HR Horizons 2024: Bridging the Talent Gap with a Tech-Infused Future
During UNLEASH’s exclusive roundtable in collaboration with AWS, ten senior executives from global businesses discussed some of the most prominent challenges businesses face regarding the talent gap.
Why You Should Care
As the job landscape is forever changing, it can be challenging for CHROs to understand how to bridge the skills gap present within the workplace.
In this session, we explored key strategies and insights that can empower CHROs to proactively address these changes and shape the future of their organizations.
Throughout the 60-minute roundtable, Jake Shannon, HR director at AWS co-hosted a thought-provoking discussion with UNLEASH senior journalist Lucy Buchholz, while giving participants the chance to share their genuine perceptions and challenges.
In this thought-provoking conversation, our HR leader group focused on:
- Strategic Training for the Future: With the rise of remote work and digital transformation, what should CHROs consider when developing training programs?
- Planning for the Unpredictable: How can CHROs prepare their organizations for unforeseen challenges?
- Emerging Technologies and HR: How are the latest HR technologies and trends shaping the future of talent management – what do employers and employees need to prepare for?
- Future-Proofing Strategies: With the motto “The Future is Now,” this discussion highlighted visionary approaches to future-proofing your HR department and organization. Each HR leader shared what this meant to them, and how they’re implementing this within their organization.
Accelerating learning and development
Throughout the roundtable, many key areas were discussed. However, one question sparked a particularly insightful conversation, which came from one HR leader in the tech vertical.
They asked: “How do you motivate the organization to assess their proficiency, not as a performance management mechanism, but as a way to clearly articulate where businesses are, and to drive those insights and engagement? And how can we bring the leadership along too, while making these journeys shorter or more efficient?”
Several comments were made in response to this problem, with a key point made by another senior leader in the tech sector, who shared: “There is no algorithm for experience – some things are just going to take time. Leaders need to figure out the direction they want to take the business in and to get started.”
As a continuation of this, they explained that business growth can be accelerated, however, shortcuts should not be taken when doing so. To achieve this, one business explains that they had adopted a ‘single-threaded leader’, which makes one individual responsible for a specific change the business is focusing on.
“Although it sounds like a super simple idea, we’ve really found that putting one person in charge helps to drive accountability, which ultimately helps us accelerate faster,” they said.
To add to this, another attendee shared how a company they previously worked for accelerated progress by changing the image of how businesses should approach learning; the employees need to want to learn, just as much as the employers need to support their growth. “To promote this, we made cultural changes, to ensure it was the employee’s responsibility to learn and take on new skills, for example, by setting their own KPIs.”
Final thoughts from AWS
To summarize the roundtable, co-host Jake Shannon shared three key take-home points.
“The more HR leaders I talk to, the more I’m hearing that the cloud is critical for reducing cost. Businesses must figure out their infrastructure,” he says, “that’s becoming more and more prevalent, especially with everything that’s coming in the future with what generative AI has to offer.
“My core message is therefore: You are not behind. Other businesses may be ahead, but that doesn’t mean your business is lacking. We are still in the very early days of generative AI, so remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint.”
“Secondly, I would suggest figuring out how to learn, get educated, and especially how to bring your C-suite along the learning journey with you. Leaders need to be involved, so they need to be equipped with the right tools. To do this, businesses can bring in speakers and other individuals who are skilled in this area and encourage them to have the right conversations with the right people.”
“Finally, I would encourage others to just get started. I realize there’s a lot of panic about starting a journey and accelerating it, but there’s a lot of value in starting small and just figuring out the key areas to focus on. I would even suggest focusing on one particular space to excel in and prioritize figuring that out. It may take some time to get it done, but it’s all about getting started.”
HR Leader Attendee Demographics
Why join an UNLEASH roundtable?
Our exclusive virtual Roundtables are designed to explore where HR leaders are focused now, key challenges, and prioritizations for the rest of the year. We’ll dig into what matters most when planning for what’s next and equip you with your future strategy. You’ll be joined by senior HR practitioner peers, allowing an opportunity to discuss personal experiences of challenges and wins, providing the ability to benchmark and reconsider current strategies and tech together.
Check out our upcoming events here: HR Roundtables
