International HR Trends. Mobile Recruiting. Big Data. The Future of Work
5.1. Trends in social media at the international level
We must not expect things to change if we always
do the same thing.
International panorama of social networks
According to We are Social’s “Digital in 2016” report, the following statistics give an international point of view of the penetration of leading social networks and social media trends:
Social media trends in Argentina
Penetration of leading social networks in Argentina (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 42%
WhatsApp: 37%
Facebook Messenger: 29%
Google+: 20%
Twitter: 18%
Skype: 13%
Instagram: 13%
Taringa: 11%
LinkedIn: 10%
Pinterest: 8%
Social media trends in Australia
Penetration of leading social networks in Australia (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 41%
Facebook Messenger: 26%
Skype: 13%
Google+: 11%
LinkedIn: 11%
Twitter: 10%
WhatsApp: 10%
Instagram: 10%
Pinterest: 9%
Tumblr: 6%
Social media trends in Brazil
Penetration of leading social networks in Brazil (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 31%
WhatsApp: 29%
Facebook Messenger: 24%
Google+: 17%
Instagram: 15%
Skype: 15%
Twitter: 14%
LinkedIn: 12%
Snapchat: 9%
Pinterest: 8%
Social media trends in Canada
Penetration of leading social networks in Canada (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 47%
Facebook Messenger: 28%
Twitter: 16%
Instagram: 14%
Google+: 13%
LinkedIn: 12%
Skype: 12%
Pinterest: 12%
WhatsApp: 10%
Snapchat: 10%
Social media trends in China
Penetration of leading social networks in China (2016) % Share of population:
Wechat: 24%
QZone: 21%
Sina Weibo: 16%
Tencent Weibo: 12%
Renren: 6%
Facebook: 5%
Kaixin001: 5%
Facebook Messenger: 4%
51.com: 3%
Social media trends in France
Penetration of leading social networks in France (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 43%
Facebook Messenger: 22%
Google+: 11%
Twitter: 11%
Snapchat: 9%
Skype: 8%
WhatsApp: 7%
Instagram: 7%
LinkedIn: 6%
Pinterest: 5%
Social media trends in Germany
Penetration of leading social networks in Germany (2016) % Share of population:
WhatsApp: 39%
Facebook: 38%
Facebook Messenger: 20%
Skype: 10%
Google+: 9%
Instagram: 7%
Twitter: 7%
Pinterest: 4%
Snapchat: 4%
LinkedIn: 3%
Social media trends in Hong Kong
Penetration of leading social networks in Hong Kong (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 50%
WhatsApp: 47%
Facebook Messenger: 30%
WeChat: 24%
Instagram: 17%
Line: 17%
Google+: 15%
Skype: 10%
Sina Weibo: 9%
LinkedIn: 8%
Social media trends in India
Penetration of leading social networks in India (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 13%
WhatsApp: 12%
Facebook Messenger: 11%
Google+: 10%
Skype: 10%
Twitter: 8%
Hike Messenger: 8%
LinkedIn: 7%
Instragram: 7%
WeChat: 6%
Social media trends in Indonesia
Penetration of leading social networks in Indonesia (2016) % Share of population:
BBM: 19%
Facebook: 15%
WhatsApp: 14%
Facebook Messenger: 13%
Google+: 12%
Line: 12%
Twitter: 11%
Instagram: 10%
WeChat: 8%
Pinterest: 7%
Social media trends in Italy
Penetration of leading social networks in Italy (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 33%
WhatsApp: 30%
Facebook Messenger: 23%
Google+: 14%
Twitter: 12%
Instagram: 12%
Skype: 12%
LinkedIn: 9%
Pinterest: 6%
Viber: 6%
Social media trends in Japan
Penetration of leading social networks in Japan (2016) % Share of population:
Line: 25%
Facebook: 17%
Twitter: 15%
Mixi: 5%
Facebook Messenger: 3%
Ameblo: 3%
Instagram: 2%
Google+: 2%
Mobage: 2%
Gree: 1%
Social media trends in Malaysia
Penetration of leading social networks in Malaysia (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 41%
WhatsApp: 39%
Facebook Messenger: 33%
Google+: 23%
WeChat: 23%
Instagram: 22%
Line: 17%
Twitter: 16%
Skype: 13%
LinkedIn: 11%
Social media trends in Mexico
Penetration of leading social networks in Mexico (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 25%
WhatsApp: 23%
Facebook Messenger: 21%
Twitter: 16%
Google+: 15%
Skype: 13%
Instagram: 12%
Pinterest: 10%
LinkedIn: 9%
Tumblr: 9%
Social media trends in Poland
Penetration of leading social networks in Poland (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 36%
Facebook Messenger: 19%
Google+: 14%
Skype: 10%
Twitter: 7%
Instagram: 6%
WhatsApp: 6%
NK.PL: 6%
LinkedIn: 5%
Gadu-Gadu: 5%
Social media trends in Russia
Penetration of leading social networks in Russia (2016) % Share of population:
VK: 39%
Odnoklassniki: 32%
Facebook: 24%
Skype: 19%
Google+: 17%
Viber: 15%
WhatsApp: 15%
Instagram: 12%
Twitter: 11%
Facebook Messenger: 6%
Social media trends in Saudi Arabia
Penetration of leading social networks in Saudi Arabia (2016) % Share of population:
WhatsApp: 27%
Facebook: 25%
Facebook Messenger: 20%
Twitter: 20%
Instagram: 17%
Google+: 15%
Skype: 14%
Snapchat: 13%
Line: 12%
LinkedIn: 11%
Social media trends in Singapore
Penetration of leading social networks in Singapore (2016) % Share of population:
WhatsApp: 46%
Facebook: 43%
Facebook Messenger: 26%
Instagram: 18%
Google+: 14%
Line: 14%
LinkedIn: 14%
Skype: 13%
Twitter: 13%
WeChat: 12%
Social media trends in South Africa
Penetration of leading social networks in South Africa (2016) % Share of population:
WhatsApp: 33%
Facebook: 30%
Facebook Messenger: 20%
Google+: 15%
LinkedIn: 13%
Twitter: 12%
Pinterest: 11%
Instagram: 10%
BBM: 9%
Skype: 9%
Social media trends in South Korea
Penetration of leading social networks in South Korea (2016) % Share of population:
KakaoTalk: 41%
Facebook: 27%
KakaoStory: 17%
Facebook Messenger: 12%
Twitter: 10%
Line: 7%
Instagram: 7%
Google+: 6%
Twitch: 4%
Tumblr: 3%
Social media trends in Spain
Penetration of leading social networks in Spain (2016) % Share of population:
WhatsApp: 45%
Facebook: 44%
Facebook Messenger: 24%
Twitter: 24%
Google+: 21%
Instagram: 15%
LinkedIn: 14%
Skype: 13%
Pinterest: 9%
Line: 8%
Social media trends in Taiwan
Penetration of leading social networks in Taiwan (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 41%
LINE: 33%
Facebook Messenger: 25%
Google+: 17%
Skype: 16%
WeChat: 10%
Twitter: 9%
WhatsApp: 6%
Instagram: 6%
Plurk: 5%
Social media trends in The Philippines
Penetration of leading social networks in The Philippines (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 26%
Facebook Messenger: 23%
Google+: 17%
Skype: 16%
Viber: 14%
Twitter: 13%
Instagram: 12%
LinkedIn: 11%
Pinterest: 9%
WeChat: 9%
Social media trends in Thailand
Penetration of leading social networks in Thailand (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 32%
Line: 29%
Facebook Messenger: 28%
Google+: 22%
Instagram: 19%
Twitter: 14%
Pinterest: 11%
WhatsApp: 11%
Skype: 10%
LinkedIn: 10%
Social media trends in Turkey
Penetration of leading social networks in Turkey (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 32%
WhatsApp: 24%
Facebook Messenger: 20%
Twitter: 17%
Instagram: 16%
Google+: 15%
Skype: 13%
LinkedIn: 9%
Viber: 8%
Vine: 7%
Social media trends in the United Arab Emirates
Penetration of leading social networks in the United Arab Emirates (2016) % Share of population:
WhatsApp: 47%
Facebook: 46%
Skype: 46%
Facebook Messenger: 42%
Twitter: 29%
Instagram: 27%
LinkedIn: 27%
Google+: 27%
Viber: 20%
Snapchat: 19%
Social media trends in the UK
Penetration of leading social networks in the UK (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 47%
Facebook Messenger: 32%
WhatsApp: 24%
Twitter: 20%
Instagram: 14%
Skype: 13%
Snapchat: 12%
Google+: 10%
LinkedIn: 10%
Pinterest: 8%
Social media trends in the United States
Penetration of leading social networks in the United States (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 41%
Facebook Messenger: 26%
Twitter: 17%
Pinterest: 15%
Instagram: 15%
Google+: 12%
LinkedIn: 11%
Snapchat: 11%
Skype: 9%
Tumblr: 8%
Social media trends in Vietnam
Penetration of leading social networks in Vietnam (2016) % Share of population:
Facebook: 29%
Zalo: 25%
Facebook Messenger: 25%
Google+: 20%
Skype: 15%
Viber: 11%
Line: 10%
Twitter: 9%
Instagram: 15%
WhatsApp: 6%
Online recruitment users, by industry, in the U.S. are as follows:
• Information Technology
• Finance & Banking
• Healthcare
• Manufacturing
• Engineering
• Sales
• Admin & Clerical
• Telecommunications
• Biotech & Pharma
• Staffing & Recruiting
• Source: http://www.statista.com
One billion job searches are carried out each month from a mobile device and 45% of active candidates apply for a job through their mobile device.
The number of active mobile connections surpassed the total world population.
With mobile-oriented services like WhatsApp, WeChat and Facebook Messenger achieving the top social media ranking spots in some of the world’s biggest economies, it is clear that much of our digital behaviour is now converging around mobile devices.
According to the “Social Recruitment Survey” by Jobvite:
Mobile usage is empowering job seekers to look for jobs more openly: 41% in bed, 38% during their commute, 36% in a restaurant, 30% at work and 18% in the restroom.
There’s a mobile disconnect between job seekers and recruiters:
Despite 43% of job seekers using mobile devices in their job search, 59% of recruiters currently invest nothing in mobile career sites.
For those who are leveraging the power of mobile usage, they are already seeing its impact on candidate engagement:
• Improves time-to-hire: 14%
• Improves quality of candidate: 13%
• Improves quantity of hires: 19%
• Improves quality/quantity of referrals: 10%
Some mobile recruitment statistics:
• 20% of recruiters have a mobile-optimized career site.
• 37% of Millennial job seekers expect career websites to be optimized for a mobile device.
• 5% of Fortune 500 companies allow job seekers to apply from a mobile device.
• 13% of recruiters say they have invested enough in mobile recruiting efforts.
• 62% of passive job seekers will explore a company’s career page on a mobile device.
• 40% of mobile candidates abandon a non-mobile friendly application process.
• Active job seekers look for opportunities almost equally on job sites (71%) and social networks (69%).
• In a survey LinkedIn ran, 28% of respondents were active job seekers.
• 61% of people have a better impression of a brand based on their mobile experience.
• 62% of recruiters say #mobile #recruiting is the top trend for 2014.
• 71% access social media via a mobile device.
• 50% of emails are opened on mobile devices.
• 50% of cell phone owners download apps to their mobile device.
• Users globally spend nearly 3 hours daily on their mobile devices.
• On average, Americans spend 2.7 hours per day socializing on their mobile devices. In Europe, the average is 2.4 hours. In Asia Pac, the average is 3.4 hours.
• 61% of people have a better impression of a brand based on their mobile experience.
According to the survey “The Corporate Mobile Readiness Report”:
The Corporate Mobile Readiness Report is an on-going study of the Fortune 500 regarding their preparations for the rapidly increasing shift toward the use of mobile devices by candidates to search for and apply for jobs.
This survey considers the following metrics to evaluate if a company is adapted or not to mobile recruitment:
– Mobile Optimized Corporate Site: The content on the homepage of the corporate website must be displayed in a format that is appropriately sized to the screen of the device.
– Careers Link: The corporate site must be optimized and there must be a careers or jobs link found on the site.
– Mobile Optimized Career Section: The content on the career section must be displayed in a format that is appropriately sized to the screen of the device, and must include functionality to search and browse job opportunities.
– Mobile Optimized Apply Process: The job seeker must be able to complete the entire application process from the mobile device.
– Optimized pages.
– Redirect: All links to career related content from search results lists or the corporate site must redirect the job seeker to mobile optimized pages of content.
– Other Career Content: The mobile optimized career site provides career related content other than the jobs, such as About Us, Benefits, etc.
– Native App: There must be a company branded SmartPhone or Tablet app found in the app store. The purpose of the app may be for business or careers.
The survey highlighted the following top eight companies with the best Corporate Mobile Readiness Index (CMRI) score:
• AT&T
• Dow Chemical
• General Motors
• Macy’s
• McDonalds
• Walmart
• Casey’s General Stores
• Tyson Foods
For example: If you look at the McDonald’s mobile app you will notice that their recruiting team managed to insert a Careers tab front and center as the app opens. Injecting a careers option in your already existing company app is a great way to save money and reach a wide audience.
According to the “Social Recruitment survey” by Jobvite:
• 55% of recruiters use or plan to use a mobile career site to support recruiting efforts.
• Recruiters are already seeing the benefits with improved time-to-hire (14%) and quality of candidates (13%).
Graylink http://www.graylink.biz announced the launch of txthire in the UK market, which enables job application and screening via SMS, social media, instant messaging, web and .mobi channels. This unique interactive tool won the Gartner 2011 Cool Vendor Award for Graylink and is just one of a leading edge suite of mobile and web recruitment solutions which the company offers.
Txthire is secure, cloud-based software for recruitment process mobilization.
• Enables candidates to apply with any mobile device – txthire supports SMS, mobile internet, social media & IM channels.
• Automatically pre-screens and scores applicants using job-specific questionnaire’s.
• Exchanges applicant data with external systems.
• Interfaces with your ERP, HRM and/or ATS or uses as a stand-alone service.
According with Michael Marlatt, a recruiting consultant for Microsoft:
“In less than 30 years, the mobile industry has become the fastest growing trillion dollar industry. But for all its power, the recruitment industry has stayed relatively quiet on the mobile recruiting front. It’s Web 1.0 all over again, but this time with mobile. Who aren’t positioning mobile as a top-tier source for candidates are missing out on a powerful resource. Any company exploring new ways for attracting and engaging diversity talent should not overlook this untapped channel.”
Mobile recruiting capability is no longer an option for employers, it is a requirement. Though mobile devices are a tool and not a source, job seekers around the globe use them 24/7 to find positions and engage with prospective companies.
Industry research shows that it is simply good business to make mobile a central part of a recruitment strategy: In the U.S. alone, 64% of adults now own a smartphone of some kind. Of those, 43% used their phones in the past year to look up a job.
“The common mistake is to see mobile recruitment as a one-time investment. Our biggest success is the fact that we made mobile recruitment part of our organic growth.”
Vildan Stidham (Abbott)
Some recommendations to optimize in the use of a corporate app for recruitment:
• Filter jobs by function and department.
• Be sure your web page is responsive: the search works on a mobile device.
• Keep your job descriptions short and to-the-point.
Some of the benefits to implementing Mobile Recruiting policies are the engagement of the potential candidates (Staying in touch with them through quick text messages, emails or phone calls) and hiring managers. It provides an innovative on-site candidate experience.
HR organizations must allocate a budget to enable recruiting systems for “small screen applications” and all types of handheld devices. Otherwise, recruiters risk losing candidates to their more tech-savvy competitors.
5.3. Big Data and the future of HR
We have entered a global economy where talent and skills shortages challenge world economic and business
growth around the world.
Klaus Schwab, Chairman, World Economic Forum
As technology continues to shape our businesses, our role evolves to that of a more proactive strategic partner, a greater critical change agent and a bigger culture champion.
Technology has the power to turn annual performance reviews into immediate feedback, while recognition programs can become online platforms. Technology will also usher in a new era for accessible training that can be taken anywhere, anytime, in any language; while virtual resumes and interviews will become the norm. Employees will use apps to find out about their work, their total rewards, their schedules and more.
A recent study by influential HR thinker David Ulrich and executive recruiting firm Korn Ferry shows the CHRO role is more important than ever before. As Ulrich said in modern business, attracting the right talent, creating the right organizational structure and building the right culture are essential for driving strategy.
Big Data analytics requires people who are knowledgeable about the business, who think creatively around insights and patterns, and who have the methodologies and tools that provide
insights to help inform decisions.
David Hom, Principal at Deloitte Consulting
Big Data is a term used to describe the new volume, variety and velocity of data. Organizations must recognize that Big Data is a tool to provide new or better insight. It is an enabler. Initially, most organizations hire “data scientists” to gather data and explore questions.
As the experts point out, Big Data initiatives are characterized by three criteria:
1. Volume (the data sets used are enormous)
2. Variety (data streaming in from a vast number of sources)
3. Velocity (the increased pace at which data is being created and then incorporated into the analytic process and the ability to put the data to use in real time as it streams in)
According to a recent study by Deloitte: By using Big Data analytics solutions, and specifically high-performance analytics, businesses and governments can analyse huge amounts of data in seconds and minutes to reveal previously unseen patterns, sentiments and customer intelligence. This speed and accuracy of insight, delivered across any device including smart phones and tablets, means organisations can make better, faster decisions.
• IBM has calculated that 90% of all the digital data has been created in the last two years.
• The New York Times has published 2.9 billion words since 1959. Twitter publishes 8 billion words per day, Facebook 10 billion.
• A major part of this shift is the explosion in new tools. Today nearly every major HR software vendor (Oracle, SAP, ADP, Ceridian, Workday as well as specialty companies like SumTotal, Cornerstone, Lumesse, Silkroad, Ultimate, and hundreds of others) are building and buying end-to-end HR suites, very similarly to the evolution of customer relationship marketing. Today Oracle (OBIA), SAP (Workforce Intelligence), Workday (Big Data Analytics), and SumTotal have all launched major integrated HR analytics systems.
• 71% of CEOs view human capital as the top factor contributing to sustainable economic value.
• 43% of CEOs indicated that investing in HR is a high priority.
• #1 Big Data Challenge: Sharing information across silos.
Big Data: The Keys to Success
1. Reliable
• Data must be “true” and validated over time
• Seasonal changes, organization changes, must be handled
2. Actionable
• Reports must be detailed enough to let managers take action
• Drill, filter, group data so it is relevant and meaningful
• Goal is a “business-driven” dashboard (red/yellow/green)
3. Scalable
• The process of collecting and analyzing data must scale
• Your outputs must be useful for people at all levels
4. Understandable
• People must be able to visualize and understand what you find
• Line managers, executives and employees must use the data
The old fashioned fuddy-duddy HR department is changing.
The Geeks have arrived. Today, for the first time in the 15 years I´ve been an analyst, human resources departments are getting serious about analytics. And I mean serious.
Josh Bersin, Principal and Founder. Bersin By Deloitte
Big Data in HR will allow us to move beyond a simple headcount and be more predictive than reactionary. We have to move from being pure HR experts to business experts who use analytics to drive our actions.
The future trend of HR professionals will be using analytics to continuously learn from historical trends and impending talent needs in order to determine where to focus and how to optimize talent programs.
A recent global survey of executives at more than 1,200 companies by Tata Consulting Services confirmed that finance and HR are among the lowest priorities for Big Data investment.
According to the LinkedIn survey “Global Recruiting Trends”:
• 24% of global recruiting leaders believe they are using data very well in their roles.
• Recruiting leaders need to strengthen their talent analytics capabilities to stay ahead.
• The best 10 countries using Big Data in HR are: India, MENA, Southeast Asia, Brazil, Mexico, United States, South Africa, Canada, China and Spain.
Here are some Big Data scenarios that blend finance and HR, and that could grow out of a technologically and globally integrated enterprise.
• Analyze global payroll costs.
• Determine the profitability of individual customers.
• Gain a complete picture of an organization’s staffing.
• Use advanced visualization techniques on geospatial data.
• Analyze the impact of wellness programs on employees.
• Less than 25% of CHROs are using analytics to make future workforce decisions.
• Only 6% of HR departments believe they are “excellent” in analytics and more than 60% feel they are poor or behind.
Other purposes for HR departments:
• Identify potential recruits
• Measure costs per hire and return on investment
• Measure employee productivity
• Measure the impact of HR programs on performance
• Identify (and predict) attrition rates and new hire failure rates
• Identify potential leaders
The key is that the profile of the business partner must change. Even in senior HRBPs the reaction to anything to do with data and process is horror. We have got to shake and break this, as it would not be tolerated anywhere else in business.
The true HR pro of the future has got to be a great project manager, business person and analyst and be able to negotiate and influence. But currently an awful lot of them do not fit the bill even at senior levels.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) recently announced that talent analytics and Big Data are now must-have capabilities in HR.
If an HR function can target human capital investment with precision and anticipate future issues, then there will be less waste due to poor decision-making and better investments in proactive HR interventions.
HR Big Data could prepare companies for transparency, helping them make sense of a complex interconnected world and giving them insights to drive the appropriate people strategy. Websites like glassdoor.com “the TripAdvisor for job search” mean outsiders, such as prospective employees and competitors, can see deep inside a company.
As a conclusion Big Data has a massive opportunity for HR so long as we follow nine golden rules:
1. Drive your data analytics from the business issue not the data.
2. Don’t be seduced by the tools and technology; focus on people’s ability to use them to address business issues.
3. Don’t overinvest in your data initiative; start small and prove the concept.
4. Join your HR data with your finance, marketing, risk and other data.
5. Don’t worry too much where your data analytics team sits but make sure they are connecting the data to the business issues and the HR solutions.
6. How you present the data is as important as the data – insightful, impactful, simple and relevant.
7. This will change HR so recruit HR people who get it: commercial, action oriented, focused, willing to challenge, agile and curious.
8. Develop data comfort in the whole HR function.
9. Data is a tool, not the answer; never lose track of the human element in HR.
Warning: before embarking on a Big Data initiative, be sure to know where your organizational culture sits on the spectrum.
In a “negative” sense, any initiative using HR data will be received as too much “Big Brother” and be seen as a weapon to control and punish, and also be viewed as a loss of privacy.
In a more “positive” sense, it will be seen as a tool to help improve the organization’s effectiveness and boost productivity – something that is part of the organizational learning journey and that will improve employee engagement.
You have to have a leader who’s committed to changing the minds of the rest of the executive suite that HR is important
and an enabler for everything else in the organization.
Harry Osle, Global HR Transformation and Advisory practice leader, The Hackett Group
Big data is essential to HR and L&D because it allows the conversations and connections, which have tended to be in the realm of the immeasurable, to be captured and leveraged.
Gartner’s three V’s of Big Data: Volume, Velocity, Variety.
The three S’s of talent analytics and Big Data in HR: Silos, Skills, Suspicion.
It’s clear that companies around the world are making a big investment in Big Data. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that 85% of Fortune 1000 executives have projects planned or underway for getting more business value out of data their companies generate and collect. And a recent Gartner report projects that Big Data will account for 28 billion U.S. dollars of IT spending globally this year and will increase to 34 billion U.S. dollars in 2013.
Big Data offers an historic opportunity: the opportunity to make the most rigorously evidence-based human capital decisions ever made.
For a talent 3.0. revolution to take place, governments and businesses will need to profoundly change their approach to education, skills and employment, and their approach to working with each other. Businesses will need to put talent development and future workforce strategy front and centre to their growth. They require a new mindset to meet their talent needs and to optimize social outcomes. As the issue becomes more urgent, governments will need to show bolder leadership in putting through the curricula and labour market regulation changes that are already decades overdue in some economies.
According to the World Economic Forum (2016):
It is therefore critical that broader and longer term changes to basic and lifelong education systems are complemented with specific, urgent and focused re-skilling efforts in each industry. This entails several major changes in how business views and manages talent, both immediately and in the longer term. In particular, the Future of Jobs Report finds that there are four areas with short-term implications and three that are critical for long-term resilience.
Immediate Focus
• Reinventing the HR function: As business leaders begin to consider proactive adaptation to the new talent landscape, they need to manage skills disruption as an urgent concern. What this requires is an HR function that is rapidly becoming more strategic and has a seat at the table—one that employs new kinds of analytical tools to spot talent trends and skills gaps, and provides insights that can help organizations align their business, innovation and talent management strategies to maximize available opportunities to capitalize on transformational trends.
• Making use of data analytics: Businesses and governments will need to build a new approach to workforce planning and talent management, where better forecasting data and planning metrics will need to be central. To support such efforts, the Forum’s Future of Jobs project provides in-depth analysis on industries, countries, occupations and skills.
• Talent diversity: As study after study demonstrates the business benefits of workforce diversity and companies expect finding talent for many key specialist roles to become much more difficult by 2020, it is time for a fundamental change in how talent diversity issues are perceived and well-known barriers tackled. In this area, too, technology and data analytics may become a useful tool for advancing workforce parity, whether by facilitating objective assessment, identifying unconscious biases in job ads and recruitment processes or even by using wearable technologies to understand workplace behaviours and encourage systemic change.
• Leveraging flexible working arrangements and online talent platforms: As physical and organizational boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred, organizations are going to have to become significantly more agile in the way they think about managing people’s work and about the workforce as a whole. Businesses will increasingly connect and collaborate remotely with freelancers and independent professionals through digital talent platforms. Modern forms of association such as digital freelancers’ unions and updated labour market regulations will increasingly begin to emerge to complement these new organizational models.
Longer Term Focus
• Rethinking education systems: Most existing education systems at all levels provide highly siloed training and continue a number of 20th century practices that are hindering progress on today’s talent and labour market issues. Two such legacy issues burdening formal education systems worldwide are the dichotomy between Humanities and Sciences and applied and pure training, on the one hand, and the prestige premium attached to tertiary-certified forms of education—rather than the actual content of learning— on the other hand. Businesses should work closely with governments, education providers and others to imagine what a true 21st century curriculum might look like.
• Incentivizing lifelong learning: The dwindling future population share of today’s youth in many ageing economies implies that simply reforming current education systems to better equip today’s students to meet future skills requirements —as worthwhile and daunting as that task is— is not going to be enough to remain competitive. Ageing countries won’t just need lifelong learning —they will need wholesale reskilling of existing workforces throughout their lifecycle. Governments and businesses have many opportunities to collaborate more to ensure that individuals have the time, motivation and means to seek retraining opportunities.
• Cross-industry and public-private collaboration: Given the complexity of the change management needed, businesses will need to realize that collaboration on talent issues, rather than competition, is no longer a nice-to-have but rather a necessary strategy. Multi-sector partnerships and collaboration, when they leverage the expertise of each partner in a complementary manner, are indispensable components of implementing scalable solutions to jobs and skills challenges. There is thus a need for bolder leadership and strategic action within companies and within and across industries, including partnerships with public institutions and the education sector.
Companies wishing to attract and select talent must adapt to new technologies and social networks.
Companies must boost the efforts they are making to attract and develop talent since the future will belong to people who are multidisciplinary, multicultural, creative and involved. Businesses will increasingly need multi-skilled personnel, capable of coping with challenges in different departments and different countries. The candidate of today might be in any corner of the world, and we must be able to reach out to him. Social networks will bring that talent to us, and they represent a living, dynamic environment, and it is we who must change to fit with it.
Looking for a job is a process with many facets: we must make use of all the tools available.
The use of the ICTs in the recruitment process is changing the ways candidates are sought, making companies adopt a more active attitude than they have for years.
The new Generation of Talent (Generation Y) will represent 85% of the workforce worldwide.
Transparency is needed as the engine of change and the construction of open, collaborative companies, organisations which grow because people make them grow. We must reinvent formal structures, and that may mean they cease to be hierarchical and become “net-archical”.
The future is being built by each and every one of us, and in a society, which is increasingly open, transparent and hyper-connected we are the ones who must take the role of the protagonist. In the wake of the revolutions we have experienced, we are now in the throes of a social revolution, since never before has technology been so important to people of every generation and culture.
HR must excel at innovation in order to deal effectively with these 21st-century talent gaps.
The challenge is also to have world-class HR expertise that can implement the best practices in recruiting, retaining, and developing global talent on a local basis.
Big Data will be a trend in HR and the demand for Big Data expertise is growing every day as companies become aware of the benefits of collecting and analyzing data. Currently the number of people specialized in Big Data trained to analyse this data isn’t growing in line with the high demand. This creates a challenge for companies looking to hire experts, and who need to adapt to the new global talent management
As automation technologies such as machine learning and robotics play an increasingly greater role in everyday life, their potential effect on the workplace has, become a major focus of public concern. But which jobs will or won’t be replaced by machines? According to McKinsey: technical feasibility and the cost of developing and deploying both the hardware and the software for automation are both a necessary precondition for automation, but not a complete predictor that an activity will be automated. McKinsey demonstrated in a recent report that technologies could automate 45% of the activities people are paid to perform and that about 60% of all occupations could see 30% or more of their constituent activities automated, again with technologies available today.
We are facing a new paradigm characterised by dynamism and uncertainty, one in which the old models of the past will not work in a future which is almost upon us, and that means that our future will depend on our attitude to change. As Darwin said, “We have to adapt.”