Maximizing Return on People Assets

Organizations need to rely on their people to navigate the complex changes ahead in a business world, already shaken by technological and market upheavals, that is now having to adapt to AI, Industry 4.0, Blockchain and other digital disruptions. 

“The increasing use of AI and robotics leads to both opportunities and challenges for employers. Organizations will need to monitor their changing skills requirements and take steps to both recruit these into the firm, and to develop and re-deploy existing employees.  In particular, it is likely that there will be more emphasis on skills related to creativity and higher levels of complexity. There are also challenges relating to how to manage a workforce that is part-human and part-machine – this will require a different form of leadership and management that few employers are currently prepared for.” Emma Parry, Professor of Human Resource Management, Cranfield School of Management.

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Join Cranfield’s People Strategy Workshop to create a highly effective outline strategy to maximise the returns on your people. Next course: 9-11 October 2018 …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Motivating and developing people across the organization so they can innovate, compete, and navigate change, while ensuring the organization also takes advantage of AI and other technological advances, presents a big challenge. 

Mastering this challenge also presents a big opportunity for HR practitioners. An opportunity to shape effective people strategies that maximize the organization’s human assets in the context of a fast-changing environment, enabled by new technologies that if not actually replacing people will greatly change their roles. People strategies based on a clear understanding of organizational transformation and how to generate measurable value.

While organizations need strategies that maximize the benefits of digitization – from big data analytics to AI – to find efficiencies and improve decision making, they also need to re-think their structures and processes to keep their people on side. They increasingly need to re-deploy and motivate those whose work is automated, develop creative people comfortable with complexity and change, and create cohesive working environments which engage rather than alienate employees that are often dispersed, perhaps working via an AI platform in the gig economy. 

 Organizations can benefit enormously from AI assisted performance, decision making, and flexible working practices, but to realise these benefits they have to provide people with support and employment security, as well as the training and development they need. AI is not a passing trend nor it is for the future. It is happening now and is a key reason that today more than ever organizations must maximize the return on their people assets – an exciting challenge for HR leaders.

Unfortunately, too many HR leaders are, or are perceived to be, ‘boxed’ into transactional and administrative work, at the expense of maximizing a strategic return on people assets.

The Cranfield School of Management’s People Strategy Workshop offers a rigorous and tailored process for creating an outline people strategy that ensures business goals are met, while also developing participants understanding of the strategic imperatives shaping the world in the era of AI and Industry 4.0.

Drawing from state of the art research, the workshop is created specifically for HR Leaders and anyone else responsible for creating a people strategy. Workshop participants will be helped to:

• Translate business-level objectives into an effective people strategy
• Understand cutting edge trends in HR and their potential impact on the organization: people analytics, emerging technologies – artificial intelligence, wearables in people management, machine learning, data driven HR practices, blockchain, etc.
• Discover how to create conditions that get the best out of people
• Learn to connect employee engagement and capability with customer loyalty and business profitability
• Link HR metrics to business performance
• Gain a deep understanding of business strategy – the internal environment and the changing external context and how these combined forces impact on operations.