Balance zwischen Mensch und Technologie – die Zukunft des Personalmanagements

"The future of work is dependent on the right balance between technology and people." "H.A. and the people management of the future will be extremely crucial for the strategic success of the company." That's what Sandra Doth and Asmus.com say. Partner with McKinsey in the field of people and organizational performance. And I'm Mirona Kallitz, the host of this podcast. Asmus, Sandra. You're drawing a completely new picture of the personal management of the future. What makes you so sure that everything will be completely different? Yes, that's a good question. What we've done is that we've observed and realized that a lot has changed, also because of what we've done. We've asked about a hundred companies worldwide and evaluated their studies in their personal area. What's interesting is that we've not only looked at companies, but also looked at what H.A. Tech players do. Because that will be very important, because a lot of what we've learned will be driven by technology. We've also talked with the academic research institutes worldwide about where they will go and what the future of H.A. will be. And what we've done in this study is to think about and define on the one hand how the personal management of the future will look like. That means what ultimately the employees experience, and on the other hand how the personal function will be, as such, how it will be created. And finally, the big trend is, of course, this whole topic, I'd say, when it comes to tech, everything around digitalization, GNI automation, but also the social expectations of the demographic change and the, so to speak, the pressure on business models and the higher demand for productivity and resilience on the H.A. function. You've already talked, and you've made a distinction between the term between people management and the personal function or the H.A. function. Maybe you could explain a little bit more what the difference is. Yes, of course. I think if you think about the personal function, it's relatively clear what we mean by that. We've also written other reports on the topic, what is the operating model for the personal function of the future. And before the whole wave of the asmr story, of technology and changes and acceleration of changes, the discussion at the personal function was always about how we can improve ourselves a little bit, but still very thought-provoking today. So what is improvement? You virtualize the COE's a little bit, or you do a little more agile work in H.A. This was very looking at the inside. And that we have noticed in these conversations, the first thing that has been said, is that we actually have to take another step back and say, what does the person in the company actually mean? What does the future of work look like? What changes there, so that you can define at all which roles the H.A. function actually plays in this world? And therefore, perhaps you can define the operating model, but first of all, the role of the person in the company. So the person plays the central role, so to speak. How exactly does this person-centered people management have to be set up in the future? Especially what Asmus just said about the strategic importance of the business model, to be justified for the business model. Yes, I think we see three or four essential trends. The one thing is, let's talk with everyone, the manager will play a much stronger role in the interaction with the employees. So the role of H.A. will be much lower. What we see is that the manager is currently in the position, basically the entire H.A. work, all of them are developing and ultimately working together with the employees, but he is also the, and he is the interface, or he is the one here, the approach partner, I would say, for the employees. The important thing is that H.A. will have to put the manager in the position that it will also do well, that the tools will be available to the processes. That might be the case. The other thing we see is, when it comes to personalization, the idea behind it is that through, especially here comes the very strong, the whole topic of technical, general and digitalization, that ultimately every on-the-sport, whether it's a hyper-personalization, a real-time support of the employees in learning, it will not go with this training course, where you go to training with other colleagues, but that you really learn on the job. And that it is ultimately directly connected to the individual person. And that's what we might have sketched here on the topic of development. It will be transferred to other personnel processes, that is, for the topic of recruitment, and also for the topic of performance management. So, very, so to speak, to see the employees individually, to understand what they need, and then to give them, so to speak, direct on-the-sport, on-time. That might be a second big topic. The third topic we see is very much stronger, a very quick, a use, let's say, a so-called effortless, a fluid scope of employees and abilities, also through organizational limits, and also in the case of the company in the company, exactly where the problem is, where the work is needed. So, so to speak, a separation of the somewhat staff-organizational limits, and therefore a almost agile range of resources and certain activities to do. I also believe that with the end of the topic, we have always said that the manager really understands what the employees need, the topic of humanity, also has a very important, so to speak, dynamic. And also we expect in the future, when the topic can be understood, then the whole topic of humanity, at the same time the manager, will play a very central role. For you, an extension of the person is in the center, and at the same time, the value is also in the center. And over technology and over data and insights, you can better control the person to the value creation. That means, again, with hyper-personalization, we often have discussions about, "Yes, but you don't want to give each employee exactly what he wants." That's not the point. It's about cutting it down to each employee, controlling what the employee needs, both for himself, but of course also to create value for the company. And similarly with this topic of "reliability", if you think much more fluidly about it, how do I set my skills for the work, the best one that is most important for the company, then that also belongs to one of the premises of this future of personal management, so to control the person to the value. You are cleaning up the manager, or the manager, into a central role, maybe as long as possible. It's not quite without each employee standing in the center and generating value. Does the manager manage the daily business and what role does the HR function play? The question is, does the manager manage it today? There are certainly companies where people leadership is outsourced to HR, although it is actually core responsibility of leadership. That's why without this future vision, surely today we already have a need to support people manager, to be a better people manager. And Asma has also told us that HR can also take this role as a function to support people manager through digital tools, through insights, through coaching, so that this role can be accepted at all. That means, of course, the second part of your question, which role does the HR function play, is the one role to support people manager, but that's not all. Only because the people manager is the face of the employee, the person I have to talk to with my care, wishes, needs, and no more HR. Of course, it doesn't mean that there are other things that the HR function has to do in this world. The one thing is, of course, the translation of a business strategy into implications for everything around staff, what staff I need, what org structures I need, what culture I need, what leadership I need, how I manage the succession planning of leadership, etc. There are still many strategic themes where HR plays a central role, which also needs much more business understanding, typically more expertise and experience. That means, if you think about it, we may have less HR in HR, but what it does is also more strategic value here. That's why we also say in our research that HR in the future is probably smaller. That doesn't mean that it's cheaper. Of course, the people who are sitting there have much more expertise in the field than it is today. The other thing that still exists in HR is, of course, these 1.6 products, be it for the manager or for the employees, the hyper-personalized products, to design, to control, to use technology intelligently and to build these products at all. That has to be done by someone who really has deep expertise in performance management, recruiting or learning development. That means, you also need these experts in the future vision. And the third thing you need in the future vision is to get all the functions out, not just HR. The world of the future, the working world of the future needs a much deeper understanding of technology. And HR has to be a reliable user, a buyer and designer of technology. What we see today is the technological, even the people analytics topics. They sometimes even sit in IT. And in this vision of the future of HR, there will be much more technology, data analytics in HR and no longer dependent on the fact that another function may be delivered to HR at some point. These are really central tasks that will stay with HR. But according to your analysis, two-thirds of today's people management processes can be automated. Maybe you can explain again which processes are above all. There are about 60 HR processes. And we went through them once. We looked at it. What will happen to them in the future, what will happen to them in the future when they digitize and touch them? And what you really notice is that two-thirds of them are fully automated or part-automated. And one-third of them, what we call augmented, in the sense that they are improved, they are better at working with them. If you, for example, take compensation benefit, there will be technologies in the future. With light prompting, a first version for a new model will already be developed. That will automatically be created and automated. These are examples. Or the topic of learning. These are very modern applications that are ultimately the topic of learning. As said above, a topic of hyper-personalization directly on the individual with whom to cut. And also deliver in an automated, digitized form. That means that these are the topics. And if you go through HR, through these processes, you realize that two-thirds of them in this, how should I say, are ultimately automated. And that is already a big, huge effort, a huge impact for HR. Of course, it is clear to us that there is still a human loop. And in this case, HR has to, as mentioned before, continue to design and control. Only technology can do a lot. Much faster and better and more economical as humans. Especially when you look at all the manual, transactional activities, the whole topic of HR operations. That's what we didn't say before. But there are also companies who think about it, if they don't have a shared service center. Whether in this world of technology there is no point in building a shared service center, because that can be done in the future of technology. In this case, there is a lot that technology can do. And of course, there is still a role for humans and HR in this world. In your experience or your conversations with the clients, where are the companies currently in this big process towards the future model of personal management? Maybe first look at it globally and there is certainly a wide range of companies that may already be technologically more refined, more data-driven. They are certainly a bit further. There are companies that have already said five years ago, HR is behind the scenes and actually our role is to support the manager, to do good leadership and the less you see it, the better. Such companies, of course, lack this world because they have a different foundation. They already have systems that are integrated. They have personal data that are integrated. But that is less than five percent from our assessment. Then there are those that have invested over the last one and a half years and perhaps already after Corona in technology and in opportunities, which technology offers. This is the middle category. They are a bit more experienced, they have already made pilots, we have already thought about it. What capabilities do we actually need in the HR team? We can already see creative restructuring how the HR team is set up to witness this world, this middle category, which we call the experienced. That is about a quarter. The big part is still at the beginning of the journey. What is actually our north star not only in HR, not only for personal management, but also a lot of central questions about what technology actually means for value creation in our company. These are sometimes producing companies with a lot of blue-collar workers. Of course, this is a world that is even newer than for a high-tech company where 80 percent of the labor force are Asian software engineers. On your question, Germany, we are in Germany in general at risk of adversity when it comes to technology and a lot more carefully when it comes to personal data, etc. That means, in average, Germany is a bit slower than the rest of the world. What I really enjoyed is OpenAI. It has brought out research on which countries are the biggest users and also the biggest users of professional creativity. Germany is at level 3. For the first time, it is a technology in German context that is really quickly adopted. That is why I have the hope that we may not only get behind it as Germany, but may also be able to advance. That is exciting, that is interesting. What should the companies, the larger majority that are still under the strategy, what should they do now to set themselves in the future? I think there are four or five topics that we will see again and again at successful companies that have started their way. I think one is how do we actually deal with the topic? It is difficult to say that it is a very clear implementation plan. I think it really needs to be more agile. First of all, to prioritize where, in my opinion, the areas that make the most sense and can generate and start in them. And then experiment with it as a priorization and then experiment with it and see what works. We can do it better and then, if something works well, we can scale it. That is the first topic, I think. The second thing we see is, at the end of the day, defining the northern star. Where do we actually want to go? What is our vision for the future? Because this will, as I said, continue to develop for some time, maybe one or two years and then we will have a lot of questions and then it will help to have such a northern star. What, as I said, the role of HAA and the manager and the business side will be changed. That means, you have to between the managers on the one side and the other on the other side to make a new approach. Because we believe that a lot of the business side will be much more in love with the construction of the new world and also around the cutting edge for the employees. And then there are topics like how we have to set up this team and how we are to carry out this transformation. I think a very important consideration is the topic of digitalization. Digitalization through with your own abilities with your own digital abilities in HAA and on this path is not just about the desire to earn money, it is a long way. That means, to bring the momentum forward and to keep it up. It is our duty to go on this path for two or three years is very critical. Great, thank you very much Asmus and Sandra for your attention and that was it again tomorrow, a McKinsey podcast. McKinsey is a world-wide business consultation. It helps to achieve sustainable, integrative growth.