There are eight people around the table. Their decisions depend on opportunities for the professional growth and development of hundreds or even thousands of people.
Every so often, I think about the impact of HR decisions and how many families these decisions generate spillovers, positive or otherwise.
How many people over dinner will be confronted and told about a training course, feedback received, an evaluation not understood, a raise that came or did not come, a proposal to pack up and go to the other side of the world to make a career?
Eight people, thousands of families.
As HRI, we were called to accompany them in defining their people development and talent management strategy.
Strategy is the key word. We have to direct a strategy that contemplates the group’s needs, ensures continuity with current projects, and has a horizon of up to three years.
I can’t tell if there is room to really think about a strategy within these constraints.
A Strategic Foresight approach: possible future scenarios.
Above all, the word strategy calls to our mind a “strategic foresight” approach: we mean by this term the introduction of a perspective of scenarios of possible futures, from which strategic thinking is also shaped and transformed.
Those working on HR issues often have to deal with phenomena that require longer time horizons than the three-year plan.
One only has to think of the effects on the labour market of a social system that no longer “produces” young people.
The history of the past 50-60 years has given us a demographic “pyramid,” that is, many young people and fewer older people. For several years, Italy’s demographic “pyramid” has been a rhombus whose largest part is gradually ageing, and there is a lack of replacement.
Well, this phenomenon, known and obvious to most, has not been translated into an HR strategy and is instead, today, almost an “emergency.”
Lack of young people, lack of the energy that young people bring to drive innovation. But again, the retirement age is inexorably moving forward. And increasingly ageing corporate populations. Whose work-life balance problems are shifting from parenting to caregiving toward ageing parents.
What are companies’ responses to these demands?
Again, watching inexorable trends, we observe technology advancing faster and faster, taking us not only into the world of AI-related opportunities but also hyperconnectedness, automation, robotics, augmented reality, quantum computing, etc. These are all issues that can completely change the face of a workplace and how we work.
What do we estimate to be the employment spillovers? How do we – as a company – choose to manage them, assessing employment, social, reputational and ethical risks? How do we help people gain expendable skills?
But browsing through the trends, we also find many interesting insights for those working in human resources: the “training” system (schooling and education) that – from the company’s point of view – represents the supply of basic skills is changing meaningfully.
The security paradigm is changing (and there is no shortage of recent striking examples), but people and organizations seem to be dimly aware of it.
The increase in the global chessboard is the weight of the global south and east.
Possible futures and talent management
In our strategy workshop, we explored 14 global trends and wondered about their consequences and implications for corporate people development and talent management strategy. We also drew some consequences from them for Talent and organization Development strategy.
It was a very intense and inspiring day, which opened up reflections and thoughts about declining a strategy that is “future-driven” rather than built on past experience.
Three factors influence our ability to think about futures:
– the weight of the past, i.e., history, experiences, traditions, “anchors”
– the drives of the present, more or less contingent, tactical, sustained by reiterated and reinforced messages
– the ambitions concerning possible and desirable futures
Our minds are much more trained to think from the past and consider the thrusts of the present. Training for possible futures is a less usual exercise, and as is often the case when approaching a different discipline, we discover new avenues, and thoughts not yet explored, and through insights, we also grow and improve as professionals.
As HRI, we have integrated the strategic foresight approach into strategy workshops, particularly in HR, and we never cease to be surprised to see how this generates rich ideas and robust strategies, as well as interesting insights for the people who share these paths and experiences with us.
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