Visitors of the L&Dpro Expo Festival, which recently took place in Munich, had to be proficient in English. The presentations on current HR trends were filled with Anglicisms that hint at great things to come. Human Resources and personnel development in 2022, the credo goes, must be completely rethought. However, this seems not yet to have reached the HR departments of the present.
Info: This text was created during a visit to the L&Dpro Expo Festival 2022 in Munich. The author is Sebastian Bach, Head of Marketing at blink.it, who shares his subjective impressions here.
A quiz of its own for trendy HR buzzwords
There are probably only a few industries where a quiz (“L&D Quiz Show”) is held at the beginning of a trade fair day to explain the terminology of their own industry to professional visitors. No wonder, as the significant buzzwords shone brightly from the well-lit presentation walls of the MVG Museum in Munich, prompting the interested visitor to wonder what they might mean. Here, a first indicator emerged that the new methods, strategies, and trends in personnel development are, although hypothetically known, only yet to be recognized and implemented from the companies' perspectives. Nevertheless, the quiz was entertaining.
Trends in Personnel Development: What about analog?
“Green L&D” refers to the focus of Learning & Development on sustainability, awareness, and moderation. But what does this actually mean in concrete terms when this field goes green? Will HR departments in Germany and their suppliers consume less electricity in the future, reduce server load and paper use, or will perhaps just less food be consumed? No, it is about creating awareness of the topic among employees and repositioning personnel development methods in terms of employee orientation. This fits perfectly with the spirit of the times. McKinsey & Company even states in an article from spring 2022 that Reinventing HR determines success and failure in how the professional world deals with the consequences of the Corona pandemic. One could thus speak of significant pressure.
Agile fire extinguishers: Where is the phone?
However, the HR department of today faces a very analog problem with the shortage of skilled workers, which McKinsey's trend report on personnel development only inadequately addresses. What is supposed to be rethought if the people, the actual resource and the center of the strategy, are missing? Is AI going to help me? Yes, as we will see later in this article. For now, however, HR professionals find themselves confronted with the fact that their daily business, depending on the size of the company and its specialization, does not allow engagement with such complex questions.
After all, if production is halted due to failures, the willingness of management to introduce AI at this moment is likely to be low to very low. According to relevant reports from German HR departments, what is primarily required here are analog actions: pick up the phone, talk to people, hire people quickly, on short notice, even on the same day if necessary. The people who shoulder these processes are undoubtedly very agile, as they are always adaptable – but their job has little to do with agile personnel development.
The HR department of the future does not react; it takes the lead!
As SPIEGEL reports with reference to a study by Boston Consulting, the income loss caused by the shortage of skilled workers is already costing the German economy dearly: a loss of 80 billion euros is to be lamented, and the Institute for Employment Research in Nuremberg reported 1.9 million open positions just for the second quarter. There they stand with their briefcases (without brochures, as everything is digital) listening to contributions about AI recruiters that take the work off their hands and about avatars that onboard people and solve problems. That would be great. But actually, the HR department of the future is not supposed to recruit and react so much anymore; it is supposed to act, lead, and influence the company! It is the friendly driving force of a self-learning organization! Developers of potential, learning animators, trainers, coaches, educators, AND talent smiths. Again, one could speak of pressure here! In any case, it is clear: instead of dealing with vacation requests and training certificates, personnel development will methodically focus on the future on:
Corporate learning
Collaborative learning
Immersive learning
E-Recruiting
Green HR
… and many other wonderful things …
The dream: Data takes away our work
Of course, there are booths and companies at the L&Dpro Expo Festival that offer tailored solutions for exactly these tasks and can significantly simplify the challenges in personnel development. Nevertheless, the operational reality in many companies looks different, which is why progress and an insightful quiz are indeed appropriate here. The industry needs solutions, and they exist. However, it is important to first understand them and know beforehand whether they fit the lived reality of one's own employer. A visit to Munich could help with this, although there was an impression on-site that exhibitors were mainly speaking with other exhibitors.
With all the terminology and innovation surrounding highly modern onboarding approaches, cyber glasses, and strategies, it becomes particularly clear in recruiting where the optimists and pessimists of the industry are located: Saša Savić, Chief Sales Officer of Cobrainer, undoubtedly counts among the optimists. The title of his presentation was: “The best talents? Are already here!
Made clear which skills companies currently still lack: Saša Savić, Chief Sales Officer of Cobrainer.
Savić and Cobrainer pursue the approach of first deciphering the existing skills of the core workforce and further qualifying them as needed. The talents of their employees and the expansion of their abilities often lie dormant and untapped. On the one hand, because training offers are often drafted in clear catalogs and generally tailored to departments, not to individual employees. But also because companies lack data in a networked form to make a meaningful assessment of the skill level and development potential of their employees. Recognizing talents and trends and promoting growth individually is thus the central task of the HR of the future.
The somewhat more pessimistic and more common approach is known to assume that one must primarily address the shortage of skilled workers through more efficient recruiting, or else dark times would await. However, the recruiting approach does not work inward but outward and is, by definition, a very complex and time-consuming endeavor, which likely constitutes the lion's share of the work of an HR department today.
Here, artificial intelligence can also assist with e-recruiting, particularly in the pre-selection of suitable candidates. The foundation as a prerequisite for success: again, a lot of data! And of course, such an implementation is elaborate, and one must be able to read and understand the data. However, the time savings and the quality of the results in some demonstrations have been perceived as impressive across the board. If this thought is pursued further, a modern HR department could actually have a stronger influence on the company – if it has the right tools, time, and knowledge on its side. This applies both to onboarding and to further qualification and the transfer of know-how between employees and departments.
