The technological revolution has brought with it both hope and fear, excitement and trepidation. The jury is still out on whether the advances that technology enables will be overwhelmingly positive or negative. The reality is that it we humans need to take responsibility for making well informed, intelligent decisions about how we use and apply technology in our lives to ensure that the results are positive. Nowhere is that more relevant than in the workplace. Over the next few weeks, we will be doing a deep dive into HR automation to unpack the latest research, best practice and trends. This blog series will highlight what every leader and HR professional needs to be aware of in order to make those fully informed decisions about HR automation so as to ensure that the effects those decisions have on employees and the workforce generally, create positive results for all parties. Not to mention for the future of HR and the future of work.

We're all conscious of the fact that working in a shifting market landscape with constant disruption, all the while leveraging automation to optimise production, is an ongoing challenge. According to Deloitte's research about the age of 'Industry 4.0,' many leaders view the transition required by digital transformation as complex and challenging. However necessary digital industrial transformation may be on an organisation’s path to becoming fully connected, the journey if often hindered by speed bumps. Deloitte’s Industry 4.0 Readiness Report found that only 14 percent of the 1,600 C-level executives surveyed are confident that their organisations are ready to fully harness the changes associated with Industry 4.0. As organisations are called on to transform along with the market and society itself, what types of business models will serve the organisations of the future? In this week's HR Blog we explore the future of work through the lens of Industry 4.0 and the emergence of the 'Teal' organisation model as a possible framework for navigating business transformation with success.

The Employee Lifecycle (ELC) is your roadmap to building an engaged employee experience. Cloud HR software is how you digitally transform your employee lifecycle to reduce friction and deliver powerful results to potential, current (and maybe even past) employees that is simple, automated and engaging. In this week's HR Blog we explore how to make your employee lifecycle sing...

As the world of work changes, so too must the approach of those who design, build and maintain our physical and/or virtual offices. Accordingly, how those who are in charge of managing the teams who occupy these physical and virtual spaces is also in a state of flux. With four generations in the workplace for the first time in history, we also need systems, processes and offices that support and adapt to the needs and talents of the entire cohort, fostering constructive interaction and collaboration across generations. We've shared a few posts recently about the future of work, including digital workspaces, human capital trends and driving culture change. Continuing on with this 'future of work' theme (because a good offence is the best defence), this week's HR Blog turns an eye to the practical solutions for managing the future of work, workplace and the performance of your workforce.

According to research reported by MIT's Sloan Review, the term 'ecosystem' occurs 13 times more frequently now than it did a decade ago. Now, we all know that buzzwords and jargon tend to get overused and aren't always included in the appropriate context. In the modern business lexicon, the word 'ecosystem' has been used to refer to support functions, product portfolios, service bundles (the list goes on). Behind these linguistic applications however, there is a bona-fide new phenomenon evolving in the marketplace. That is the rise of dynamic, multi-company (eco)systems that provide the foundation for new ways of doing business. These digital ecosystems are comprised of companies, people, data and processes that are connected by the shared use of and intersection between digital platforms. In building these ecosystems, businesses foster collaboration and provide mutually beneficial relationships between all parties involved. If it is true that mastering digital ecosystems are one of management's next frontiers, how can HR professionals take the lead on managing these ecosystems as part of the digital transformation of HR?

Every year, Deloitte conducts an extensive study on the emerging and prevailing trends in human capital and the future of work. Each year, the post we write on our HR blog about that report is always one of the most popular. In 2019, the Human Capital Trends Report highlights an intensifying combination of economic, social, and political issues impacting HR and business leaders. These factors continue to put pressure on businesses to operate in a more socially oriented manner (a continuation of 2018's trend, which we covered in a previous HR blog post), and to reinvent their organisations around a more human focus. Let's take a look at the highlights of this year's report and how to prepare for the future of work.

Our capacity to analyse HR data is, like most other aspects of the workplace, undergoing continuous transformation and maturation. That change can be illustrated in the trajectory from 'descriptive' to 'predictive' analytics, and word on the street is that this process will eventually become 'continuous' analytics. Predictive HR analytics is tending towards the mainstream, with more organisations using statistics or data mining techniques to create insights that will support their decision making. The Deloitte Human Capital Trends Report 2018 showed that 70% of their respondents are in the midst of major projects to analyse and integrate people data into their decision making. So for more businesses it is becoming true that they are breaking the wall between descriptive and predictive analytics. 

According to HRD's annual research, CEOs across the Asia-Pacific are empowering their HR teams with increasing budgets to purchase HR tech platforms and systems. 74% of HR professionals surveyed said they were planning to increase their spend on HR tech over the next 12 months. With more virtual working arrangements and tech savvy employees than ever before, HR departments are working to keep up with the pace of change, looking to tools like technology to help manage that change. However, HR technology can bring with it a set of issues that HR professionals are (and will continue to) grapple with, including AI, machine learning, implementation and how to manage future workforces. This HR Blog will examine the HR tech issues you need to consider in your business and how to mitigate them going forward.