THE FUTURE OF HR?
(AND WHAT THAT MEANS FOR OD)
Steve Urquhart
Webster University
April 2014
“The future has already arrived.
It's just not evenly distributed …
yet.”
―William Ford Gibson
William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist
who has been called the noir prophet of the cyberpunk subgenre. Gibson
coined the term cyberspace in his short story Burning Chrome and later
popularized the concept in his debut novel, Neuromancer.
The future of HR … isn’t.
HR
Evolution from “Personnel office”
to “Talent management”
Old focus: Administration
New focus: Talent supply chain
We have SaaS, and
soon we’ll have …
TaaS
Jun 1st 2013
http://bit.ly/workforcecloud
Talent-as-a-Service, a.k.a. crowdsourcing
Elance.com
oDesk.com
Guru.com
Mechanical Turk (Amazon.com)
The (Virtual) Wild West: The Disruptive Effects of Crowdsourcing
http://bit.ly/virtualwildwest
“The concept of a job,
as we know it, is starting
to go away.”
― Josh Bersin
The End of a Job as We Know It
http://bit.ly/endofjobs
The "job," defined
Me,
Inc.
Not jobs … (specialized) roles
Expertise vs. experience
Bid on work
Pay to affiliate
The “end of average”
The End of a Job as We Know It
http://bit.ly/endofjobs
IBM “Liquid” Portal
IBM BeLiquid (video)
http://bit.ly/ibmliquid
Social Peer Rating
IBM BeLiquid (video)
http://bit.ly/ibmliquid
If it comes down to you vs.
a robot or a computer …
Within the next 20 years,
approximately 47% of all jobs
could be replaced by
automation.
The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation?
http://bit.ly/oxfordfuturetech
"The factory of the future will have two
employees: a man and a dog.
The man's job will be to feed the dog.
The dog's job will be to prevent the
man from touching any of the
automated equipment."
―Warren G. Bennis
Meet Baxter
Meet Watson
Understands request in context
Generates and explores hypotheses
against data
Evaluates and validates
Learns from itself!
Shares with you what it “thinks”
All in seconds, all in plain English
Watson’s Thought Process
http://bit.ly/watsonthought
Since the Industrial Revolution began
(ca.1760), new technologies have
been stealing jobs
People have responded by finding or
inventing new jobs that contemporary
technologies couldn’t do.
Robots, Drones and the Uncertain Future of Work
http://bit.ly/govtecharticle
So what?
The new normal is change.
Roll up your sleeves.
Leadership will be key.
The future of HR is … you.
QUESTIONS?
Steve Urquhart
@workforce101
steveurquhart@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/steveurquhart

Webster the future of hr