50% of the professions practiced today will disappear tomorrow. The digital revolution of our economy impacts HR professionals in their role and function. How to anticipate the needs of tomorrow, support those whose profession will have disappeared while representing the company’s values?
The digital revolution has inexorably entered our lifestyles. The world of work does not escape it. The digitalization of internal processes is already changing working methods. Functions are evolving towards more added value where the least productive tasks are automated: RPA (Robotic Process Automation) is gradually integrating into companies. Humans will adapt and put their abilities at the disposal of their employer for nobler tasks. The challenge is sizable to ensure that the new jobs created are superior in number and quality to those that will be destroyed.
Roles are redefined, functions evolve and professions change. This new industrial-digital revolution is a source of issues and opportunities for HR managers. The economist Joseph Schumpeter spoke of creative destruction, and in this phase of digital revolution, entire sections of the economy will undergo a strong mutation.
There are beneficial destructions. If we refer to the industrial revolution, it is not said that the abandonment of work in the fields is a situation to deplore. Planning a Plan B, anticipating retraining, managing the risks related to one’s job is a responsibility that the employee must now assume. HR managers are privileged interlocutors on these subjects.
A crystal ball to guess tomorrow’s professions? Identifying tomorrow’s professions is salutary for the younger generations but also for those who will have to retrain. Behind a simple observation, the analysis must be done pragmatically: where the machine will not be, the human will remain. Health, IT, and manual professions offer opportunities.
Supporting the people concerned but also supporting management is the inescapable role of HR professionals. Their role is key in this transition, for their strategic vision of the labor market, their analysis of skills but also for their advisory role regarding career trajectories.
Towards a new form of social valorization? The question arises of the social valorization of these profiles and their place in an economic system that could ignore them. Will the digital revolution introduce a paradigm shift that will be partly carried by HR?
