Changes & Further Changes of HR in the Digital Economy

Choose a job role (or career path) with which you are familiar. In what ways has this role 1) already changed in the digital economy, and 2) be likely to change further in the future? 800 words

In the digital economy age, the operating methods and roles of human resources organizations is changing. Today, talent management ever more important in improving in terms of corporate competitiveness, digital human resources organizations will occupy a more advantageous position and play an indispensable role.

To begin with, let me share with you the intuitive part.

During my undergraduate period, I did a half-year human resources assistant internship at the head office of the Bank of Shanghai. During this period, I came into contact with many human resources works in recruitment and personnel file management. I found that although Bank of Shanghai is one of the most popular local banks in Shanghai, many working models are outdated. Talking about the human resources department, there are too many proceeds can be improved. In other words, even an intern felt that many steps were inefficient…Yes, I’m complaining. For example, the HR system is very outdated, and the information need to be updated manually. This job is boring, and mistakes are unavoidable. However, you know, this is a common problem for many companies. Thanks to these powerless feelings at work, I thought a lot.

No doubt human resources management has made many great improvements in the past ten years. In terms of recruitment, more than a decade ago, companies that wanted to recruit university graduates could only go to campus to open job fairs, collect paper CVs, call interviews by phone, and then schedule time and place for face-to-face interviews. And now, HR have already begun to use a variety of ways to recruit. For example, posting recruitment information on mobile apps, receiving electronic files of CVs, and completing various quality tests online, such as completing Sudoku games, simulating daily tasks in enterprises to test the EQ of job candidates, and even a small number of companies have begun experiments AI testing and then flexible video interviews.

In short, advanced technology has provided HR with the opportunity to test job candidates more comprehensively, and also allows companies to more accurately meet their needs when selecting talent.

Talking about training, too many meetings often make employees feel very boring, leading to less efficient outcomes. Now, through the online lessons on the computer and online fun test questions, you can achieve a very good employee knowledge and skills improvement. In addition, changes in performance management are even more significant for companies.

Furthermore, I want to share my perspective on the digital economy. I think that if a company wants to keep up with the pace of the digital economy, what they need most is not technology, but management. That is to say, the change that the digital economy will bring to the human resources industry in the future is that the talent demand will not only focus on IT talents, but also on management talents.

It is good management models that are likely to keep changing further in human resource department.

I have participated in an interview of the position of bank teller. The interviewer told me that counter services are gradually being replaced by AI, and many traditional tellers are facing unemployment. He asked me that after I enter this industry, what is my plan to avoid unemployment. I didn’t have a clear idea of the digital economy at that time. My answer was to become an AI technology background supporter. Now, rethinking of this interview, I have a new answer. What the digital economy needs most is not IT personnel, but managers with digital economy thinking. Digital transformation needs managers with the insight and leadership to co-ordinate this complexity. In my opinion, digital transformation is a management proposition, although it looks more technical than previous management propositions (Betchoo, 2016).

With the gradual maturity of technologies such as cloud computing, AI, big data, and the overall slowdown in the growth of traditional industries, digital transformation is no longer a multiple-choice question, but a survival question. In the context of industrial digital transformation, both enterprises and employees are facing the test of this industry’s digital transformation (Kane, Palmer, Phillips, Kiron, & Buckley, 2015). International data company IDC previously conducted a survey of 2,000 CEOs of multinational companies. The results show that by 2018, 67% of the world’s top 1000 companies regards digital transformation as the strategic core of their enterprises. Unfortunately, the failure rate of traditional enterprises’ digital transformation has still hovered between 70% and 80%.

Investigating the reasons for the failure of these traditional enterprises’ digital transformation, it is not difficult to find that many traditional business leaders hope to achieve rapid growth or even double their turnover through digital transformation. When they find that this goal cannot be achieved, they retreat to digital implementation Head of IT department. However, the practical experience of successful digital transformation enterprises proves that the digital transformation of enterprises should be driven by managers and driven from the top down (Ustundag & Cevikcan, 2017). Enterprise digital transformation is not so much a technical issue as it is a management issue.

I am willing that you leave your opinions or any questions and let’s discuss them together to make the point more thorough.  ^_^

Words count: 854

References

1. Betchoo, N. K. (2016, August). Digital transformation and its impact on human resource management: A case analysis of two unrelated businesses in the Mauritian public service. In 2016 IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Innovative Business Practices for the Transformation of Societies (EmergiTech) (pp. 147-152). IEEE.
2. Kane, G. C., Palmer, D., Phillips, A. N., Kiron, D., & Buckley, N. (2015). Strategy, not technology, drives digital transformation. MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte University Press, 14(1-25).
3. Ustundag, A., & Cevikcan, E. (2017). Industry 4.0: managing the digital transformation. Springer.