Snippets: Future of HR

HR will take on new wider people remit incorporating, influencing many other aspects of the business

The “Future of work: A journey to 2022” study conducted by PwC underlines that HR has been perceived by many as a passive, service-oriented function. But given the demands of tomorrow’s workplace and business environment, HR is at a crossroads and will go one of three ways: With a proactive mindset and focused on business strategy, HR will take on a new wider people remit incorporating and influencing many other aspects of the business. The function will become the driver of the corporate social responsibility agenda within the firm. The function will be seen as transactional and entirely outsourced. Forward-looking HR teams are considering different scenarios for the future but few are taking a sufficiently longer term view to deal with them. Most of the HR professionals don’t believe they’re prepared for meeting the needs of a workforce that demands more autonomy and flexibility. Only around 20 per cent report that they’re ready to embrace the role of technology and automation in replacing knowledge workers, even though most recognise this is something they should consider.

Managing stress

According to a Harvard Business Review article, titled, “Stress leads to bad decisions. Here’s how to avoid them”, stressed-out leaders resort to binary choice-making, limiting the options available to them. In tough moments, we reach for premature conclusions rather than opening ourselves to more and better options. Faced with less familiar conditions for which our tried-and-true approaches won’t work, we reflexively counter our natural anxiety by narrowing and simplifying our options. Stressed out leaders must avoid the whiplashing effect of bounding between polarities. They must learn to increase their “range of motion” across an array of leadership challenges and increased pressures — because that gives them a more effective set of options from which to choose.