HR PROFESSIONALS – MEETING THE FUTURE WORLD OF WORK

In the second part of this two-part series, Jaen Beelders, Director and Head of Analytics Business Stream at 21st Century and Elmen Lamprecht, Consultant at 21st Century outline the skills that will be required by present-day HR Professionals – for now and into the future.

Human resources and the Future of Work

“The Future of Work will place an extraordinary demand on HR professionals to lead their organisations strategically through this disruptive period. However, before they can lead the change, they themselves must change and adapt. This will require HR Departments to identify the trends of 4IR that will have the most significant impact on the industry. They will have to evolve their functions to serve all stakeholders better, while moulding and transforming roles and responsibilities to adapt to a new reality.

“With changing times and demand, HR professionals now need a new set of skills and competencies to be an excellent contributor to the business.

“The following table presents the skills required in order to capacitate HR staff to comfortably manage their HR analytics reporting:

Digital Literacy

• Training regarding the basic understanding of systems, data, artificial intelligence, and people analytics.
• Regular retraining on systems used.  We recommend quick monthly training sessions (1 hour) hosted by the System Super User with one annual full system update arranged by the supplier (this can be done over video conferencing to save costs).

Data Literacy

• Training regarding exporting and importing data from any system that they currently use.
• Intermediate to advanced excel training for HR to do their own data analytics and reporting.  Graphical representation of data is vital.
• For those individuals who need to work with data from multiple sources, training on extracting data from the database and on creating reports directly from the Data Warehouse using PowerBI/SSRS
• For those individuals who need to provide reports, training on PowerPoint is essential.

Reporting and Presentation Skills

• Report writing
• Proposal writing
• Advanced PowerPoint
• Presentation and facilitation skills – presenting a report or proposal to a group of people
• Managing online meetings

Commercial skills

• Understanding business strategy
• Business ethics
• Situational ethics

Critical thinking

• Creative problem solving
• Design Thinking

Branding and User Experience

• Basic principles of brand management
• Content writing for marketing/advertising
• Principles of Customer/Employee Experience

-- ENDS --

About 21st Century
21st Century, a level 2 BBBEE company, is one of the largest Remuneration and HR consultancies in Africa, with a team of more than 60 skilled specialists, servicing over 1700 clients – including non-profit organisations, unlisted companies, government, parastatals and over two-thirds of the companies listed on the JSE. 21st Century offers bespoke business and strategy planning services, operating model and organisational design, creative reward practice modelling, change, stakeholder and culture management, training courses and comprehensive human capital and talent plans. These are all underpinned by our analytic and survey capability tailored to the African environment. 21st Century continues to offer solutions via a combination of virtual channels and on-site presence. 

21st Century has expanded its services to offer a full turnkey sustainable business and remuneration service. Beyond remuneration and reward consulting, 21st Century offers local analytics for business advantage; remuneration and HR training; change management services; talent and people solutions; and end-to-end organisational design and development.

Issued By: The Lime Envelope
On Behalf Of: 21st Century
For Media Information: Bronwyn Levy
Telephone: 076 078 1723
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