A shift in HR for 2020 workplace readiness
Now is the time to change your workplace so it’s ready for the future. In fact, the best companies globally are already preparing strategies that will define their vision for 2020. A number of forces, which are currently at play, are helping to shape the workplace of tomorrow.
Keep in mind that future new employees, called Generation 2020, are now almost in high school and at the same time, the technologies that will define the 2020 workplace are already in the design stage. In addition, globalisation, introducing new ways of working, using emerging technologies and shifting demographics throughout the workplace are all impacting and helping to shape the workplace of the future.
For companies to succeed, they will need to introduce particularly innovative HR practices to ensure they are ready to meet the inevitable shifts in the way people view work. Consider, for a moment, that never in the history of the modern world will there have been five generations in the workplace at one time. So how do organisations best integrate these different generations whose style of working, technology use and overall mindset differ so dramatically?
According to the book The 2020 Workplace by Jeanne C Meister and Karie Willyerd, one of the first things HR needs to initiate is a global mindset to enable performance at the highest levels in the 2020 workplace. It’s critical to develop an organisational capacity to work with a geographically dispersed set of employees, customers, partners and suppliers from diverse cultures across time, space, geographies and organisational boundaries. Cultural exchange is vital to understanding the market, which is why a company that withdraws into itself atrophies.
Other things that HR needs to do include:
- Developing advanced corporate communication platforms using a range of social media, blogs, wikis, communities of practice and online corporate social networks to connect employees, enable mass collaboration and facilitate innovation,
- Personalising the employee experience and considering how to individualise the existing one-size-fits-all approach to employees, and
- Creating an inclusive culture by building a welcoming corporate environment and employer brand that is sensitive to culture, ethnicity, race and age.
