In the 1960s “Jetsons” cartoon, part of the fun was imagining life 40 years into the future—vacations on Venus, push-button food, flying cars that folded themselves into a briefcase, office buildings with moving walkways, and George Jetson’s three-day work week.
Eight years into the 21st century, Jetson-like holographic phones or a TV you can materialize from still don’t exist, but one member of the Society for Human Resource Management’s Technology and HR Management Special Expertise Panel foresees other changes ahead in virtual communication.
“Some of the biggest shifts we’re gong to see this year [are] a wholesale movement toward mobile [communication information],” says Gerry Crispin, SPHR, a principal at the consulting firm CareerXroads.
“It’s going to move off the Internet,” with mobile phones becoming “the primary source of communication and information gathering.”
“If you expect people to connect to your web site, and your web site is not mobile-enabled, you will see a dramatic drop in your traffic—and what does this mean?” Crispin asked rhetorically.
“One thing it means is there’s not a single company in the United States whose corporate web site staffing pages are fully mobile and able to allow for research and application by candidates. By the end or this year, all competitive corporations will be mobile and enabled, he told SHRM Online.
“This is a very, very big deal and Asia and Europe are already ahead of us,” he added.
Crispin has written a somewhat tongue-in-check blog entry, Revisit 2008 Predictions—Recycled for 2009, but thinks it contains some serious kernels of truth for the coming year.
One such prediction is that closed, online affinity-specific networks will explode.
“You’re really going to reach critical mass in 2009,” said Crispin, who belongs to 15 social networks.
“Instead of a few private associations having social networks, most of them will [have them] by the end of 2009. It will reach critical mass and begin to impact some of the open public networks,” such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, “and some of the money that people spend trying to advertise through these central sources will now start moving to some of these new areas where you can further target the groups you’re interested in,” he observed.
“As these private networks,” such as professional and alumni social networking sites, “gain traction, individuals who belong to several of these private networks will integrate them and pay attention to what’s happening to them” more so than the public social sites.
He foresees “a huge shift away from PC-based communications” to text messaging and mobile access of the web. This, he said, “has a huge implication for HR in terms of any time, any place, anywhere kind of computing.”
This, he said, “will force [recruiters] to make themselves more amenable to applying, engaging and screening from a mobile phone and continuing to raise the bar for corporations in terms of why do people have to come to an office to work.”
Other predictions, from other sources, include:
- An individual’s professional knowledge will become obsolete almost as quickly as it’s acquired, making job-related education a necessity for nearly every worker. (The Futurist magazine).
- An increase in more students exploring niche or unusual majors such as sustainable business or nanotechnology, instead of merely majoring in business. (The Futurist magazine).
- Greater demands on HR to be business people, including having competencies for finding and retaining talent and managing contract and freelance employees, says MotivationConnect365.
- HR will play a more significant role in the organization’s leadership development and will have a part in formulating strategy and in executive discussion. (MotivationConnect365)
- Flexibility will no longer be optional, with employees expecting short- and long-term flexibility options. (MotivationConnect365)
- The talent market will look more like eBay—job candidates will put themselves up for bid for specific work, hours and duration, and name the minimum acceptable price and the benefits and perks. (MotivationConnect365)
- Companies will remain selective in planning workforce, pay and benefit cuts as they anticipate a decline in their company’s business performance in 2009. (Mercer global survey).
Kathy Gurchiek is associate editor for HR News. She can be reached at kathy.gurchiek@shrm.org.
