Study on the Impact of Technology on Human Resources Jobs & Skills Report

We live in a world of flux and constant change, as such, it does not surprise me that some ofthe HR roles as identified in the study shows that 90% of the HR roles will be disrupted. Anything that is what I would call – ‘consistently consistent’ can be disrupted or even replaced with technology or automated. Jobs and even HR roles that have always pride ourselves to be a people centric function has also evolved over time.

The timeline for HR to change and transform has always been there, we knew to some extend that even without COVID-19, the face of the workforce will have to change by the mid 2025. By the year 2025, majority of the baby boomers, if not all, would have somewhat retired from the workforce and the digital natives (those born in the year 2000 and beyond) would have already started to come into the workforce. The digital natives who have grown up with a Smart Phone in one hand and milk bottle in the other, present a new workforce like no other. They are extremely tech savvy and have gotten used to high-code platforms. As such, if HR still think that they can get away with low-code technology or platforms, we should rethink our offerings.

I would like to imagine in the future that the HR department is one that is truly a strategic business partner. We perhaps, need to drop the letters HR in its entirety and simply refer ourselves as business partner. To become a business partner, we need to fully understand the key aspect of business, its risks and challengers, areas of mitigations and compliance, evolving consumers demands and needs and all these brought together and fused by technology. We need to get comfortable with numbers, make sense of numbers and translate and relate them towards assisting our business leaders to make better and holistic decisions. We need to get into what I would term – the People Intelligence Space to complement the Business Intelligence. It is through the coming together of all the HR levers, combing them with data and developing these insights that will form the People Intelligence View. In order for CHROs to be credible, we cannot just run a tight ship on excellent processes and procedures. We need to reflect our capability as a business partner and be fiscally responsible.

Though the report highlighted three trends, not only that we should be using data as a predictive perspective, a key aspect is also about the preventive analytics that should also be looked into. With preventive analytics we are also able to then perform and up our game. To be the creator of a more robust talent strategy to be able to identify and as well manage key talents for retention and succession. To look holistic into key aspects of strategic workforce planning and as well using these data to challenge status quo and plan for strategic enterprise changes.

We are still not too late in the change and transformation game and as I have been advocating, it is perfectly alright to be uncomfortable with these impending changes.

Alvin A. Goh,
Executive Director,
SHRI



Study on the Impact of Technology on Human Resources Jobs & Skills is a
research report by Willis Towers Watson. The report was commissioned by the
Institute for Human Resource Professionals (IHRP) and the Ministry of
Manpower (MOM).