Now more than ever – My wish list for HR function ahead of SHRM21

Honored to be part of SHRM’s coveted list of HR influencers once again for SHRM21. This would have been my 7th time at an SHRM annual conference, and 4th consecutive one after 2017 (pandemic took 2020) as an international attendee. This year, as pandemic has put restrictions on international travel, I will be following and curating online experiences from SHRM21 along with my fellow HR influencers or SHRM 21 bloggers – make sure that you link up with each one of them to follow their unique perspectives. Today, as an introductory post, I would love to delve a tiny bit into the theme of SHRM21 and what it means to me. This year’s theme is ‘Now more than ever’. What are the thoughts that your unique synapses are live wiring to you when you read the theme? Do share as comments with #NMTE. So the following are the just some of the results that my neurons seems to want me to share with you all today. 1. HR is better poised to embrace science, Now more than ever To elucidate this, I’d like to link readers with work of SHRM13 (which I missed) General Session speaker and one of my favorite authors, Daniel Pink. In 2009, he brought out his book named Drive around Human motivation – which became very famous. The RSA animate video about this talk has been viewed over 18 million times on Youtube alone. This was the first popular version that highlighted the need for connecting to updated learning from science. In 2018 Dan Pink has brought out another book named ‘When’ – about the science of timing. Watch this RSA replay and audio visual review of this book to imagine the possibilities. This century has given us many updates in the field of Human behavior thanks to improvements in invasive technology, which gave us inside view to how our neurons work inside the live-wired brain. Imagine what advancements in Behavioural Economics, Evolutionary Biology, Neuroscience and Human biology in general can provide by themselves or in combination. I’m sure that SHRM21 attendees will be energized to pursue this path and become better people-2-results designers. 2. Social Audio is opening up many unique Collaboration possibilities – which HR can use to catalyze business impact The internet has aligned itself to suit the Industry 4.0 journey with the advent of #SocialAudio era – The ‘Tech 5’ are already following the new-kid-on-the-block, Clubhouse and the pandemic catapulted rise to Unicorn status! Having been on Clubhouse since Jan 2021, I have been witnessing it’s purpose led journey to connect ‘Amazing humans’ using ephemeral nature along with the special ‘trust enabling’ power of audio. I feel that this opens a huge possibility for HR solution designers who are keen to craft employee Experience designs for the future of work – Now more than ever. 3. HR can lead the renewed push for renaissance of Management as a concept – using 1 above. With its origins in Industry 1.0, Management has been on a slow but steady renaissance from early years of the new Millennium. With many 21st century tools to aid collaboration, HR function is uniquely place to play catalyst role for human-to-human connections, which the United Nations started off after the end of WWII – learning from lessons that the collapse of Berlin Wall, taught us and over 20 plus countries who came together to form the European Union.