HR Transformation: People Management in Digital Era

HR Transformation 

People Management in Digital Era

On the pages of 21st century, rules of success for organization are being redefined and rewritten' as technological change has dramatically reshaped the business environment across the globe with much force on strategic value to business. Globally, Human Resource Management is transforming with complex initiatives to bring top-cited change in respective industry. The implementation of cloud HR solutions, intelligent automation, process automation, and usage of HR metric for HR operating model and strategic models are the modern practices towards transformation of People Management in major organization across the global. 

The role of HR is changing from traditional system to value-added systems through process automation, intelligent automation and instrumentation of capabilities. In this time, strategic value of people management is now being considered decisive change agent and people management capabilities of organization are thus important for business partner role for smarter decision making. The global HR Transformation Survery-2018  conducted by KPMG( a global financial institution) has revealed that HR Data analytics and HR operations across the global has seen significant changes thereby focusing on talent management and talent acquisition or on boarding. The modern HR initiatives are either focusing on reengineering HR process and refocusing HR business partner roles. However, short coming of HR technologies and inadequate change management have been key challenges for HR transformation in most of organization. Some of the technologies do not fit with the organizational culture or business process, few of them are flexible for customization according to need and nature of business and industry at large. Despite all this, the biggest area of investment by half of the organizations have been Human Resource Management System (HRMS) with focus on cloud and premise systems in order to deliver value-added services and improve availability of management information.

The HR transformation has also witnessed disruptors in many forms. The drive change or be changed notion of today business environment requires to view today’s disruption as a unique opportunity to transform their business models and driver new levels of growth and success. The technological disruption and ever change demand disruptions of market are to be taken positive for business more but, for this, such transformation is required to have strong, proactive, and information leadership. The leadership is expected to pursue initiatives that shall be uncomfortable but inevitable for organization success.  The digital area of modern organization will continue to unfold around the organization with inevitable forces of change to initiate strategic transformation initiatives. Therefore, it is need of time to redesign traditional HR operation model via fully integrated change management strategies. The enhanced level of engaged employees’ workforce mobility for diversified business nature, smarter decision making with HR analytics and better work efficiency are aligned now for the age of HR transformation and implementation of modern HR initiatives.

Apart from initiatives, major challenges faced by HR function are to be given due consideration. The foremost challenge is cost/funding for new HR initiatives based on automation and technologies. Organization in general have limitation for funding to bring changes in processes and models. Some of them have also lack of appetite budget and skills to make required process standardization. They are of the view to initiate when it is dire need with reference to survival. Furthermore, it is also revealed that Inconsistent and non-standard business processes are also making automation impractical. People in HR are coming across disruption with this regard as well and find it hard to implement full automation at all.

Increasingly interconnected world is required to embrace uncertainty as a valuable new opportunity by pursuing innovative technology, skills and capabilities in order to deliver crucial new competitive advantage. The digital disruption and rapidly changing business models in organization are to be taken with great deal for transformation for growth and productivity. The forward-looking organization are making their HR transformed with best initiatives and forces of change for creating competitive advantage through people management. There is strong need to call for action on the HR transformation with effective e and detailed change management across the board in business or organization.

If organization are to compete, survive and win, there is no room for delay. Being position for future, success demands action today. The forces of change are here, leaders need to drive change or be changed, shape or be shaped……………………………………

Mr. Shoukat Ali Abbasi is a HR professional with professional work experience of almost 8 Years in HR & OD in complex and multi culture environment in different organizations across the country.  Mr. Shoukat Ali has been a lead Trainer for various sectors like; corporate sector, social sector, and public sector. His area of interest are Organizational Psychology, Organizational Behavior, Employee Relations, and Organizational Development. He is currently working as Deputy Registrar-HRM with Sukkur IBA University, Sukkur, Pakistan.