The Beginning has started. The future is in full swing. The evolution of exponential technologies is revolutionizing every aspect of our existence and proceeds at an amazing speed. Innovation seems to have no limits, and the same can be said for our imagination in predicting what may happen…
2018 Prototypes of new graphene-based materials (solar cells, batteries, supercapacitors)
2019 People wear permanent devices for recording, storing and classifying every conversation
2020 Google markets the first self-driving car and sends thousands of satellites into space to provide the Internet connection to three billion people. Google Earth becomes a service in real time. Mobile communication takes place using 5G technology. Data traffic on the web is eight times higher than it was in 2015. In an industrial region of China, 80% of the factories are automated. The first journey in Hyperloop, the high speed train carrying goods and people in vacuum capsules suspended in the air.
2021 The number of Internet users reaches 4.6 billion, more than half the world’s population. It is possible to upload the contents of your brain into a computer. Ford follows Google’s example and markets self-driving cars.
2023 The calculation capacity of computers will be equivalent to that of the human brain.
2025 Alphabet has acquired the genetic data of the entire world population. Genetic therapy is able to entirely regenerate certain organs, comprising the heart. Humanoids flank human beings in home management, caring for the elderly and doing heavy or dangerous jobs. Applications of exoskeletons, prostheses which are parts of humanoids attached to the human body. Electrical appliances do not consume electricity because they run on plant fuels. New grapheme-based materials are now on sale.
2030 Asteroid mining: the exploitation of mineral resources to be found on asteroids. Man lands on Mars.
2035 Large-scale marketing of biomimetic products (made from new materials inspired by the plant world). Confirmation of the existence of forms of life on other planets. Half of the number of jobs potentially lend themselves to being automated.
2045 The calculation capacity of computers will exceed those of all human brains. A hypersonic plane will fly from London to New York in one hour, at the speed of 4.5 mach.
2050 The demand for animal proteins has grown by 50-70%. Edible insects are the “most sustainable” source of alternative food. The world population is 11 billion.
2065 Nuclear fusion. Gorillas, polar bears, brown bears, wolves, rhinos, pandas and tigers are extinct. Spacecraft travel for generations. Spaceships travel at the speed of light.
[an extract from “Prossimi Umani”, Francesco De Filippo, Maria Frega]
Are we ready for all of this? Do we grasp the signs of change in the making? How are we preparing ourselves and our children for this epoch-making transformation? These are questions I often ask myself, as a father and as a businessman, infinitely curious with regard to our future life, which is starting right now in 2018.
Do you ever imagine what your job will be like in 5/10 years time? With all probability, my son who is now a university student, will work with a cobot (or co-robot) and will also be assessed for his capacity to collaborate and interact with his humanoid colleague. This is a revolution companies ought to consider carefully, both with regard to the technological side but also, and above all, the relational and human management aspects, by adopting solutions made to measure for HR Digital Transformation.
Chronology of an exponential future: make way for the immagination to renew hr processes Click To TweetAnyone engaged in Human Resource Management addresses an incessant stream of incoming and outgoing information and data, deriving from various sources that are more or less organized (just think how high social network conversations rank in a person’s interests). They inevitably change decision-making processes, both in the talent recruitment phase and when assessing the performance and skills of existing employees, towards a Big Data-driven model which supports the irreplaceable value of human relations.
Let’s consider Recruiting 4.0. Thanks to the powerful technologies of Analytics and Predictive Analysis, the construction of a pipeline of valid talents has become much more simple and rapid for the recruiter. The wealth of information at his disposal and the algorithms which govern the working of the main digital recruiting channels enable the recruiter to reduce the time required to identify and employ top talents. From a predictive viewpoint, for example, the analysis of a candidate’s social profiles evidences which potential skills and abilities complete his technical and specialist preparation (endorsed by a normal CV).
The constantly accelerating computing power cannot help but support increasingly rapid recruiting processes, by assimilating thousands of bytes in the search for those profiles in possession of the best set of skills.
That of analyzing thousands of curricula, rapidly identifying significant information, such as success indicators and an aptitude for corporate organizational culture, is for instance the strong point of Linkedin, the most important social recruiting tool.
However, recruiting frontiers go well beyond the use of social networks. We are all familiar with the case of Google (an Exponential Organization by definition), which has created a truly disruptive process of talent acquisition. To identify an expert programmer, Google has used the search engine’s algorithms of machine learning to activate a talent scouting process, based on its users’ search keywords. Max Rosett, an IT university student, was seeking information for his thesis on a particular Phyton function. In response to his search keyword and following his click on a result, Big G redirected him to a text on a black background: “You are speaking our language. Are you ready for a challenge?”. This was followed by three options “I want to play”, “No thanks” and “Don’t show this message again”. This was the start of the recruiting process which very rapidly revealed the programming skills of the candidate, who was promptly hired after personal interviews with the HR representatives of Google.
Gamification as a simulation environment is a valid tool for identifying those candidates with greater potential and there is no need to be Google to implement forms of experimentation in our companies. However, there can be no doubt that the HR Department also needs to accelerate the transformation of processes in a digital key, by developing across the board skills and governance of the exponential innovation we are experiencing.
Rapid changes in business strategy correspond to sudden skill gaps which the Chief Human Resources Officer has to fill rapidly. The role of today’s CHRO is represented in the most important board rooms because it is increasingly evident that the human factor is central to the sustainability of innovation processes and business transformation.
In which main areas does HR intervene in support of Digital Transformation?
Each of these points would be worthy of specific consideration, because changes are so disruptive as to envisage a dynamic future for human resource management. What we can say with certainty is that transformative technologies have pervaded all ambits, constantly creating new opportunities for development and improvement to emerge. But, as I like to recall, our human-tech vision of the exponential future guides us in the care and valorisation of those exclusively human skills which can really make HR Digital Transformation strategies efficacious.
First and foremost, a forward-looking CHRO needs to know how to address and implement a Competence Assessment in order to constantly map skills, making recourse to technological monitoring tools and performance assessment, and by leveraging people’s creative spirit, through innovation challenges aimed at revealing their full unexpressed potential. Engaged in this way, the best talents will form communities, and will be the protagonists of the initiatives being created and, at the same time, company ambassadors.
The identification of digital-ready resources with a greater propensity for imagining pockets of innovation may reveal precious concealed potential for business transformation. - Andrea Ruscica – President of Altea Federation Click To TweetAnother disruptive characteristic of the HR Director and his team lies in the exclusively human understanding (at least until 2023) of the relations which coexist between business choices and the phenomena residing in the sphere of human capital.
Man represents that essential bond between an indistinct mass of data and a concrete decisional strategy based on the same data. This is tantamount to being able to interpret and read in a synergic manner, to grasp the relations between phenomena and internal or external variables, through the implementation of a predictive analysis.
The Human Resources Director plays the role of HR Business Partner, called on to answer the following questions (backed up by data):
The structural organization of this mass of data is simplified by the most innovative solutions of Human Capital Management integrated with latest generation ERPs: algorithms of artificial intelligence trace paths of personalized and intelligent decision-making, thus contributing to orient the main company stakeholders along the entire life cycle of the employee, in favour of a new people experience whose design, conceptualization and creation is custom-made.
BIO
For almost 30 years, Altea Federation has been working alongside the global leaders of technological innovation through a holonic-virtual business model which embraces the professional approach and high degree of specialization of a federation of companies under one brand: different yet complementary worlds which reinforce each other while preserving a strong Group identity and an unmistakable approach to the challenges posed by new paradigms in the ambits of Consulting, Technology, Digital and Operations.
