How the companies that are shaping the future are also changing the way we work
This week, HR executives across sectors gathered for a cross-pollination of ideas and solutions surrounding the future of work and the continued alignment of people strategy to company strategy. The Work Rebooted Summit brought together an exclusive group of fifty of the country’s predominant thought leaders in the people space, like Heather McGowan, who gave a great talk on the evolving relationship between humans and work, for an intimate, engaging couple of days.
It was my great pleasure to be included in this exchange. Mike Priddis of Faethm joined me in a conversation about robots taking over jobs and the impact of AI and automation on employment, led by Nigel Cameron. No, the robots aren’t coming for all our jobs, but you’ve probably heard me say that before already.
Here are some highlights from three other sessions, which shared the recurring theme of transformation:
The Gig Economy
We heard from Stephane Kasriel, CEO of Upwork. We learned about two key environmental trends that are giving rise to the move away from full-time work. Education as we know it was not built for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which requires a lifelong learning model. And new jobs aren’t being created in the same places they are being destroyed, but meanwhile, geographic mobility in the US is on the decline. Millennials are facing the expensive, risky decisions of whether to pursue formal educations and/or moves to coastal cities. It’s little surprise then, that Upwork estimates that in ten years, the number of freelancers will outnumber FTEs. Already, half of US freelancers would take no amount of money to go back to a normal 9 to 5.
People Analytics
Ross Sparkman, Facebook’s Head of Strategic Workforce Planning, shared an inspiring story about using people analytics to examine previously unquestioned assumptions. The size of their engineering rotation program was 90, and a leader finally asked, why is the number 90? The question went down the chain of command, from the VP of Talent, to Ross, and no one had an answer. After four months of research, Ross’ team found that the size of the class was double than what was optimal. Six years after the program, alumni were six times more likely to leave Facebook—they were creating a breeding ground of talent for their competitors. It would have been far more effective to just hire more senior engineers than sinking time and resources into such a large program.
Employee Experience, End-to-End
Pat Wadors, CRHO of ServiceNow and former SVP of Global Talent at LinkedIn, led a discussion about “consumerizing the enterprise.” Her employee experience team at LinkedIn defined their work as culture, tools, and environment, from when candidates are being courted to when they become alumni of the organization. Consumer concepts applied to the HR lens included reviews, personalization, the creation of employee personas, membership- and event-based marketing, thinking of services in terms of employee use case over provider, and even P2P economies in the context of “purchasing” colleagues’ meeting-hour credits.
As you can see, the rate of change and innovation in people management is continuing to accelerate. I genuinely believe that the future of talent acquisition has never been brighter. It’s such an honor to transform TA into strategic partners in the company with the intelligence and technology of Censia’s products. If you’re a TA leader who is looking for a partner in that journey, please reach out. I’d love to connect.