Future focussed

This year’s HRNZ Summit featured an impressive list of speakers and a fantastic opportunity for over 70 HR professionals to start to build a practical vision of the future of HR. Kathy Catton reviews the HRNZ Summit, held in Queenstown, at the end of October.

For some of us, it’s scary to think that 2020 is just a few weeks away. 2020! For all the talk of the digitisation, rapid technological advancement and progressive changes ahead, it is clear to me that the future of work is now. So what better opportunity for HR professionals to gather together to focus on what this means for HR and work together to form a vision of the future of HR?

One of the many highlights of the Summit for me was the speech delivered by Jo Cribb, Leadership and Governance Consultant, on the future of work and workplaces. Not only did Jo take a light-hearted look down memory lane to show how we have already lived through massive technological change (who remembers cassette players and

processing photographic film at the pharmacy?), she also helped us recognise that the very nature of ‘change’ has changed and is changing. Whereas previous changes (industrial revolutions, as an example) changed just one piece of technology at a time (eg, steam, electricity, computing power), the changes we are facing now are affecting every facet of our lives.

Jo quoted from a recent study by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) stating that, if employers wanted to, they could immediately remove an estimated 9 per cent of jobs from the workplace by using automation. In 10 years, it is predicted as many as 35 per cent of jobs could be removed. So it appears that change is becoming exponential, but we don’t yet know how this will play out.

Jo gave her top seven predictions for what the world of work will look like in the future:

1. fewer managers will be needed, because employees will be expected to be far more selfdirected due to the increase in apps to monitor workers, performance and productivity

2. leadership will become far more critical to draw teams together

3. a wide range of ages will be in the workforce. Potentially 17-to 70-year-olds

4. workers may not physically need to be in the same space. Much more fluidity in working locations and styles will be possible, for example, self-employment, gig workers, portfolio career.

5. people will be learning as they go and will need to upskill continually

6. there will be a scrambling for talent, but a lot of unemployment

7. being ‘human’ won’t change: the need for empathy, connection, humour will remain.

HR has a huge role to play in harnessing technology and humanity. It’s our choice about how it goes.

Facilitated by Dr David Keane, workshop delegates got the opportunity to explore these ideas further, using a simple framework of looking at what we would like to Keep, Get, Remove and Avoid within our organisation, in the context of workplace changes. Delegates added ideas to Post-it Notes and stuck them on a large central template to share with the group. Examples included removing the ‘command and control’ model of operating, avoiding

historical best practice to make way for getting clear on our purpose and keeping ‘hi-tech, hi-touch’ ways of working.

Katie Williams, HR Director at Vodafone and HRNZ HR Person of the Year, provided us with practical insights into the use of Agile in HR. Katie’s purpose in HR at Vodafone is to “make it easy for our people to do their best”. What this translates into (and considering the future of work) is four main areas:

• to automate the manual, repetitive HR work (eg, Vodafone has a Chatbot in its HR Ops team that answers all those common “What’s my annual leave allowance?” type questions)

• to relinquish some of the power that has historically come with HR, so managers can make fast, confident, HR decisions

• from the top down, have in-depth experiences with the business, which lead to a more employeeadvocated position

• to build an HR team that deals commercially on the business, with the business.

For Vodafone, this has meant HR people are becoming expert in one or two areas, at the same time as being broad in all other areas. Katie described this as being ‘T-shaped people’, for example, masters and experts in one. Although some members in the room articulated that Katie’s agile methods sounded “exhausting”, Katie quoted that HR team engagement and productivity have improved, with greater breadth of capability and contribution and a reduced HR cost to the business.

The ‘workshop’ style afternoon sessions saw presentations from five speakers. Ryan Ghisi, from Xero, talked about a world-class employee experience, using continuous feedback from employees and the market, which has resulted in significant initiatives being put in place that increased engagement, retention, wellbeing and productivity.

Rachel Mason, Partner at Lane Neave Lawyers, talked through the latest immigration changes and what this will mean for the future employment pool of foreign workers (see article on page 30, for more information).

Martin King, Director at Winter Pride, challenged us to look at how we can achieve higher levels of inclusion in the workplace when faced with a broader range of cultural, physical and social needs amongst our employees. A great ‘take-out’ I got from Martin’s session was that diversity is what your organisation looks like, for example, differences of age, race, gender, and inclusivity is what your organisation feels like, for example, the culture. It is this inclusive culture that is a critical source of competitive advantage for us today.

Bridget Jelley, Registered Psychologist and Director of The Effect, shared the most recent research about mental health and wellbeing in the workplace so we can fully understand the accurate picture of what it is that we have to manage as organisations. She also challenged us to look at how we can find the right initiative for our organisation in terms of an approach to wellbeing.

Dr David Keane concluded the day by acknowledging the enormous workload and responsibilities that we carry as HR professionals. He stressed the importance of taking care of ourselves by being clear on how we define our success, being careful about choosing our priorities for 2020 and not getting distracted in our execution of these priorities.

Feedback from delegates was incredibly positive, with particular value gained by the shared activities at each table. It was a chance to ask questions such as “what?”, “so what?” and “now what?”. This led to a sense of being able to walk away with specific strategies for 2020 that were tangible and meaningful.

“The need for a vision that is robust and right is a certainty,” says Nick McKissack, HRNZ Chief Executive. “But we must be agile in how we obtain it. This HRNZ Summit provided a roadmap on how to build a practical vision for HR. What will the future of work look like and what challenges does this place on HR?”

As Katie Williams summed up, “We are at a crossroad in the world of work, and it’s an exciting time to be in HR – as long as you like exciting times”.