The 2018 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trend Report showcases a profound shift that is facing business leaders worldwide. The report is based on interviews with 11,000 business and HR leaders, documents ten key human capital trends and points to the rise of, what Deloitte is calling, the Social Enterprise.
To talk through the report’s findings and their extreme relevance for Talent Acquisition I’m delighted to welcome Michael Gretczko, Principal at Deloitte, as this week’s guest.
In the interview we discuss:
What is a “social enterprise”?
• The forces driving change
• The rise of the individual and their unique influence over the organisations they work for
• Using people analytics and data to create personal and agile rewards
• Why the focus is moving away from career and moving toward experiences
• How an employer’s attitude toward social issues impacts employer branding.
Deloitte 2018 Global Human Capital Trends
Subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts
Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Smart Recruiters, the hiring success company Smart Recruiters is an enterprise grade talent acquisition suite designed for hiring success. Move beyond applicant tracking with a modern platform that provides everything you need to attract, select and hire the best talent. From candidate relationship management, sourcing and recruitment marketing to screening, selection and offer management experience. A talent acquisition suite with a user experience that candidates, hiring managers and recruiters all love. Companies from Kelly Services to Visa to Bosch leverage Smart recruiters to achieve hiring success and expand their business. Visit smart recruiters@www.smartrecruiters.com to find out why companies across the globe consider them the number one ATS replacement.
Matt Alder [00:01:15]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 152 of the Recruiting Future podcast. The 2018 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends Report showcases a profound shift facing business leaders worldwide. The report is based on a global survey of more than 11,000 business and HR leaders. It documents 10 key human capital trends and points to the rise of what Deloitte are calling the social enterprise. To talk through the report’s findings and their extreme relevance to talent acquisition, I’m delighted to welcome Michael Gretczko, principal at Deloitte, as this week’s guest. Enjoy the interview. Hi Michael, and welcome to the podcast.
Michael Gretczko [00:02:03]:
Hi there. Nice to meet you.
Matt Alder [00:02:04]:
So could you introduce yourself and tell everyone a bit about what you do?
Michael Gretczko [00:02:09]:
Sure. Michael Gretczko, I’m with Goliath Consulting. I’m a principal in our practice and I really focus on working with our clients to help them get the most possible value out of their human capital.
Matt Alder [00:02:23]:
So I know that as part of what you guys do, you do an enormous amount of research into the human capital space and what’s going on and what’s likely to go on in the future. And I know you’ve recently published a trends report called the Rise of the Social Enterprise. Could you tell us a little bit about that report and the research that went into it and what the report’s actually about?
Michael Gretczko [00:02:48]:
I’d be happy to. The Human Capital Trends Report is really our premier publication we publish each year. It’s a longitudinal report based on interviews with thousands of organizations and data that we’ve collected. And the theme of the report, as you’ve said this year, is called the Rise of the Social Enterprise. And what that really means for us is that organizations are increasingly focusing on really about a sense of purpose at work and organizations are increasingly being held accountable by their employees to take a position and to have a perspective on these social forces that are happening without their borders. If you look at historical practices, organizations often focused on things that were very much about the bottom line, typical business performance measures like stock price and value of the organization in terms of pure capital. What we’re seeing now is this shift to companies and organizations needing to really focus on the positions they take on important social issues, what that means for their brand and they providing leadership on topics that there’s really a gap of leadership in the broader market from government and from other institutions.
Matt Alder [00:04:05]:
Is that sort of the main thing that’s driving this. I’m kind of sort of interested in why is this the case? What are the sort of forces that are sort of driving this change for?
Michael Gretczko [00:04:18]:
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is really just if we look at the environment that’s occurring in the global marketplace, we’re increasingly seeing these social issues that are really shaping the relationships that individuals have with each other, the relationships individuals have with their government, with their community, and with the company that they work for. It’s a very dynamic time. We’re seeing a change in the power balance and, and a shift in influence. And in particular the rise of social media and a social ecosystem is really changing how people influence others. There’s a lot more connectivity, a lot more communication between individuals and that’s really creating this sort of rise of the individual, as we call it, where the individual has significantly more influence over the direction of the organization and the direction of these social issues, more so than they’ve had at any other time in history. I think that’s creating a bit of a perfect storm where this topic is front of mind for C suite executives and in particular for organizations as they think about their presence and brand in the market, as they look to attract and retain new talented during their organization.
Matt Alder [00:05:28]:
So you identify 10 sort of specific human capital trends that are part of this and are kind of driving this forward. Could you give us an overview of the ones that are perhaps most important and perhaps the ones that are most relevant to companies from a talent acquisition perspective?
Michael Gretczko [00:05:49]:
Yeah, maybe I’ll just touch on, you know, I’ll just touch on a couple of the key terms that I think are applicable. You know, I think the first one is that, you know, businesses are increasingly being expected to fill this leadership vacuum in society. You know, we’ve done some, some research and there’s a great sort of piece of data out there. The 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer that said, people worldwide place only 52% trust in businesses to do what’s right, versus 43% in the government, and that’s a really low number. So increasingly, organizations, people, excuse me, are looking for their organizations to fill that leadership vacuum. That’s important from a talent acquisition perspective, because candidates are looking for organizations that are demonstrating that leadership, that are taking a stand on some of these topics that are important. Second, we’re seeing this tremendous impact of technological change that’s having really unforeseen impacts on society, and it’s really creating massive opportunity to grow. But that technology change is also changing the kinds of relationships that employees have with their organization. It changes the kinds of opportunities, the job opportunities that are at these organizations. And we’re really seeing a change in what I’ll call the future of work and the composition of jobs at many of these organizations. So for the job seekers, they’re often trying to navigate an increasingly complex and dynamic job marketplace. And for organizations, it’s really critical that they’re able to talk about the jobs of today and the jobs of the future of that particular organization and what they’re doing to make sure there continue to be compelling growth opportunities for the individuals that are coming into that organization, and that there’s the support for individuals to continuously develop, refine their skill sets so that they aren’t worked out of a job as automation continues to creep its way into the marketplace and into the workplace.
Matt Alder [00:07:43]:
And did you know, do you see automation as something that’s genuinely happening now, or is it a trend for the future? What sort of timescales are we looking at in terms of the increases in AI, robotics and automation?
Michael Gretczko [00:08:04]:
Yeah, I mean, our assessment, working with our clients, is that it’s here, automation is already in the workplace. It has already fundamentally changed many of the jobs. But if you look at the maturity of some of these technologies that you mentioned, you know, they’re still very much focused today on automating, what I’ll call more administrative tasks, trying to get rid of mundane work that’s happening in the workforce. Of course, it’s being applied to some other areas where you start to see some cognition being provided by these technologies. But we think we’re just seeing the beginning of that. One of the things that we’ve done with a number of our clients is to really help them understand how these technologies are impacting those individual jobs so that organizations can start to do a better job in workforce planning and understanding what the composition of the workforce needs to look like in the future. Across really Three dimensions. One is where those jobs should be so geographic dimension, secondly, how those jobs should be filled full time employees, gig workers, contingents, third party relationships. And third, this topic we’re talking about here, what the level of automation is and how these cognitive technologies might reshape those jobs and what new skills will be required in the future. Our point of view is that technology is a enabler, a cognitive enabler to humans. And we still believe that humanistic capabilities and skills will be required in the future. It’ll just be done in a different combination of jobs to reflect the new needs that organizations have.
Matt Alder [00:09:34]:
And one of the other trends that you’ve picked up on is the rise of people data and analytics in hr. And obviously it’s something that we’re seeing that’s affecting employees, but also it’s affecting recruiting as well. In terms of the sheer amount of data, data points that are available on individuals and individuals individuals behavior and how these can be interpreted and analyzed. Well, you know, what’s, what’s your kind of view on that? How does that sit with this sense of, you know, the social enterprise?
Michael Gretczko [00:10:10]:
Yeah, I think something that’s really interesting is, you know, with the proliferation of data that we’re starting to see in the marketplace around people and, and not only the experiences and data they create outside of the workplace, so their social media accounts and their demographic information, but also the data that they create in the marketplace is a real opportunity for organizations to create a very customized experience for the individual. Where organizations are increasingly focusing on really getting to know their employees and using that insight to do things like create personalized and agile rewards, which is one of the trends we talk about in the report. Where in the past rewards might be sort of one to many, one set of rewards for all segments of the workforce, we’re now seeing organizations focus on finding what exactly their individual workforce segments need and want. That can be defined by generation, by job type, by career aspiration and crafting rewards accordingly. Another example might be that we’re starting to see the shift in the traditional career from something that’s a career to something that’s more of an experience where the workforce of today recognizes that where skills are changing, the skill requirements are changing so quickly in the market that your best way to stay ahead is just have lots of diverse experiences that prepare you for the dynamic environment in front of us. I think many organizations are starting to use that data to understand what experiences their highest potential employees need to have and just start to create those experiences and create those opportunities so that employees can self direct themselves to achieve that growth within a framework that the organization has constructed.
Matt Alder [00:11:51]:
So you mentioned in the report that this is a, this is kind of a really sort of fundamental pivot in how organizations do business and how they, how they think, how, how prepared do you think organizations are for, you know, for this kind of new era and this, this change in. Change in their role and also the change in the relationship between them and their employees?
Michael Gretczko [00:12:18]:
Yeah, I mean, I think our general assessment is that organizations are woefully behind in being prepared for this. I think it’s going to continue to be a journey as organizations try to put the capabilities in place that they need to be able to respond. I think what’s at the forefront of that is that especially for HR organizations, they tend to be slow adopters of some of these technologies in the automation space. As we talked about here, I think we’re starting to see early adopters to this into the HR space and in particular, recruiting. If you look at the technology market for recruiting, cognitive recruiting is incredibly prevalent right now and there’s lots of investment going there. I think we’re going to see some rapid adoption because it’s fundamentally changing the landscape for recruiting out there.
Matt Alder [00:13:11]:
And final question. What would your advice be to organizations in terms of how they can make that shift and how they can prepare themselves for this changing world?
Michael Gretczko [00:13:25]:
Yeah, it’s a great question. Look, I think the biggest thing is to recognize that this is an important dynamic that cannot be ignored. I think organizations that aren’t constantly sensing the external environment, that don’t understand the positions they take on social issues, actually define their employment brand, are organizations that will find themselves increasingly challenged to attract the best and brightest into their organizations. So a lot of this is about recognizing the reality of this, embracing it as an opportunity to have another input into the way these organizations are run. And in particular, we think organizations need to embrace what we call a Symphonic C suite, where those C level executives are working really, really closely on these workforce issues because we don’t think they’re just hr, just recruiting issues. They’re issues for the entire leadership team in order to be able to continue to drive organizational performance for the companies they work for.
Matt Alder [00:14:19]:
Michael, thank you very much for talking to me.
Michael Gretczko [00:14:21]:
Thank you.
Matt Alder [00:14:22]:
My thanks to Michael Gretczko.
Matt Alder [00:14:24]:
You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. The show also has its own dedicated app, which you can find by searching for Recruiting future in your App Store. If you’re a Spotify user, you can also find the show there. You can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com on that site. You can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
