Knowledge Infusion during 2007 has worked with over 100 organizations helping them set their overall HR and HR technology strategy. During this period, it has become more apparent then ever that the role of HR has changed and will continue to change into the future. What are the changes?

1. HR is being looked to more than ever from the business to understand the impact that people have on business results. Most HR organizations are not equipped at all to provide this information and in 2007, began to realize that the manual, data heroics probably won't work going forward.

2. HR leaders today are split into two camps; those that have been in HR forever and new entrants into HR. Lets call them HR Natives vs. HR Immigrants. The HR Natives are struggling to get out of old school, transactional HR while the HR Immigrants don't want anything to do with that. This caused quite a chasm in HR organizations in 2007 and we expect this to continue in 2008.

3. Continued entrance of "The Quants". HR leaders are either equipped or hiring individuals with quantitative backgrounds to focus on measurement. This is changing the demands on the rest of HR as far as the type and style of information that they need to have at their fingertips.

4. HR is focusing on marketing internally more than ever. Creation of employment brand is important, but more HR organizations are marketing themselves to the press to prove they are creating value in their workplace. The Knowledge Infusion Deployment Excellence practice actually does this for clients and in 2007, the demand was greater then ever.

5. HR is no longer an administrative, back office function. HR is at the executive table in most organizations today - a big change from 5 years ago - and now the question they are asking is "How can we prove value?". This is a ticking time bomb because if they can't prove value, they will be replaced with someone that has more of a view into the business.

6. Alignment between HR and the business is at an alltime high. HR leaders are getting more than ever that they need to be the business, not support the business. Another big change from five years ago and will continue to be a major factor for HR going forward.

7. HR leadership should be considered the most exciting job in an organization. They have their finger not only on the largest expense bucket, the people; but they have the opportunity to have the biggest business impact by driving workforce results from those people. HR HAS to look at it this way, or once again, look for a replacement for your role.

8. HR will continue in 2008 to feel the pinch of the talent crunch. This MUST be a major focus of HR and not handled in silos such as Recruiting, Performance Management and Compensation, but a holistic strategy with a single leader as to how the organization will attract and retain talent now and into the future.

9. HR has continued to learn from supply chain theory and will be forced into this even more as the economy changes. The right people in the right place at the right time will continue to be a major theme as it was in 2007. What does this require: KNOWING WHAT YOU HAVE - i.e... Talent Management.

10. HR has stopped thinking of itself as a department and is thinking of itself as an extension of business. This has occurred extensively in 2007 and will continue to grow in popularity in 2008. If HR is not directly part of the business, YOU MUST do this first in 2008. This will change the role of HR forever in your organization and make it much easier to drive value.

All of these changes to HR have had major changes to the role of HR technology, talent management technology and strategies. We will cover more of those impacts in later December Countdown blog entries.

Another infusion of knowledge...

During 2008, Knowledge Infusion had the opportunity to work with over 100 enterprise organizations based in the US but most with operations in some other parts of the world as well. There are a number of observations that we have collected during 2007 that will continue to impact the nature of HR and Talent Management technology for years to come.

1. Talent Management as a practice is global in nature. Even organizations that only have US based employees are looking to recruit from outside the US and have to for that matter. A Chief HR Officer that is a client of Knowledge Infusion recently said "I will go anywhere in the world to find talent and bring it here, therefore I need technology that can support me in that effort."

2. HR continues to work on standardization and realizes that the only way to manage certain processes is to govern them on a global basis. This doesn't mean that all processes must be the same globally; but when looking to compare and use data, the standardization and streamlining of the process goes a long way.

3. All organizations should them of themselves as global today. Whether they do business globally, have employees that come to the US from other parts of the world (which is everywhere) or have growth as part of their business objectives; must think globally when creating their long term HR technology strategy.

4. Global deployments of software are occurring at a record pace. This requires whole new thought processes around business process transformation, change management and the software itself.

5. Organizations are looking for vendors that "get" global implications. Many vendors simply bypass this issue; but it is one that simply cannot be overlooked anymore.

6. Portals are great tools to make the workforce feel relevant even if they use different tools and processes. A role based, personalized portal drives specific content to the user based on where they are in the world. This will continue to be a growth area for HR solutions.

7. Data privacy concerns around things like Employee and Manager Direct Access are fading away slowly. These will always be issues, but organizations are doing more than ever to work their way through them.

8. HR is realizing that they cannot do all processes within HR, Payroll, Benefits and Talent Management in a single system. Their solutions include outsourcing pieces of Payroll and Benefits, using best of breed applications in country specific situations and struggling with data. This will continue to be a major issue and one that Workforce Intelligence solutions will have to assist with going forward.

9. More and more VP's of HR don't care how, but are demanding a single view of data globally. This is more than likely a request from their CEO who should be asking these questions. HR has been terrible at combining data on a global basis and we are starting to see that change.

10. The world is flat, small and getting faster each day. Succession Management is a global practice. Workforce Planning is a global practice. Knowing the skills of the workforce is a global practice. This list will continue to grow as the chasm between continents is filled in by continued innovation in the technology space.

What does this mean to you? Think globally. Bring together leaders from all countries and continents. Look at their business processes with yours and realize they are not that different and with a bit of compromise, they can work from the same platform. Finally, remember the world is getting smaller by the day and organizations depend on a global workforce more than ever. Are you ready for a HR technology standpoint?

This has been a major trend in 07 and will be even greater in 08!!

Another infusion of knowledge...