Evolved HR practices for the future ready organisation

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In 2019, workplace developments focused majorly on improving productivity and employee experience. This year, organisations worldwide and in India will continue to advance the business needs of driving greater human effectiveness, poised for an HR (human resource) transformation.

A significant shift will be to prepare operations around a multi-generational workforce. Most organisations will initiate, if not make remarkable progress on, this journey of deploying work models to challenge hierarchies.

While there are multiple aspects from a people and organisation perspective that will need to be aligned to build agile and future-ready organisations, here are some non-negotiable HR practices that will define the HR trends for 2020.

Getting ready to work with a multigenerational workforce
The coming decade will see true implementation of practices that will further drive the inclusion of a multigenerational workforce in organisations. This would mean keeping the unique requirements of each workforce category in mind while designing engagement, productivity and performance measures, as well employee experience measures.

Wellness and flexibility at the core of employee experience
To ensure that employees have a healthy work-life balance, it has become absolutely necessary for organisations to come up with wellness and flexibility initiatives. The ability of organisations to design and implement options depending upon the unique needs of various employees will become an extremely important requirement in the coming decade.

Employee-centric learning and upskilling to prepare for the digital world
One of the most important HR priorities across organisations for 2020 is going to be building employee-centric learning and providing upskilling opportunities. Organisations worldwide will have to invest in understanding how they differ from competitors from a business and capability perspective in the digital world, and accordingly build their workforce capability. However, these investments in technology won’t deliver outcomes, if sustainable upskilling efforts are not prioritised.

Build an adoption-centric culture in the wake of digital transformation 
Apart from upskilling, the focus on digital transformation will be paramount. Such a transformation is not a result of a singular process or a series of communications, but of multiple culture-focused initiatives that make organisations agile.

Focus on building a unified strategy for talent across sources
Fixed Term Employee (FTE), Gigs and contractors: As organisations try to balance super specialist talent requirements along with productivity and use of technology to solve problems, the talent model of the past will become obsolete. The sourcing and delivery strategy will shift towards balancing the build/buy/borrow framework in the true sense. The only concern about this model is that borrowed talent is scarce, and has its own set of demands. Hence, catering to that talent and not treating it discreetly but inclusively as full-time talent will become more important. However, organisations’ ability to redefine their engagement and development models to create space for borrowed talent, so that they give their firm precedence over others, is going to be an important need and a focus area for organisations.

The past decade saw technology becoming the biggest differentiator between organisations. The biggest differentiator for organisations, in the near future, is going to be the talent that it has access to, directly and indirectly. If 2020 is to be the year of talent becoming the key differentiator amongst organisations, it is only logical that the five above mentioned initiatives focus on employee experience.

The author is a Leader–People and Organisation at PwC India.

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.