Conference receives great reviews

NZ HR Conference + Expo 2018 received great reviews. Read what Distinguished Fellow Paul Toulson and Waikato Student Ambassador Eleri Oldman had to say…

Conference Review – Paul Toulson

This year’s conference theme the future of work was attended by 242 delegates with two days of presentations of keynote speakers and concurrent sessions. The conference had a one day expo with 27 exhibitors’ stands. The theme was tackled from a number of perspectives including some nanotechnology, brain psychology, adventurers’ stories, reflections on the NZ economy, the intergenerational shift, robotics, changing workforce characteristics, applications of digital technology, and entrepreneurial activity. These perspectives are not exhaustive but the striking thing to me was the emergence some common themes, and the fact that the digital world that we are in is interconnected. Even if you did not attend the conference you will be familiar with the program which is made available to everybody. So I will try and to make general observations and conclusions that I got from attending all sessions except the ones that I couldn’t due to them being concurrent.

The conference started with a welcome by the local iwi, and an introduction by the conference MC Te Radar (who incidentally did a great job because he injected a wonderful mixture of humour and seriousness that only Te Radar can do. This was followed by the welcome by our National President,

Julia Stones and an acknowledgement of the conference sponsors. Then it was into the first keynote speaker. And the rest of the two days.

I guess my first reflection is when we talk about the future of work, it is already here. We are now in what has been popularly coined as the fourth or fifth Industrial Revolution. There are two aspects of this particular revolution, and they are: change is occurring much faster and the power of our digital resources is increasing at an exponential, rather than a linear rate. The good side of this is that as this power increases the costs of the technology actually go down. So what is the impact of this rapid rate of change on our workplaces and the job roles of people who work in them? I guess this leads me on to my second reflection that underpinned many of the presentations; that is the idea of disruption to peoples comfort zones with respect to when, where, how, and, most importantly, why they work. Many see this disruption as adversity and a threat to the way things have been done in the past. So the question of resilience in times of rapid change appeared in several presentations. Different speakers gave different angles on the ways to handle this, and the various fields of activity that they were engaged in. One aspect is our appraisal of what is considered an adverse event, and the ways we think about this (cognition), and consequently react (behave) to this event. As Jill Klein, one of our keynotes, defined resilience as “the ability to cope with unexpected changes and challenges”. A number of speakers provided us with ways and means of building resilience, irrespective of the different environments in which they were operating. These ideas do not just apply to people, but also to all organisations, and in particular those that manage them. So resilience operates at various levels, not just the individual level.

The exponential growth of technological innovation means that most of us are having to learn that what we believed to be true for a long time is now wrong, a kind of future shock for us all. This has huge implications for the management of human resources in organisations, and to the profession of human resource management (HRM). What we have believed for a long time about the why, what, and how of HRM is now changing, and this rate of change is becoming faster! Some of the paradigms of HRM practice are already changing, particularly with respect to the more traditional notions of workplace planning, recruitment and selection, employment relations, performance appraisal management, people development, and voluntary and involuntary termination. No function is immune. The one common denominator from all of this is the importance of data analytics in the so-called Gig economy. The most powerful organisations in the world today are the digital organisations whose role is information management and data analytics. These are the growth areas. The key to these organisations is their ability to disrupt the status quo. It is at this level that whole organisations and industries face adversity and the ability to handle this adversity. Cameron Bagri from an economic point of view defines this as grumpflation, where different parts of the global economy are now going in different directions. With respect to New Zealand we are going through a big economic transition and the old drivers are now changing, New Zealand is strong and labour participation rates are high but we have a lot of skills mismatch, and productivity is not as high as it should be. In Bagri’s own terms the traffic lights on the economy are amber, and could go in either direction depending on what happens in the area of international trade.

This leads onto another reflection that of leadership in this new and changing landscape. This point was emphasised in John Allen’s thought provoking reflections on workplace leadership of the future where he suggests that the kind of top-down “heroic leadership” now no longer works because it does not respond to environmental change disruption. Nowadays in this environment you need to be less risk aversive, and many of our NZ organisations are still risk aversive. You actually learn from the mistakes that you make, this was echoed by many of the speakers, and is by no means new. In

this environment leaders have to be both visible and have values, because people are now looking for authenticity and real engagement by their leaders. Leaders in turn have to care about the people.

With respect to the power of data technology, Carmen Vicelich in her keynote on the power of data and technology suggested that the most powerful organisations are those who leverage data technology and the most important driver of this technology is human (customer) expectations; so customer centrality is about leveraging the power of technology to solve people’s problems. In many large organisations currently the biggest problem is the silos within those organisations that do not talk to each other, and who compete with each other. So there is a need to reshape business to put the customer at the centre, and customer data are an asset that needs protection, and organisations need to design strategies to achieve this data protection; this is still a growing and evolving area of data management.

People are often sceptical about new technology and justify their laggedness, in terms of the inhumanity of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). Simon Tubman in an interesting presentation entitled “But I am not a robot” described the recent publication of the report “AI shaping a future New Zealand” as being optimistic but comes with a warning, and that is we need to be prepared. The human element is still very important: both customers and employees need human interaction, and the leadership challenge is to establish trust in organisations. This is a challenge for HR specialists because people are not resources they are humans! This theme was also emphasised by social entrepreneur Andrew Nichol and his concurrent session on becoming an HR (human radical) professional. The term human resource was coined in the 1960s and subsequently is rooted in employment legislation. As we were reminded earlier in the keynote presentation on the inter-generational shift by Holly Ransom, people who were born in the 1980s and late 90s now comprise 50% of the total workforce. The latest poll of these millennial’s suggest that 63% of millennial’s are simply not engaged, and only 15% report that they are engaged in their workplaces. These workforce members are more concerned with effectiveness rather than efficiency, and are more focused on the why they are working, rather than the what and how. This is the digital generation where instant feedback is essential. This has huge implications so far as performance management and feedback is concerned. Because of the emphasis on the why, companies in the future must include all employees in their work contracts, not just employees as defined in the employment legislation, which is always way behind the realities of the modern workplaces. Perhaps for me one of the most relevant and optimistic applications of the technological advances was the very applied keynote presentation by Lance O’ Sullivan when he described his journey as a medical practitioner in developing a program known as a digital health service in South Auckland. To me this really put into a concrete applied aspect of many of the ideas discussed in the other presentations to actually save lives by taking the medical service to the patients (customers) in their communities – a complete reversal of the current medical model with a patient has to visit the medical fraternity. This to me was an absolute gem of an example of putting the why first, and using the benefits of the new digital economy to bring the medical services online to the patients, who otherwise cannot afford to seek medical advice. A very exciting yet sobering example of how the Gig economy with all its robotics and artificial intelligence rather than replacing people at work can and will serve humankind after all, and in the end save lives rather than ignore them.

On that note I can end my report Leo Tolstoy’s quote shared by Simon Tubman: “The soul meaning of life is to serve humanity.”

Paul Toulson is a Distinguished Fellow of HRINZ, an Associate Professor of Human Resources Management at Massey University and a Manawatu Branch Committee Member

Conference Review – Eleri Oldman

The 2018 NZ HR Conference and Expo “The Future of Work”, was a thought provoking and valuable learning experience. As expected, the conference had a big focus on where the future of work is heading and what that will look like. From a student perspective, it was interesting to attend and hear people’s thoughts on what the future might look like. The Conference and Expo really bridged the gap between the theory learnt at University and the nature of the current job market and where it is heading.

The conference kicked off with welcome function. This was an awesome opportunity to meet other student ambassadors from around the country and chat to them. It was inspiring to hear what other student ambassadors where doing on their campuses and to hear how they have found the experience.

With Te Radar as the MC, the conference started with a bang. Lots of jokes and laughs were shared while we went through formalities before getting into the first day. The highlight of the first day for me was the talk given by Stephen Scheeler, centred around disruptive leadership. It was very interesting to hear from someone who had been in the centre of Silicon Valley amongst the rise of Facebook. The lessons learnt across his time put a focus on customer obsession versus customer centric, he also offered lessons for leaders on how to succeed.

One of the main lessons he offered is that ‘everyone needs a vision’. As an aspiring HR professional, I think it is interesting to learn this lesson at take it into the workforce, defining my vision and then inspiring others to find their vision will form the basis of successful leadership. This message is something that was reinforced by Holly Ransom, although she had a focus on the intergenerational shift in the workforce with regards to millennials, she put across the message the everyone needs to find their ‘why’. Our ‘why’ is what drives our motivation, connecting this to the workforce to empower people is something I learnt through the conference.

The Expo provided a great opportunity to network with stall holders and learn about what businesses are doing in the face of all these technological changes. I would like to give a special mention to Open Polytechnic, not only did I learn about what they do with digital learning platforms, but I also won a barista coffee machine from them. Upon leaving the conference I felt inspired and optimistic about the future of work and what this might hold for me and the other student ambassadors. One overall message was clear upon leaving the conference. This message was:

He aha te mea nui o te ao
What is the most important thing in the world?
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata
It is the people, it is the people, it is the people

I left with the message that while the future of work is changing, the most important thing within this change is people. The Conference and Expo was a valuable learning and networking experience and I look forward any future conferences and bumping into fellow HR student ambassadors again.

Eleri Oldman is the Wakato Region Student Ambassador. For more information about becoming a Student Ambassador please contact [email protected].