I recently listened to Dr. John Sullivan’s webinar on The Future of HR this week. The gist of the discussion was around what I think we all know to be true – HR in the future will look dramatically different and we must start planning for the changes now. Since Dr. Sullivan is both a futurist and an expert on all things HR, I wanted to see if his perceptions matched the ones I keep reading about in all of the HR as well as CEO trade publications. And of course, they did. Here are some of the takeaways from his webinar:

1. HR must be adaptive because the workforce of the future will become and must become more flexible – it will require a large percentage of well-managed contingent labor (I have to say I was happy to hear this, however, there are many implications around the “well-managed” part). All companies will be in a perpetual crisis mode
2. Two things that executives want from HR – own the company’s goals and own the bonus criteria
3. Executives were asked to rank the most important strategic areas for HR: They are recruiting and retention
4. In a study of what areas use analytics the most, HR ranks last so HR must learn to implement and use more analytics and become more data driven
5. HR must shift to a proactive, internal consulting firm model, and away from a compliance/transactional model
6. There will be a permanent skill shortage
7. Most work will be done in a project format and people will move from project to project
8. Managers will do most of the HR work
9. You can view slides from Dr. Sullivan’s here!

You can view slides from Dr. Sullivan’s here!

By: Valerie Freeman, Imprimis Group CEO