-term needs, and will focus considerable energy on the long-term
retention of smaller core talent groups.
5. Leadership development will be a critical need. Global
leaders must develop strong decision-making, business and people management capability
in diverse cultures.
6. With a more flexible workforce, employers will struggle
with the funding of workforce development. They will be hesitant to train workers
only to see them leave. Training and development may be tied to some contractual
time commitment on the part of the worker.
7. (tie) More focus will be placed on searching for people
who match companies, not just people who have the skills that companies need.
The lack of skilled workers will be a global phenomenon,
making the war for talent a global war. Successful HR professionals will be much
more adept in fighting this war and will develop expertise in work visas, employment
and privacy law around the globe.
9. (tie) Workforce development will be seen as a holistic
approach that meets the needs of clients, individuals, organizations and surrounding
communities.
There will be more development inside and outside of
work. People will be encouraged to take a "social sabbatical" as a development experience,
for example.
Strategic Role of HR
1. The strategic role of decisions about talent and how
it is organized will increasingly be recognized as pivotal to an organization’s
sustainable strategic success. Leaders will be held accountable for the quality
of those decisions.
2. HR issues will be measured much more as part of the
business plan.
3. Talent management will become the prime focus of HR.
4. HR will be heavily involved in helping build organizational
strategy, including such decisions as which markets to enter, which countries to
choose for expansion and which analytics to inspect.
5. (tie) A "decision science" approach will be the foundation
of human resources. HR will view talent in a supply-chain fashion and help the business
understand workforce trends to make sound decisions.
HR will be part of strategy formulation and execution
discussion.
HR will play a more significant role in developing leadership
for an organization.
HR will go the way of finance and accounting. There
will be two career paths. One will be the equivalent to the comptroller in an organization,
focused on HR delivery and compliance issues. The other will be equivalent to finance:
focused on the business strategy relative to talent needs, workforce development
and organizational design.
9. The full-time permanent jobs that remain in HR will
require more business acumen and more HR depth than ever imagined, leading to a
continued and greater global shortage of the needed talent.
10. (tie) The role of the "HR department" will vary widely,
becoming the repository of expertise and advice on talent in some organizations,
but in others, this role may be taken by experts from other disciplines, with HR
focusing more on processes, vendor management, etc.
To remain successful in a flat world, predictability,
sustainability, profitability and risk management are critical. Hence, HR’s value
will also come from helping the organization tackle such areas as people-related
challenges, risk and compliance issues, sustained growth and the looming talent
shortage.
The ratio of HR staff to firm population will be dramatically
smaller.
Compensation and Benefits
1. Companies will need to offer tailored benefits to meet
diverse needs and attract talent. As a result, there will be more menu-like choices
available for employees relative to their personal lifestyle (e.g., risk-reward
incentive designs, benefit options, etc.).
2. (tie) Increasingly, organizations will help their employees
understand that benefits have expanded to include an organization’s ability to provide
opportunities to build skills and career in an inclusive and flexible work environment
through challenging work assignments, career mobility, formal and on-the-job learning,
coaching and a feedback-rich culture.
Executive compensation still will be a critical responsibility
of HR, and there will be even greater reliance on outside consultants to help design
programs. But corporate boards, concerned about consultants being too close to executive
management, will seek HR expertise, resulting in many more HR professionals having
positions on corporate boards.
There will be more creative ways to tie employee wealth
to firm performance, such as performance shares, and not just stock options.
5. There will be more accountability associated with CEO
and senior leader pay, with more transparency.
6. (tie) Traditional compensation and benefits will evolve
toward a focus on total rewards, with a commensurate emphasis on customization,
differentiation and integration across all elements of the employment relationship.
Compensation and benefits will be more tied to financial
results and behavior results—that is, demonstrating the right competencies, which
will be defined more from the customer point of view.
Organizations will have to work to educate employees
on the total value proposition they receive. Compensation is only one component.
9. Benefits will be more globally similar, and portability
will increase.
10.There will be an expansion of creative benefit offerings
to address different workforce needs, such as elder care, pet care, concierge services
and
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