Aptology recently conducted a live panel on the future of work. Kristin Trecker, CHRO of Visteon joined Pradeep Javangula, VP of AI at Workday, and Brad Benson, CPO and co-founder of Aptology to outline the key pillars structuring what the future of work will look like. Looking across industries, the panelists agreed that the largest challenge as the future of business becomes people-centric is how to leverage tech to align interests for a more profitable bottom line.
Bucketed into four main categories, below are the key takeaways from the future of work conversation.
1. Talent Capital and Due Diligence
“Everybody says talent is your greatest asset. If that’s the case, the talent supply chain is still being managed in many companies as more of an expense…We have far more work to get done to have that same level of sophistication to focus on getting the same level of value from human capital talent. ” – Kristin Trecker, CHRO, Visteon
Capital is defined as assets that can enhance one’s power to perform economically useful work. Technology has enhanced many operations in every industry, but as businesses become more people-centric, people emerge as the new power to perform economically useful work. As a result, talent is the new capital. Employees and their lifecycles need to be analyzed, tracked, predicted, and de-risked with the same rigor of any other powerful asset. Without continued due diligence, talent and the employee journey will never perform at optimal levels and the business cannot reach its optimal potential.
2. Broadening Talent Pool
“We now have global access to resources that we didn’t think about before. Conversely, our employees are also becoming global assets that can go anywhere. We need to figure out a not ‘one-size fits all’ strategy for employee engagement.”
Companies of every industry and size were tested on the possibility and productivity of remote work due to COVID-19. Many found remote work possible and productive, and as a result talent pools have started to expand as a legitimate and lucrative recruiting option. However, diversifying the talent pool necessitates a diversification of the employee engagement strategy, too. Not only are teams becoming more diverse across location and culture, how managers engage with their teams in a remote environment is forced to change as well. Traditionally, HR has been put in a position of managing talent and performance. However, managers work with teams every day and are much more responsible for supporting performance, mentorship, and skill-building among their teams. As talent pools expand, HR and management together must answer: how do we make consistent decisions that are in the best interest of the company and the employee in a more productive, profitable way?
Analysis shows one-size fits all employee engagement plans never worked, but as businesses become more people-centered and focused on global diversity, it is more critical than ever to understand, track, and respond accordingly to the employee journey.
3. Tech Applications of the Employee Value Proposition
“Technology is a powerful tool not only in workforce planning but in how work gets done delivering various aspects of the EVP (employee value proposition).”
As HR functions become increasingly responsible for business goals, business tools are increasingly being applied to deliver results. Behavioral platforms, predicted analytics, AI, bots, and machine learning all expose data about talent turnover, mobility, and workforce planning in real-time. As a result, tech-enabled HR is the MVP – pinpointing where resources should be focused in running a people-centric business of the future.
4. Talent: Looking Inside
As businesses become more people-centric, CHROs are finding they know more about candidates than about their own employees. Traditional HR functions shine in only two moments of the employee lifecycle – onboarding and offboarding. The candidate experience may be great, but if the employee experience isn’t met with the same level of insight, career pathing, behavioral and performance checks, the employee experience becomes a major vulnerability to meeting staffing needs and ultimately business metrics. If the goal is to do great business at the lowest possible cost, CHROs need to start thinking about how to better understand internal employee journeys.
5. Aligning People and Business Objectives
“HR has been put in a position of managing talent and performance, but business leaders still have the front line capabilities. How does HR help business leaders make consistent decisions that are in the best interest of the company and the employee in a more productive way?” – Brad Benson, CPO and co-founder of Aptology
A distributed workforce and a strain on resources means that now more than ever, CHROs are under pressure to align people and business objectives. Business leaders are still under pressure to perform, and now they have to do so in a more distributed way than ever. That means that HR and business leaders need new ways of understanding the people side of the business, consistently and at scale.
How to: Put Modern Talent Management Frameworks in Place
CHROs must start redefining the employee journey by augmenting people insights at an organizational level. Behavioral platforms like Aptology help HR and business leaders survey, understand and prioritize the characteristics of the employee and employee lifecycle that add value to the business’ bottom line.
To see how a Fit-to-Role platform can empower your organization’s employee journey, get a quick 15 minute demo.