In its “2019 Global Human Capital Trends” report, “Leading the social enterprise: Reinvent with a human focus,” Deloitte examines ways organizations can reinvent themselves on a broad scale, including interacting, motivating, and personalizing experiences with the workforce to help build identity and meaning for workers.

Completed by nearly 10,000 respondents in 119 countries, Deloitte’s ninth annual Global Human Capital Trends report is the largest longitudinal survey of its kind. In the report, respondents said the role of the social enterprise is more important now than ever and noted a positive link between leading the social enterprise and an organization’s financial performance.

The future of the workforce

This focus on the workforce comes as more than 86 percent of respondents cited reinventing the way people learn as important or very important – the No. 1 trend for 2019. Leading organizations are empowering individuals’ need to continuously develop skills by investing in new tools to embed learning not only into the flow of work, but the flow of life. With the need to sustain 50-60 year careers as part of a 100-year life, lifelong learning has evolved from a matter of career advancement to workplace survival. However, even with this emphasis on learning, only 10 percent of respondents said their organizations are “very ready” to address this topic.

Amplifying the need for continuous learning is the ongoing adoption of automation technologies as 64 percent of respondents said that automation is important or very important. Yet even with these advancements, human skills remain critical to augmenting the value of this technology. In response, organizations should consider redesigning work into a new category of “superjobs,” which combine the work and skill sets across multiple domains, opening up opportunities for mobility, advancement and the rapid adoption of new skills desperately needed today.

“Adapting to the trends and changes around us is vital in the skillset in today’s workforce. To enable this, organizations should place emphasis on the importance of tailored learning, as well as actively employing profiles with strong tech knowledge. We must focus on adopting a type of learning relevant to the challenges we face on a day to day basis, especially as we propel into the new tech era. If we are not well informed on this matters, we will not reap the rewards that await” explains Stephan Tilquin, Partner and Talent Leader at Deloitte Luxembourg. 

The importance of internal, enterprise-wide talent mobility has become paramount. In 2019, three-quarters (76 percent) of survey respondents believed new tools and models for careers, and internal mobility are important or very important. Beyond mobility, organizations are finding that they need to look at the technology provided by the cloud as a launchpad, not a destination. But despite investing billions in HR technology, 65 percent of respondents report that this technology is inadequate or only fair at achieving its overall objectives.

The future of the organization

In the age of the social enterprise, organizations are being challenged to up their game when it comes to the employee experience. This emphasis comes as only 49 percent of respondents believed that their organizations’ workers were satisfied or very satisfied with their job design and only 42 percent thought that workers were satisfied or very satisfied with day-to-day work practices.

As organizations look to provide technology to support employees’ work, only 38 percent of respondents said that they were satisfied or very satisfied with the current work-related tools and technology available. Finally, only 38 percent of respondents thought that they have enough autonomy within their jobs to make good decisions, providing further evidence that significant reinvention is required.

Eighty-one percent of survey respondents believed that “21st-century leaders” face unique challenges and requirements, making it critical for organizations to extend leadership pipelines to find and build leaders from within the organization.

“Leaders have a duty to encourage a collaborative and supportive environment for their employees. We must be reflective and reactive to the internal feedback given within an organization and proceed accordingly. To avoid the possible detrimental effects this traditional employee experience appears to inject into an organization, we must shift our view to the new category being referred to as the ‘human-experience’. This will ensure a durable and learning-centric environment, focusing on human identity,” elaborates Basil Sommerfeld, Partner and Leader of Operations Excellence & Human Capital at Deloitte Luxembourg.

Underlying this shift is the continued reinvention of the traditional hierarchical organizational model. One-third (31 percent) of survey respondents said their organizations now operate mostly in teams within a hierarchal framework and another 46 percent said that they are somewhat team-based. However, most C-suite leaders, tools, cultures and incentives are still struggling to adopt and support the team-based model.

Read more about the 2019 Global Human Capital Trends here: https://www2.deloitte.com/lu/en/pages/human-capital/articles/human-capital-trends-2019.html