We encourage your participation in blog comment threads. In order to keep the experience a positive one for all of our users, we ask that you follow our
Envisioning the employer-employee relationship in 2020
Thursday, 04 March 2010
Category:
The Future of HR
On the 24th of February Jane Sullivan and I ran a workshop at the HRN Europe conference - Performance and Management: The Future of HR. Drawing upon The Work Foundation's Future of HR research, we explored with senior HR practitioners from over 30 companies some of our early thoughts on the future of the employment relationship. It was an opportunity for us to test-run our interpretation of the data with a critical, business-savvy, European/ global audience.
We presented some of the drivers that our research has identified as important to the employment relationship in 2020. Using these, we painted three synthetic scenarios to prompt a thoughtful discussion of what organisations need to invest in to be able to maintain an engaged workforce ten years hence.
The participants rose to the challenge of working through the scenarios to identify the strengths, gaps and possible responsibilities for people managers of the future. They identified that for those in employment, the key to successful people management in 2020 included alignment of the personal and the organisational so that there is meaning in work, the need to offer a much wider menu for employee choice and flexibility, the assumption of work-life balance as a norm and most importantly trust.
Unfortunately we can't give too much more away with some fine tuning still to be done, we want to keep the thunder for June 2010 - the publication of our next report - but winning the hearts and minds of employees in 2020 will pose challenges to all people managers.
Whilst in Vienna, Jane and I also had the privilege of participating in other sessions. At a roundtable involving SuccessFactors, ING Insurance, Nokia, Microsoft and Unilever, there was emphasis on performance culture - essentially it was about that elusive quality of exceptional leadership. Stephen Dando of Thomson Reuters provided a keyhole look at talent development - he also picked up many of the issues raised in our session, especially the generational one of managing a workforce from 17 to 70. The executive roundtable on the war for talent with A.P. Moller-Maersk, Ericcson, Borealis and UBS was insightful as it underscored a key driver in our research - that the elite knowledge worker will have even greater clout to call the shots in 2020.
The conference, fronted by Marc and Peter of HRN Europe, provided a warm and professional atmosphere and an insightful forum for our thinking. We hope that this will be the first of many collaborations with HRN Europe.
Wilson Wong