The role of human resources is shifting dramatically—and the challenge facing HR leadership is clear: How do you create an agile, next-generation HR function fit for the digital era?
Human resources, once viewed as a dependable cornerstone of business, is morphing into one of the most critical and dynamic functions in any organization. As companies become bionic—blending human and technological capabilities—the primary barrier to progress is not technology. Rather, it is finding the right human capabilities, skills, and talent to unleash the power of technology.
Companies with next-generation HR capabilities deliver significantly better financial performance than companies weaker in those areas. To ensure that HR is a strategic partner to the business, companies must address five fundamental questions:
Armed with these insights, companies can reinvent human resources for the digital era by excelling in three areas: digital HR, employee life cycle, and HR and people analytics.
BCG’s comprehensive digital HR transformation methodology focuses on the strategy, processes, governance, organization, capability, and systems critical to HR leadership.
BCG Platinion’s Implementation Readiness Review establishes a strong foundation for an HRIS cloud migration and reduces risk during implementation. We offer deep technical and HR consulting expertise to help you evaluate and select the HRIS system best tailored to your needs—and then assist in implementation and rollout.
OrgBuilder helps clients actively resolve complexity and avoid bureaucracy to ensure successful implementation of any organizational change, including digital HR transformation.
Savvy use of digital tools and technologies—such as robotic process automation and AI—helps HR turbocharge performance by digitizing the function.
BCG’s employee journey methodology allows HR personnel to optimize the employee experience over the entire employee life cycle—from employee onboarding to reskilling and on through and beyond retirement.
In partnership with Burning Glass Technologies, BCG has analyzed 95 million jobs and skills to assess the demand for jobs and skills across the US economy. Our employee life cycle consultants pinpoint where demand is growing, enabling HR leadership to anticipate job disruptions, including job transitions and reskilling opportunities that might not be immediately apparent.
Employee journey mapping helps organizations identify digital transformation opportunities for human resources, strengthen employee retention, and build a strong HR strategy.
Our HR and people analytics tools generate quantitative—and actionable—data on what people do at work, how a transformation will affect their work, and how changes in behavior can improve financial performance. We help our clients anticipate future HR trends and prepare their organization and workforce.
BCG’s Strategic Workforce Planning (SWP) tool leverages predictive HR and people analytics to forecast workforce needs, identify capabilities gaps, and develop strategies to build the workforce of the future. Our HR consultants work in partnership with data analysts to enable a shift from capacity-driven and role-based planning to a skills-based perspective.
With Workplace Analytics, Microsoft and BCG are activating behavioral change. We offer data-driven interventions to unlock the potential for collaboration and productivity and to quantify the impact of transformation projects.
BCG’s WISE—Workforce Inclusion Scorecard and Evaluation—provides transparency into how diverse employees are represented across the employee life cycle: recruiting, retention, attrition, and promotion. The WISE dashboard can be used to set diversity goals and to predict and track progress.
Diversity analytics can be explored further through DIAL—Diversity & Inclusion Assessment for Leadership—an online survey tool that measures how employees assess a company’s progress in diversity and inclusion. DIAL identifies what works well and where action is needed to enable companies to drive meaningful change. Its results can be compared against benchmarks in more than ten industries
The function has a critical role to play in building future-ready organizations. To meet that challenge, HR needs to transform itself.
In today’s competitive business environment, HR organizations need to adopt a more innovative and active role. Four specific measures can help.
HR executives are embracing disruption in the way organizations work and are transforming the HR function along the way.
Companies won’t have balanced workforces unless they approach diversity like any other business priority, with clear metrics to understand the gaps and targeted interventions to fix them.
Properly deployed, people analytics can help unlock the full force of human resources and a business transformation and spur leaps in performance.
HR leaders must take on a more strategic role in response to big changes, such as the need to harness powerful data analytics and deal with a shift toward freelance work.
