#Disrupt HR: What is changing in the HR world?

Last Thursday I attended a HR networking event, ‘Disrupt HR’, hosted by the Ayers Group and Casual Films at the Grant Thornton Offices in New York City.

The focus of the event was all in the title, ‘Disrupt HR’, think a collection of 12, 5 minute Ted Talks on HR based topics/trends – aimed at challenging the HR function. It was really insightful to hear from both HR and business professionals on what the HR community needs to start considering to ensure they’re consistently adding value to businesses.

Topics from the event included: clarifying wellness programs, how to un-link performance from compensation, creating effective talent pools, the use of gamification in L&D, maximising ROI when hiring, diversity and inclusion (specifically in global organisations), working with ADHD and leadership styles driven through self-worth.

One of the most common, overarching themes was ‘how do we modify established HR practices to better align to the future work space’ – specifically to the millennial demographic.

In a recent YouTube posting titled Millennials in the Workplace, Simon Sinek highlighted the correlation between millennials not being able to create meaningful relationships to a decrease in job satisfaction. This has always been something of interest to me, as a millennial, a former HR Generalist and now a specialist HR recruiter.

Often I speak to candidates (from all demographics, not just millennials) that are disengaged, not challenged or feel they are not ‘making an impact’ in their workplaces. As a result they often look for a new role, without really understanding ‘why’. It’s great to know the HR community are looking for innovative and fresh ideas designed to target these issues, from the use of gamification in training & development to re-defining the performance management process so that it specifically aims to improve individual, not just company outputs.

Ultimately it comes down to better understanding what you want in a career – both intrinsically and extrinsically.

Two speakers touched on this in their talks, Bill Jensen covered ‘Simplicity: The Most Disruptive Force of All’ – essentially keep your plan/goal simple and Taryn Stejskal discussed ‘Authentic Living and Leadership’ – be true, accountable and realistic to yourself, which were my two favourites from the day!

In closing, what do I think is disrupting HR? It is ourselves not knowing what we want! If you are feeling disengaged in your current role, take some time to do some self-reflection. Understand what is important to you and then your search for new opportunities will be a lot simpler.

Rosh is a senior consultant at Elliott Scott HR, a specialist HR recruitment agency with offices in Dubai, Hong Kong, London, New York, Sao Paulo and Singapore.

If you would like to learn more about the HR market in the US, please get in touch via Twitter @Rosh_HR, my LinkedIn or by email: rj@elliottscotthr.com