Want to help HRForecast team members from Ukraine? Follow this link
HRForcast
×
  • Why HRForecast Customers stories Learn more about our customer success stories HRForecast advantages Find out what makes us unique Trust & security See how we ensure security and data integrity bg

    Find out how Siemens has benefited from our services

    Know more

    bg50%

    of the DAX 30 companies work with us​​

    Know more

  • Solutions Cases IMG Use cases Answer to your HR questions. icon Know the future People Analytics Services We use labor market data to tune your business and HR​. icon Plan the future Strategic Workforce Planning Design your future workforce & create accurate headcount​. icon Build the future Talent Marketplace Platform Discover and develop the skills of your employees.
  • Resources
    • Blog
    • Podcast, interviews
    • Webinars
    • Downloads
    • Events
    • Quiz
    • HR Glossary
    information technology skills in demand Eight in-demand IT skills you should gain in 2023 Trends in human resource management Top 5 HR trends for 2023 and beyond Areas of professional development: Key areas of professional development for employees with examples Img Post What is digitalization? Img Post Talk with Partha Neog Img Post Business restructuring in time of COVID-19 Img Post How to transform the HR with future workforce insights Img Post Building a future-proof workforce: what you need to know Img Post Plan the future of HR: your future workforce and talent demands Future of HR report Insights and trends shaping the future of HR Cover Succession planning Succession planning: current state and future trends Upskilling, reskilling, cross-skilling Upskilling, reskilling, cross-skilling Img Post HRcoreBarcelona Img Post People Analytics World Img Post Invite us to your event!
  • Company About us Know who stands for the most innovative approach. Press They talk about us, find out what exactly. Team Because our people are our true power. Speaker's corner Discover the hottest HR tech topics that we cover as speakers Career Hop aboard, maybe this is what suits you. bg

    See why 100+ companies choose HRForecast​.

    Know more

    • English
    • Deutsch
  • Search
  • Contact us
  • Get started
Back to Blog

Traditional HR vs HR in 2030 and beyond: Who will win the fight for the future of HR?

Future of HR management
Zahara
Zahara SayedFuture work expert27. October 202210 min read

Table of contents

  1. What has changed over the last ten years? 
    1. Changes in the business environment 
    2. Service improvement 
    3. Workforce diversity 
    4. Technological development 
  2. What is the future of HR?
  3. Future HR solutions  
    1. Develop a deeper understanding of what drives the business strategy
    2. Creating a healthy corporate culture must take center stage 
    3. Be an enabler and change agent to facilitate digital transformation  
    4. Proficiency in data analytics and its use in decision–making 
  4. Ready or not, the future is coming, and it will have a direct impact on your workforce 

In early civilizations, methods existed to test intelligence, courage, and skill when selecting a leader. Hunting practices were passed on from generation to generation. From 2000 BC to 1500 BC, the Chinese used employee screening techniques, while the Greeks used an apprentice system. These actions recognized the need to select and train individuals for jobs.

Early HR specialists in the 1920s were called personnel managers. Traditional HR tasks included:

  • Placing paper ads for job vacancies
  • Answering benefits and payroll-related queries
  • Terminating employees

What has changed over the last ten years?

The business world is becoming increasingly demanding, with increasing competition and globalization, and a push for continuous productivity improvements to gain market share. Digital transformation has forced organizations to rethink how to maintain their competitive advantage in the continuously changing market environment by using their people as effectively as possible.

Furthermore, other forces are pushing organizations to reconsider their HR function to meet strategic business demands and ensure future business success.

Changes in the business environment

The most fundamental change in the business world over the past ten years has been in the realm of employee management. The pandemic has changed the world of work forever. Millions of people and businesses worldwide moved overnight from working in the office to working from home and from interactions that occurred mostly in person to interactions that mainly occurred online. With remote work picking up pace, organizations had to break out of predictable ways of working and reconfigure existing routines.

Additionally, more organizations are running global businesses today, leading to HR managers managing employees across various business functions, product lines, cultural backgrounds, etc. All these changes demand a flexible and effective HR management style.

Service improvement

The traditional HR function is only concerned with essential tasks such as selecting the right people for the organization, managing the employee database, and assessing employees. However, increasing employee demands will force HR departments of the future to perform more valuable tasks. Value-creating activities such as standardizing work processes and coordinating tasks must be done by future HR professionals in order to meet workplace demands.

Workforce diversity

As a business develops and expands, it leads to a diverse and multicultural work environment. The future workforce requires HR professionals to create and manage a harmonious culture and cultivate widely accepted workplace values.

Take a look at what Stephen O’Donnell, Chief Growth Officer at TAtech, says in an interview with HRForecast about critical upcoming challenges in recruiting.

Technological development

Another important force driving the transformation of the HR function is technological advancement. Technology enables organizations to improve their business competence in various ways. Rapid technology changes require future HR professionals to acquire new skills through education or by sourcing HR professionals with specific IT capabilities.

What is the future of HR?

Modern HR puts more focus on long-term organizational development than traditional HR. Let’s take a step back in time and break down the origins of traditional HR and how it has evolved into HR of the future.

Responsibilities of traditional HR:

  • Focus on issues such as personnel management and labor relations
  • Manual data entry and processes, making HR tasks time-consuming and error-prone
  • Focus on current employees and workforce only
  • Step in when employees have discipline problems or stir up trouble

Responsibilities of HR of the future:

  • Focus on employee recruitment, training and development, disciplinary processes, and finding ways to align employees’ and the company’s goals
  • Use tools and technologies to help future HR professionals reduce their workload and improve efficiency
  • Plan what skills will be needed in the future
  • Let employees know from the start what behavior is unacceptable

These lists of responsibilities show the differences in approach between traditional HR and HR of the future. There are more duties and responsibilities placed on HR leaders today. These include:

  • Develop a strong corporate culture, code of corporate ethics, and employee-related policies
  • Act as an internal change agent and consultant
  • Be responsive to New Work changes and act as a facilitator to incorporate them
  • Maintain effective communication between the organization’s employees and external parties or stakeholders
  • Identify and evolve human resource development strategies in accordance with the overall business strategy
  • Facilitate the development of different teams within the organization and connect them in a healthy working relationship
  • Diagnose problems such as those connected to absenteeism, high employee turnover, etc., and give meaningful solutions to the problems and challenges experienced by employees
  • Provide coordination and support services for the delivery of employee learning and development programs
  • Conduct a performance review to identify, develop, or test changes in employee performance

Future CHRO job profile

Read and download the template that helps to focus and modify the nuances and complexities of the Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) job role to prepare them for the future of work.

Download the template
A man working by the laptop

Future HR solutions

Transitioning from a traditional state to a more future-oriented one is a complex process for organizations, especially when they’re not fully prepared for the change. However, the transition to future HR solutions should happen alongside developing of new skills, leading to continuously changing managerial requirements. So what are some future HR solutions?

Develop a deeper understanding of what drives the business strategy

In an agile and fast-changing world, a grasp of business nuances will be even more critical, as the margin for error is small and decision-making delays will be costly. As a result, future HR leaders must constantly work to strengthen the workforce and its productivity and amplify the organization’s competitive advantage, agility, and flexibility.

Creating a healthy corporate culture must take center stage

The future will become complex with a diverse, multi-faceted workforce. As a result, having an inclusive culture will become a business priority. HR leaders must create and facilitate a culture that enables employees to meet their purpose and feel included. Moreover, elements of culture that differentiate a business, such as a focus on continuous learning, will be expected from HR of the future.

Be an enabler and change agent to facilitate digital transformation

In the next decade, businesses will need to quickly change and ramp up new capabilities. Leading change and transformation will be a big task, and future HR leaders need to develop mechanisms to enable faster and smoother transformations. The future HR leader needs to have a true sense of what’s happening in the external environment to proactively plan for change within the organization.

Proficiency in data analytics and its use in decision-making

A deeper appreciation of modern technology, its impact on work, and ways of leveraging technology to improve HR-related decision-making will be critical for a successful CHRO (Chief Human Resources Officer). Future HR leaders need to develop an understanding of data analytics and, at the same time, address the issues of bias and exclusion. Technology and data are integral to decision-making at all levels — and key to the organization’s competitive advantage.

Ready or not, the future is coming, and it will have a direct impact on your workforce

The central aim of modern human resource management is to enhance employees’ development, involvement, and contribution throughout the organization. However, future HR professionals can mitigate the potentially unsettling impact of future trends by anticipating potential changes, studying the labor market, and preparing for and communicating changes and benefits to stakeholders.

Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with all future HR-related topics, be it current technology trends, organizations and employees’ attitudes towards technology, and more.

Stay up to date with our newsletter

Every month, we’ll send you a curated newsletter with our updates and the latest industry news.

Subscribe now

More stories we think you will like

Human resource transformation

HR and business transformation

Learn about HR transformation — the top priority for HR leaders as they seek to build resilient and future-proof workforce systems.
7. December 2022/by Zahara Sayed
Attrition vs turnover: reviewing the most crucial HR metrics

Employee attrition vs turnover: what’s the difference?

Both turnover and attrition occur when an employee leaves the company. But what’s the difference between them?
29. August 2022/by Oksana Lavri
pros and cons of internal vs external hiring

External vs internal hiring: pros and cons of every method

Internal and external hiring have their unique pros and cons. Let’s study them in detail in our new post.
14. September 2022/by Iryna Chorna
Subscribe

HRForecast newsletter

Get only relevant and insightful letters from us every month

Subscribe
HRForecast

Reach out

icon info@hrforecast.de

Not a customer yet?
Contact us

icon +49 89 215384810 icon +1 929 2495168 icon Contact sales icon Contact us

Career at HRForecast

icon recruiting@hrforecast.de

Why HRForecast

  • Customer stories
  • Trust and security
  • Data analytics approach

Solutions

  • Use cases
  • Market intelligence
  • smartPlan
  • smartPeople

Resources

  • Blog
  • Vlog
  • Webinars
  • Downloads
  • Events
  • Quiz
  • HR Glossary

Company

  • About us
  • Team
  • Press
  • Career
Icon Icon Icon Icon Icon

2022 © Copyright - HRForecast | Imprint | Privacy policy | Terms and conditions (MSA)

A guide to personal development plans for employees Career pathing strategies: How to create a career path
Scroll to top
Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}