In Deloitte’s new and impressive publication, they analyse twelve trends in the field of Human Capital Management, six of which they say are revolutionary and six of which are evolutionary. The twelve trends are:

RevolutionEvolution

• Workforce analytics
• HR in the cloud
• From ladder to lattice
• Emerging markets
• Diversity and inclusion
• Next generation leaders

• Talent in the upturn
• COOs for HR
• Leading in a regulated world
• Collective leadership
• Contingent workforce
• Employer health care reform

I am choosing to highlight the first three of the revolutionary trends, as I found them to be particularly relevant to the provision of employee-focused career development services using Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technology.

1. Workforce Analytics: Opportunities abound to build predictive capability in workforce planning, recruitment, retention, leadership and development. Companies will often already have a lot of data available to them. Now, due to falling technology costs and an increasing awareness of the power of data, companies can move from reactive to proactive personnel planning. Companies should start with real business problems and focus on building their analytics capabilities from the outset.

2. HR in the cloud (SaaS) – it’s inevitable!: SaaS technology is evolutionary but its business implications are revolutionary. SaaS has already demonstrated value in scalability and flexibility. SaaS can offer a middle ground between in-house tech people for HR and full-scale outsourcing. For clients, SaaS vendors will have to demonstrate that they can meet their security, QoS and integration needs.

3. From Ladder to lattice: The workforce and the workplace are changing, for example,  organisations are becoming flatter, much work is project-based where the ability to collaborate is highly valued, there is increased diversity in the workforce, staff definitions of success in their careers vary wildly and many people are using virtual workplaces. In today’s world, the one-size-fits-all definition of career success no longer holds true.

Deloitte promotes the concept of Mass Career Customization (MCC) where careers are personalized and in-tune with each individual’s life.  Deloitte presented what they identified as the top talent concerns of their clients in the following bar chart:

4. Other

The future importance of analytics is a recurring theme in the document. Deloitte’s clients say that there is a worldwide business leadership shortage. Analytics may be used to fill the talent gaps internally in organisations. Deloitte asserts that the traditional command-and-control model of leadership is waning and getting organisations to work as one requires new ways of thinking, for example, employee engagement and commitment have to be harnessed. Collective leadership in organisations is required. Deloitte also calls for a more prominent role for HR in business. They say that HR professionals are well suited to the development of business-focused, HR metrics the development of reliable data for analytics and to take responsibility for HR compliance issues and risk management. Step forward HR!

The full publication can be viewed on Deloittes website at: #mce_temp_url# or downloaded as an app.

- Gerard

Twitter: @Gerard_cpd