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Research Update: What skills and knowledge do our HR professionals of the future need?
HRNZ has recently carried out extensive research into future HR capability in New Zealand. By seeking to understand the factors that will drive change in HR, HRNZ can tailor its support of HR professionals today, to ensure HR meets the needs of the world of work in the future.
The research took a three-fold approach. Alongside desktop research, HRNZ surveyed all members and held a focus group comprising a diverse range of senior HR professionals from across New Zealand. The desktop research was viewed from three perspectives: how the professions, in general, are changing; how organisations are changing; and how employee expectations are changing.
It is fair to say that professions, in general, are changing. Information and knowledge are becoming more freely available, meaning there is less reliance on professionals for advice. The processes used by professionals are increasingly becoming automated, and more and more data is available to professionals to assimilate and analyse. The swell of social media has transformed people’s expectations around timeliness and formality. For example, people want instant answers and less formal communications than in the past. Legal advice doesn’t need to be written in a formal letter, for instance. Due to large-scale automation of straightforward transactions, entrylevel work could be affected.
Organisations, in general, are focusing on sustainability and social responsibility. Distributed workforces are becoming the norm, and this introduces new models of leadership and team collaboration. Digitisation continues at a fast pace, and the use of AI will be a feature of operations and customer interface. The ability to respond quickly to an ever-changing landscape, at an ever-increasing speed, will be critical to maintaining competitive advantage.
Looking at employees of the future, there will be increased diversity within the workforce, for example, the ageing population and increasing demographic of Māori. With rapidly evolving technology solutions, employees will be expecting autonomy and up-to-date tools to work with. Employees will seek greater work–life balance and the flexibility to work from anywhere. This ties into the employee’s need to be treated personally and in line with their values. There will be a greater desire for continuous learning and development and an expectation that the employer supports this.
From the focus group with senior HR professionals, it became clear that the world of work is changing rapidly and, for HR professionals to remain current in the future, they need to start developing now. Many of the areas identified are actually needed today and not exclusively in the future. There is also a potential risk that HR professionals will find it difficult to move to a future state if they are unable to relinquish current tasks. The automation of work needs to be driven by HR, to achieve good outcomes. Perhaps the most significant change that senior HR professionals forecast is the employee–employer relationship and how employees increasingly need to be treated as customers. The scope of HR’s work is still seen to be very wide, so the profession will need to continue to provide generalists and specialists to the industries it serves.
The chief executive officers identified 11 future HR capabilities:
• empathy
• lead, influence and drive change
• create bespoke HR solutions
• big-picture thinking
• human-centred design
• relationship building
• commercial acumen
• resilience
• data analysis
• using technology
• holistic approach to wellbeing.
Finally, the member survey was conducted in September 2020 and received 220 responses. The survey asked three questions. First, what are the top factors driving change for HR professionals? The evolution of the distributed workforce was identified as the top factor that will affect HR in the future. The massive explosion in remote working following the global COVID-19 pandemic has had wide-ranging implications for the leadership of people and HR practices. The rapid growth of technology is also a widely recognised factor affecting the role of HR.
Second, survey respondents were overwhelmingly in agreement that all of the 11 capabilities were going to be needed by HR professionals in the future. Commercial acumen and big-picture thinking are seen as increasingly essential to ensure HR solutions are delivering on the long-term needs of the organisation. The ability of HR professionals to display empathy and take a holistic approach to employee wellbeing was also amongst the most critical future capabilities.
Third, respondents reported HR’s strength capabilities as being resilience and relationship building. A pointer to future development priorities, perhaps, is that both commercial acumen and bigpicture thinking were amongst the least likely to be seen as a current strength. Other capabilities highlighted by members were the need to support people of different cultures to be successful in the work environment (multiculturalism) and the need to become more strategic in their approach to addressing people issues.
The results of this survey and the focus group have proven extremely insightful, particularly given the consistency of views across respondents and participants. This is just the start of a conversation. HRNZ is keen to continue the discussions with the broader HR community and to support members in the development path needed to facilitate tomorrow’s workplaces. HRNZ is leading this discussion, preparing its members and acknowledging it’s up to all HR people to create the future for the profession.
The HRNZ Virtual Summit on 25 November, entitled ‘Facing the future’ discussed themes from this research and started the process of refining this future (and present) vision for HR. This research and discussion will be instrumental in informing HRNZ’s PD courses, future Summits and webinars and magazine content. Further information can be found at hrnz.org.nz.
