When HR works from a true human-centred perspective, we can really deliver a life-changing level of impact. Whether it’s hiring a new employee who has been out of work help regain self-confidence and provide for their family or coaching someone to be better than they ever thought they could be, our ability to impact positively on the lives of others is immense. I see so much of our HR impact through the lens of enhancing human experience in the workplace.
Places of work shouldn’t be soulless, where people lack meaning and purpose. Humans aren’t resources, they’re not just a number and it’s not just a transactional exchange of labour for a wage. It needs to be so much more than that. When people feel emotionally connected and engaged in their work, they perform better. It’s hard-wired into us as human beings. When people perform better profits flow.
We spend more of our lives at work than on anything else, so this approach delivers for both organizations and the individuals who work within them. It’s a win-win.
With a different mindset for HR, I’m confident we can make 2019 the year where we humanize our workplaces to drive organizations to success and improve lives.
Digitization activates a process of disruptive innovation that, on the one hand, opens up new social and business opportunities, on the other, it seems to undermine traditional work patterns.
There are unprecedented organizational possibilities with positive impacts for organizations but also a renewed motivation and engagement of workers, as for example, better opportunities to reconcile work and private life and a better personalization of the working relationship as well as greater freedom and autonomy design.
The challenge (and opportunity) for the HR function is to stimulate and guide positive change at an individual, organizational, but also social level, developing and supporting new skills and the new digital culture, promoting new methodologies and work logics, acquiring a new role of activator of innovation and support for managers and workers in this transformation.