Human Innovations or Systems Intelligence – who will dominate the Future of Work? I joined three leaders to discuss this at TechHR’18. August 1-3, 2018 was earmarked for Tech HR ’18. This is the annual conference on HR-Tech organized by People Matters. I don’t know about Systems Intelligence but HR Tech is certainly center stage. Work, Working, and Workers are all changing. If we look at work, it is severely impacted by machines; when you look at the nature of jobs, there’s a huge amount of upscaling; the where, how and what of working are also changing; who is a worker has also changed – gig workers, digital migrants. Everything is getting reconfigured now. So must HR.On the penultimate day of Tech HR’18, I got a chance to join Chris Havrilla @havrilla , President – Havrilla LLC; William Tincup @williamtincup – President, RecruitmentDaily; Amita Maheshwari, President & Head HR – Star TV as they got into a lively chat about the Future of Work. Jason Averbook, CEO Leapgen, moderated the panel. 
What is the Future of Work?
Having to decide how to interact with the enterprise technology (voice or touch) will be the big leap says Tincup. People will adapt and change as tech evolves, said Amita Maheshwari. The future of work is about going back to basics – focusing on people and experiences, said Chris Havrilla.
What does the HR need to do for the future?
HR needs to understand that it leads a function that leads revenue and growth. So taking care of people experiences and showing people how to change and learn is important. said Chris HavrillaMove beyond the transactions, says Amita. HR needs to bring a balance between business partnering and employee championing. That means HR needs to change its own mindset.I believe, HR must make work fun. Work must be a source of joy. We see how much people hate Mondays. That is a failure of HR. Until we do that, HR is not doing what it should.
What does the HR of the future look like or needs to do?
When we talk about experience, we are used to using best tech in our personal lives. At work, we primitive and complex tech to use. HR needs to bring in design thinking and making things simple, said Amita Maheshwari. Chris Havrilla and Amita talked about using Design Thinking to reimagine HR.I made a point about getting out of the current obsession of ROI (Return on Investment). When we look at process improvement, it is easy to find measures that help us understand ROI. But if the future of work is all about designing experiences that bring joy to people, then the return will not be quantitative but qualitative. Experiences generate emotions. They have to be measured very differently. If work is to be a source of joy, measuring attrition may not be the best way to find out. Would you agree?————–People Matters wrote about this panel discussion on their blog <read it>This post also appeared in the Times of India blog on 4th August 2018Read this post in the Economic Times Blog <click here>Love to read your views about the future of work and the role of HR. How should the joy of work be measured if we get to it? Leave your ideas in the comments. Join me on Twitter@AbhijitBhaduri
