Rewriting the rules for the digital age – what you need to know to win in the 4th Industrial Revolution

Deloittes have just published their 2017 Global Human Capital Trends report. It’s subtitled “Rewriting the rules for the digital age” and stretches to 144 pages. They have identified ten trends which, in the interests of the work/life balance of our readers, we are summarising here. These are the ten trends you need to act on to come out on top in the 4th Industrial Revolution (as the digital age is sometimes known).

#1 The organisation of the future: Replacing structural hierarchies with networks of empowered teams

#2 Careers and learning: “Always-on” learning to build skills quickly, easily, and on employee’s own terms

#3 Talent acquisition: Social networking, analytics, and cognitive tools to find and attract people and determine the best fit for job, team, and company

#4 The employee experience: culture, engagement, and beyond Look at employee journeys, from 1^st contact with a potential employer through retirement and beyond, study workforce needs, use net promoter scores to understand employee experience

#5 Performance management: New approaches to performance management beginning to increase productivity and change corporate culture

#6 Leadership disrupted: More agile, diverse, and younger leaders, as well as new leadership models that capture the “digital way” to run businesses

#7 Digital HR: Go beyond simply digitising HR platforms to develop truly digital workplaces and workforces, deploy technology that changes how people work and relate to each other at work

#8 People analytics: No longer simply for HR but now a business discipline, supporting everything from operations and management to talent acquisition and financial performance, but only 8% have usable data

#9 Diversity and inclusion: Issues around diversity and inclusion continue to be frustrating and challenging for many organisations as their structures and processes fail to keep up with training and awareness

#10 The future of work: Robotics, AI, sensors, and cognitive computing along with on- and off-balance-sheet workers will result in the redesign of almost every job, as well as a new way of thinking about workforce planning and the nature of work.

Together these trends identify the areas where there are real questions to be answered to address the pace of change and the challenges of work and talent management.

How we redesign the organisation and its leadership for the future

How we design the employee experience for engagement, productivity, and growth

How we leverage digital technology to design and improve work, the workplace, and the workforce

How we build a new management system to empower and engage the teams

How we build a culture of continuous learning, adaptability, growth, and personal development

How we leverage data, cognitive technologies, and AI to improve the organisation and its teams

Along with the ten trends are new rules for the digital age to fit us, whether employers, employees or contractors, to face a period of the most significant change to the workforce we’ve even seen. A period not just of significant change but rapidly accelerating change too.

The report is chapterised for each trend and at the end of each trend section Deloitte’s have conveniently created a table of Old v New Rules. The new rules define how leading companies are already thinking and operating. The bar for performance is set high.

Over the coming weeks we’ll be sharing these and our thoughts on them as a series of bite-size articles in our L&D Lounge for Muse subscribers. To find out more about subscribing to Muse click here or please get in touch.