The future of work

  What skills are essentially human? It’s a question that many HR professionals never thought they’d need to answer. But with the advent of AI, robotics, sensors, and cognitive computing, that’s what every HR professional should be asking—because the future of work is here.

According to the 2017 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends, 41 percent of companies reported they have fully implemented or have made significant progress in adopting cognitive and AI technologies within their workforce. Another 34 percent of survey respondents are in the midst of pilot programs. Companies are no longer considering their workforce to be only the employees on their balance sheet, but include freelancers, “gig economy” workers, and crowds—all of which are being augmented with machines and software.

  To wrap their minds around this new reality, HR professionals need to expand their vision of the workforce. They need to think about jobs in the context of tasks that can be automated (or outsourced) and the role of human skills. At the same time, they must focus even more heavily on the employee experience and employment value proposition as these unsettling trends take hold. The adoption of robotics is happening quickly yet companies’ abilities to reskill and reorganize around automation are still behind. Roughly half of the leaders surveyed rate their company weak at aligning competency frameworks to AI requirements, deploying employees replaced by these technologies, and reskilling employees to complement these new tools.

  A first step in meeting this trend head on is clearly defining the difference between human skills, such as creative and ethical thinking, and tasks that can be managed by machines. HR professionals should ask themselves, what part of a job is the human “value add”? For example, bank tellers now advise and sell, rather than simply transact, giving greater customer value to clients.

  Developing a journey map can help outline and document the actual work taking place and the tools, people, and information involved in a job. With this analysis, design thinking can then be used to assess what tasks can be outsourced and where human empathy can be enhanced and further leveraged.

  The challenges this trend present requires major cross-functional attention, effort, and collaboration. The following steps can not only help you get started but will be critical to your success:

• Consider how the core work actually gets done: rethink not only what work needs to be done, but how the range of talent and technologies can combine to best com­plete that work.
• Identify all human workforce segments: This includes those both inside and outside the company, different models of contractors, the crowd, and competitions.
• Examine all types of nonhuman work­forces: Leverage the power of machines to accomplish an increased number of tasks. Partnering with the business, HR can help lead the redesign of work arising from rapid changes in robotics and AI.
• Redesign workforce planning: Separate multiyear strategic workforce planning—which looks to develop specific future scenarios based on new technologies and talent segments—from annual operational workforce planning.
• Collaborate across functions: Ensure that the new scope of the aug­mented workforce aligns with business strategy and involves full participation of business, HR, and other corporate functions.
• Invest in critical human skills: When planning the future of your workforce, consider essential human skills such as problem solving, creativity, project management, listening, and moral and ethical decision making. 
• Plan and manage the workforce transfor­mation: Develop an “augmented workforce” roadmap that includes actionable views of talent, training, communication, leadership, cul­ture, and organizational impacts.

  The future of work will likely come to dominate the concerns and agendas of HR and business leaders in the near future and will require major cross-functional attention, effort and collaboration.