The Mayans predicted that the end of the world comes this year - at least the end of the world as we have known it so far. That is true also for HR, at least according to an article in Talent Management. While in the past ten years everything in HR revolved around transformation of the traditional "paper" department in a strategic business partner, we can expect the following trends in 2012:
1. Rebranding of HR
The traditional HR functions like recruitment, training and development, compensation or succession are going to transform into new ones. Functions such as "Chief … collaboration officer, performance officer, productivity and innovation officer, officer of people and performance or officer of business intelligence" will emerge. That will help to rebrand HR as a strategic business group whose task will be to define corporate talent strategy to ensure productivity and commitment of the workforce through technologies delivering the expected business results.
2. Replacement of the software for human capital management (HCM)
HR will increase pressure on the improvement of software solutions for managing human capital. The strategic value of the solutions provided as a service (SaaS) will be realized. HR will take an essential role in corporate IT purchasing as well as the current responsibility of IT to implement the HCM solutions.
2. Replacement of workforce analyses by talent intelligence
HR managers will move the function of HR business intelligence out of HR operations separate to form an independent center of excellence (COE) under the direct guidance of the Chief HR director. Someone from the business will probably be chosen as the head of this team. That will strengthen the partnership between HR and business. Technology vendors will accelerate the visualization of data in traditional HR applications and open these applications from financial and operational systems including social networks.
4. Interest in the "big" data
The growing demand for data from all company areas will increase the pressure on the ability of HR to bring relevant data about the workforce in order to support strategic decision making. HR will acquire a new role - responsibility for global data governance.
5. Revision of performance management
HR is at the beginning of a complete transformation of the performance management processes. Companies will consider how to manage employee performance every day. A shift towards a higher level of performance management is about to start. It will be based on ownership and cross-functional teams with the responsibility for measuring multiple factors contributing to the growth of business performance.
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