Tech finally meets HR. Can you be replaced by software in 3 years?

Companies expanded their budget for technology innovations in HR, which not only sparked significant changes inside departments across the world but have also enhanced their processes and the way HR professionals work. This era is probably the best time for colleagues who are creative and willing to learn a new type of skill but were in jobs where technology wasn’t as prominent. Even more importantly for the industry, this is the best time for fresh graduates or experienced professionals with marketing, business, engineering, or IT backgrounds to move to HR and make significant contributions to their department.

HR professionals must continuously learn new IT and digital skills to enhance and complement their strategic thinking and problem-solving skills. All of these fit within their ever expanding HR daily job roles, and I am sure you love these new possibilities available to all of us, as much as I do. The skills to use new software around HR Processes, together with continuous learning in general HR best practice could make anyone employable for business enterprises for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, as there are always winners and losers during significant changes, digitalization of previously manual processes, a new influx of talent with business and IT skills fit for HR, and the impact of artificial intelligence can lead to massive downsizings in the industry.

In the short term, most of us have one question to ask: Can my job be replaced in 3 years? The answer could be especially important for those colleagues and fresh graduates who think a CIPD or Masters HR degree will give them a lifelong career in HR. 

I asked my colleague Ben, about his view on HR's ability to support his daily Agile Delivery job within the IT/Digital department. "Due to my corporate experience, IT still would require HR to deliver strategic capabilities. Although there are advanced technologies available, for instance, resource management still doesn't, or only happens in spreadsheets in real life. The ability to manage resources and track contractor's work hours would be especially important within a matrix environment."

The Effect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on HR Job Roles

HR Professionals with business degrees who possess excellent analytical and problem-solving skills can access to social media, their company's big data and cloud-based scalable software. They are now able to impact the way businesses understand their customers, create reports much more rapidly, develop HR software, set up value proposition designs, market to a new audience and communicate with existing and prospective employees. They are the future leaders of HR functions with unlimited career prospects

It is time to launch the ‘HR Go Green project’ in every department, as I did at my workplace in 2016. There are already fewer manual, paper-based processes which will lead to significantly fewer jobs for HR Professionals. Those who are not able to demonstrate business skills such as, problem-solving skills or data analysis, evaluating alternatives, technical, marketing, people analytics or financial skills may be replaced by cost- efficient scalable digital solutions. On the positive side, there are countless new software applications designed specifically for HR. These can lead to a new type of job. But we must remember to create and use systems around HR processes not processes around new systems.  

• Recruiters using video interviewing software like Powermeeter. For me, this is the best example of innovation which just changes HR job roles completely; I enjoyed every minute when I worked with it at my previous company. It saved the team making hundreds of phone calls a day and created an experience for applicants what they never came across before.
• At the top of the numerous online platforms, Microsoft’s Hololens, combined with IBM’s Watson and its AI, can rapidly increase the reputation of L&D professionals; this could be the perfect job role for a current HR Coordinator who is proficient and working with some creative applications and willing to learn about Hololens.
• HR Reward Departments are the pioneers of implementing flexible working systems for all office employees. New digital technologies and services have made it possible to work from home or from anywhere in the world. It has a huge cost saving potential for businesses and remarkably increases in employee engagement as a result of a better social life for employees.

There are endless opportunities for those who are creative, familiar with Adobe applications or not afraid to be involved in digital projects. One of these could be to create the content and surface for employee engagement applications similar to Intertain’s Pulse, which is designed to help staff members train, communicate, and share best practices with each other. Pulse also gives employees access to rotas, appraisals, and inductions on their mobile phone.

HR support function becomes transparent due to technological advancements making HR seen as a more strategic asset in more employees’ eyes within the corporate. These changes will lead to higher demand from senior leadership and the shareholders.  These expectations from the executives may result in putting job holders at risk who are not performing.

According to the source, MarketWatch, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has announced plans to eliminate hundreds of jobs by the end of January 2017; the job cuts will be mainly from the Human Resources Department–as the executives believe the team isn't efficient enough.

These innovations may help the industry to have better PR among talented graduates coming from business or engineer backgrounds. They will increase the pace of change within the industry, they possibly optimise obsolete processes, create better ways to work, and reinvent HR functions. However, this efficiency in the long term may lead to redundancies for those who will not be able to take part of the digital transition projects.

Artificial Intelligence

 

There is already a significant impact on the office workforce from emerging artificial intelligence; it will destroy but also create new job roles.

When you go to Lemonade.com, you may be thrilled by their innovations, an insurance company where the only insurance broker is Maya, their artificial intelligence bot. The question is: “Can AI replace your job in 3 years?”

If Maya can calculate the best deal for insurance in seconds, she can calculate annual bonus for thousands of employees in hours or maybe minutes?  AI could be a threat in the long term for Employment Relations colleagues, who enjoy job stability at the moment.

What Are Those Skills What Can Make You “Untouchable”?

Laszlo Bock, the former senior vice president of Google, mentioned in his book, Work Rules, that he ensured he had more than half of his department with a strategic consulting background or master's degree in analytics. He needed to reach out for employees coming from other industries to be able to maintain a Human Resources Department which acted as an efficient strategic support function for the whole company. He emphasised that it would have been a mistake to employ only HR people in his department. He also highlighted the lack of technical and fundamental IT skills of HR Professionals even at the highest level, at top companies like Google.

None of the HR graduates or professionals should be scared about the future changes to their job role if they realise these changes and take action. Viktor Tabori, who is the Chief Strategy Officer at Artisan Marketing, advice for the readers of this article is: Being able to mine and understand data on your own gives you a huge advantage over your peers. It is never late to learn some basic python and always look for new tools which can automate and scale your efforts.

The most productive HR colleagues whose answer to the question, "Can I be replaced in 3 years?" was "yes," will now follow a repeatable cycle act imminently: learn, practice, learn, practice and gain new skills, learn to think more strategically, improve their problem-solving skills. You should learn IT and technical skills, be the best in your department in using Microsoft Office, Adobe applications, read one business book per month, learn about available software in your company day by day and use those to add value to your daily job. Read the news about new trends and new HR software.  Ask a colleague from the IT department to be your mentor. All of this knowledge will be essential for you in a new digitalized, strategic HR industry.