Future of talent – Become our own talent broker

Future world: How will the world look like in 2030 – or beyond?

Imagine a world where…:

• you see self driving cars
• vehicles reach zero CO2 emissions
• power supply comes from renewable sources
• a new generation of workers are freelancers
• robots are your colleagues or take on your work
• smart devices & virtual reality are daily companions
• algorithms & artificial intelligence are not from “outer space” but a lived reality
• we live in virtual & agile organisations
• …

…can you imagine?

Already today we see things evolving. The full extent of it might at times still seem like something from the movie “back to the future” 😉 – but we can see the future lurking around the corner. It’s (starting) today.

In a nutshell: times are ever changing.

There are a variety of drivers coming together consequently requiring to redesign organisations and to create change in the talent landscape:

• Pace of change (e.g. digital technology changing workplace and disrupting business models)
• Globalisation & mobility (e.g. global labor competition and global workforce)
• Demographic trends & diversity (e.g. increasing longevity, declining birthrates, workforce both younger and older, different working models such as contract and part-time workers)
• Transformational changes (e.g. move to knowledge based & service economies, evolving from ‚transaction to interaction‘)

Correspondingly, we will see shifts happening in the people dimension of things, such as:

• labor market (e.g. global and mobile, digital labor platforms)
• ways of working (changing requirements due to flat, agile organizations)

• career paths (new career models due to flatter organizations and new ways of working)

• working conditions (e.g. flexible working models, temp contracts)
• career expectations (e.g. Gen Y with a different understanding of life, its purpose and individual development)

Over the last years already we are seeing an increasingly “VUCA”-world appear. It even might be “BANI”. How ever we call it: it entails fundamental changes for organisations & it’s people.

This faster changing working world puts new requirements on organizations and its people regarding flexibility and life long learning, as well as its ways of working.

• This world requires organisations to change their set up, ways of working as well as their company culture. Companies will (need to) move towards new, more agile ways of working and co-creation, fostering a learning mindset and a new (generation of) leadership based on empowerment and trust. In the future of work, the organization will be a #platform that organizes work and talent.

• Companies used to invest heavily in employees with the intention of keeping them for longer and seeing them grow. Today, employers must provide development more quickly, move people more regularly, and give them tools to manage their career and development path.

• As we will experience a lifetime employment with one single employer being an experience from former times as well as the classical “functional” chimney career, the “portfolio career” becomes the magic word. We very likely are to take on different roles in different constellations over the course of our working life.

Consequences for the talents: become you own “talent broker”

As the nature of careers, its paths and peoples expectations are changing the responsibility for (career) development is shifting towards self responsibility. As talents we will need to take ownership building towards this (unknown) future.

• The well established mantra is: “Design (and drive) your own development“.
• Or, in a nutshell: Become your own “talent manager“. Co-create your development.
• Continuously. A life long. Self-steered.

This new type of career requires an open-mind, flexibility and an “always on” learning mindset.

Consequences for HR & talent management: enable & enhance

HR and leaders are to encourage to take ownership as talents need to become “prosumers” of their own development. Self-responsibility and self-organisation will stand at the forefront of things.

HR will become a platform for increasingly customized and decentralized people solutions based on “self service offerings“.

As a result, talent management will shift from managing talent to enabling and enhancing development of people and culture.

The future is yet to come. AND it’s already here. Let’s better get prepared.

Please check out other publications on this subject.

 #talent #hr #skills #learning #LifeLongLearning #AlwaysOn

If u like: follow my blog, sign up to the right. Or share with friends. Also, any comments appreciated.