Digital
Author: Future Manager Research Center In the past, the relationship between European companies and digitization has always been quite fluctuating. It must not have been easy to keep up with new technologies and digital methodologies, especially for the more conservative who are used to working “the old-fashioned way”. However (and the recent pandemic is proof of this), the need to get closer and closer to the digital world is now essential for those who want to continue to be competitive in the business world. This process is underway and it will take further years to settle. For these reasons, the managerial figure of Digital HR is increasingly acquiring a key role in the corporate design of the largest companies, proposing a brand new digital mindset. He is one of the main proponents of business transformation, carrying out functional activities such as being responsible for communication, managing personnel, stimulating productivity, monitoring leave and absences or undertake recruitment campaigns. These professional figures must be extremely flexible and proactive, they should possess skills in data analysis, marketing, economics and much more. In short, they should be a sort of “hasher” of the company. The intervention of a Digital HR takes industrial processes to a new level and digital technology improves connectivity, compatibility and collaboration, making the company more productive and efficient than ever. Obviously, a Digital HR cannot be left alone in managing this huge change process of a company, indeed it is extremely important that the leaders of each company (whether small or large) prepare and follow all other employees so that they understand the need to welcome this transformation that involves them in their entirety with positivity and optimism. The support of a CEO is essential because, in the end, it is evident that it is not only a concrete and tangible change, but also a great cultural change.
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Author: Future Manager Research Center Industry 4.0, also known as the fourth industrial revolution, has taken root in all respects, for this reason industries need to aim for digitalization if they want to remain competitive, agile and efficient. Industry 4.0 takes the emphasis on digital technology from recent decades to a whole new level with the help of interconnectivity through the Internet of Things (IoT), a concept that refers to connections between physical objects like sensors or machines and the Internet. But not only that, the new digital approach also affects access real-time data, and the introduction of cyber-physical systems, all to lead to a fully automated and interconnected industrial production. The new digital technologies have a profound impact in terms of data use, computing power and connectivity, and are expressed in big data, open data, machine-to-machine and cloud computing. Once the data have been collected, however, it is necessary to derive value: today only 1% of the data collected is used by companies, which could instead obtain advantages starting from “machine learning”, that is, from machines that improve their performance by “learning” from data gradually collected and analyzed. It is a challenge that is also cultural, to which the entrepreneurial fabric of small and medium-sized enterprises together with public and private subjects is called transversally. The attitude and requirements that are required of 4.0 professionals are also changing: they are called upon to handle these recent technologies and, at the same time, to transform themselves into analysts to develop innovative formulas capable of benefiting from the mass of big data which will constitute the “collective memory”. The knowledge and skills required to face these challenges are increasingly high and engineers must face scenarios of increasing complexity: it is their task to guide and accompany entrepreneurs in the process of growth and change. Drawing hasty conclusions on how much this new revolution will benefit is perhaps premature, but one certain fact is within everyone’s reach: during the COVID19 pandemic, the new industry and the technologies connected to it proved to be fundamental to counter the crisis. Being 4.0 in times of pandemics is no longer optional, in fact investments in digital technology have guaranteed industrial continuity even in the presence of a health emergency. Companies that have implemented technologies for the digitalization of the process have had a sort of competitive advantage, an acceleration towards a new normal in terms of productivity and competitiveness. In light of this analysis, one thing is certain: the ideal company of today combines the excellence of industrial engineering with technological innovation. The most attractive candidate is the one who has mastered the computer applications that govern the machines and automatic systems intended for the most diverse types of production of the companies involved in the innovation of Industry 4.0.
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Author: Future Manager Research Center For some time now, all companies have been tending towards almost total digitization. The human resources sector is also interested in developing digital culture within its organization. In this regard, the Digital HR manager has the task of implementing the internal training levers, taking care of marketing and communication to ensure this change. With the digital conversion of organizations, the human resources department will face new challenges. This innovation process causes changes in the work tools used by raising the question of new skills to be acquired for the employees concerned. Before presenting some positive aspects of digitalization, it should be specified that to be effectively competitive by exploiting Digital HR, it is essential to have a valid basic strategy accompanied by careful planning. At this point, the benefits generated by the path to digital in the area of Recruiting will be evident and tangible. In terms of recruiting, digital technology enables HR to generalize the use of social networks as a key part of candidate procurement processes. Through technologies related to artificial intelligence, the opportunity to scan, in a short period of time, a very high number of CVs will be a reality. In addition, the algorithms facilitate the search and identification of niche candidates with specific skills. Digital HR also generates the emergence of new working methods that eliminate time and distance constraints. Digitization now allows us to react even to a global pandemic, smart working is a clear example of how the HR Digital Revolution is now also a social reality. Those who deal with HR have no reason to be alarmed: such a technological evolution will not threaten their stay in the company and moreover it will not make the performance of their activities more complex, on the contrary, it will be a step forward in the construction of their skills and consequently benefit for their career. As always, in these cases the company will enjoy greater efficiency in its HR processes.
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Author: Future Manager Research Center The search for talent is becoming more and more complex and the selection steps more intense. Due to that, it becomes essential, for those who take care of the human resources department of a company, to find and use new digital tools that help speeding up the process. One of the tools that are spreading most rapidly in this area are webinars, educational or informative sessions whose participation takes place remotely through an internet connection. Webinars can have multiple purposes. For instance, they can be used by HR managers to gather, all together, the candidates selected based on their CV, so that they can explain in detail what the job position is. In fact, job descriptions aren’t always exhaustive enough for those who want to apply. Once again, during a webinar, the HR manager has the opportunity to provide more specific information. Candidates have the opportunity to intervene and submit their questions regarding the position, so as to have a complete overview of the role they could play. But that’s not all: for a company that operates globally and that is looking for resources on an international scale, webinars are a highly strategic tool, as they allow candidates to participate from anywhere in the world. At this point, the person is fully aware of everything that concerns the position offered by the company and can therefore make a conscious decision on their future. This instrument facilitates the selection of resources that will be more encouraged to continue in the recruitment process and less inclined to reject the job offer, as they are already informed and aware of every aspect regarding the role they are applying for. This kind of solution guarantees the recruitment of high-potential talents who are extremely motivated, thus ensuring the company a significant return on investment and job retention. Due to these reasons, every company should be aware of the importance that a digital and technological approach can have within HR processes, especially after the global pandemic. This way, the Talent Acquisition Process will be accelerated, thus leading the company to save money and time.
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Author: Future Manager Research Center Nowadays who is not subscribed to at least one social network? Although in the first decade of the 21st century the generations of the so-called boomers had been reticent towards social networks, now things have definitely changed. In fact, they too have learned to familiarize themselves with these new technological tools and, we can certainly say, that the use they make of them is almost comparable to that of younger millennials. Recruiters are particularly aware of this, as they consult and study the candidates’ profiles on a daily basis in the personnel research and selection, also through these powerful means of communication and information sharing. This phenomenon is defined as “Social Media Profiling” or also “Social Screening”. On the one hand, it can be extremely helpful in selecting the most suitable talent for business needs, on the other, sometimes the abuse of social media by HR managers can lead to real cases of stalking that often escalate into discrimination of various kinds. In fact, by having access to the candidates’ contents and information on their social networks’ profile, recruiters can decide to exclude them from the selection processes on the basis of real prejudices. The problem arises when the limit is crossed: while selecting a talent, some recruiters make their choice, by carefully analyzing the candidate’s personal profile instead of his professional curriculum. Clearly, not all social platforms facilitate these abuses. For example, social screening proves to be a precious source for the acquisition of talents on LinkedIn, a social network that contains professional pages and profiles. In these cases, privacy is absolutely protected. The case of digital platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram is different: most of the users registered on these social networks use them for personal purposes, to maintain contacts with friends and relatives. Many of these share posts with a deeply private and emotional connotation, thus far from being useful for completing their candidate profile for a position. Furthermore, it is not possible to define the ideology or the real temper of a candidate from a post on social networks and, therefore, only on assumptions. In addition, it is potentially illegal for recruiters to base their own evaluation criteria on private life’s aspects. It is understandable that an HR manager will try by all means to steal the personality of a candidate in a well-rounded way. However, given that there is the possibility of limiting the visibility of a social account only to selected people, be careful and protect your privacy. A Talent Acquisition project is the result of a fair and impartial evaluation by the HR staff, who should focus on the actual skills and abilities of the candidates and not on their “cultural” suitability. The only real way to understand if they are talented resources is not to spy on their social profile, but rather to test them, perhaps through a targeted interview.
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Author: Future Manager Research Center Videogames have shaped the childhoods of millions of players for about three generations, giving birth to a real culture in its own right: nerd culture. This phenomenon has its roots in the fifties with the first experiments in the videogame field. It was closely related to the evolution of computers, which were certainly not designed as a pastime. However, some brilliant American engineers decided to put this new technology at the service of entertainment: in 1958, the first videogame in history, Tennis for Two, was born. In the coming years, many changes affected the sector: in the seventies, the launch of the arcade mode made videogames extremely cheap and accessible. Thanks to the development of microprocessors, the first consoles for domestic use were designed. Instead of having a single game saved in the system, they offered a theoretically infinite number of videogame adventures thanks to a series of interchangeable cartridges. From a graphic and narrative point of view, to continue in the game, it became necessary to overcome increasingly difficult levels and the goal was to constantly beat your own record. Videogames turned out to be incredibly compelling even over an extended period of time. In the eighties, new ideas were developed: mobile consoles were born and the graphics became more and more three-dimensional, in order to give the player an experience as realistic as possible. From the 2000s, engineers pushed their limits by combining the world of videogames with artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Today, videogames allow you to create real communities thanks to online and streaming connections and they can also be accessible to anyone, given the spread of smartphone games. Many young people, who grew up with the nerd culture, started to aspire to a career in the technical design and development of the games of their childhood. Surely, embarking on a journey in engineering and computer science can be the first step towards the realization of this goal. Professional coding courses are also useful for learning programming languages at best. However, hard skills alone are not enough to be successful in this area: in fact, a good videogame comes from the creative flair of the programmer.
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Author: Future Manager Research Center The spread of the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of digital tools in the candidates’ selection. However, even before this critical moment in history, it was already widely digitized. It cannot be excluded that the selection methods of the future will also follow the trail of digital innovation and change. Among the tools largely adopted in this period, the Virtual Job Fairs, also known as Virtual Hiring Events, emerge. They have been implemented for years in company strategies aimed at recruitment. These new generation events have actually been on the rise for years thanks to their ease of access and because they avoid any loss of time and money for all those participants who, to conduct the interview, have to pay high transport costs and undergo many hours of travel. By not having to follow a rigid scheme at a space-time level, they allow multiple talents from different regions or nations to connect to the event and take part in it. The convenience of these events also concerns the available tools: depending on the needs of the company and the candidates, they can connect to virtual fairs via any type of mobile device provided. This allows an agile participation in the selections, as well as a high economic saving for both human resources managers and candidates. Even for companies that need to fill available job vacancies, Virtual Hiring Events represent an effective and convenient instrument. They allow businesses to relate in a short time with a large number of talents and, clearly, getting in touch with a larger pool of candidates automatically translates into a higher probability of finding the right resource for the team. Thanks to this type of events, the company also has the opportunity to sponsor and promote its brand, creating a considerable competitive advantage. In fact, the organisation of trade shows and virtual events involves a careful and well-designed advertising and marketing campaign, which aims to attract as many candidates as possible, make an “audience” and strengthen the so-called corporate brand awareness.
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Author: Future Manager Research Center The issue of cyber security should be one of the main concerns of a company, especially in the digital age. For this reason, the human resources departments and the security teams in collaboration with the Digital HR work hard to guarantee the protection of a company from external threats and to maintain a level of privacy for its employees. Last year there has been a 35% increase in cases in which companies suffered attacks by hackers who have stolen their data or have caused damage. What is the reason for such a huge increase of these criminal acts and how do these digital pirates operate? The global upheaval caused by COVID-19 is a key element to grasp better what lies behind this disturbing fact. It is well known that many employees suddenly found themselves having to work remotely, without the ability to plan transition programs that take into consideration digital security. Just like in the case of holidays, hackers have seized the opportunity to further rage in a global stress scenario. Studies and surveys show that there are clear preferences regarding the most affected departments: a growing point of interest is the theft of credentials and, in the case of human resources, the appropriation of protected databases. In these cases, the leader of a company fears the possibility to submit to blackmail or ransom demands for encrypted files. Companies were therefore easy targets for cybercriminals as they were more inclined to pay any ransoms in order not to further aggravate their already compromised situation. Cybercriminals have acted with precise attack techniques, including suspicious and malicious e-mails containing URLs that were entered with the intent of concealing credentials, a famous scam known as phishing attack. These outlaws thus leverage the constant need for information and human curiosity, also exploiting the need of the populations to stay as updated as possible on COVID-19. To avoid these unpleasant inconveniences it is important to implement protection policies (if you have the need and the possibility even sophisticated), in addition it will seem trivial but given the frequency with which passwords are stolen or found, it is essential to combine passwords with other forms of authentication, perhaps adopting multi-factor authentication.
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Author: Future Manager Research Center Gamification has become a successful strategy in the selection and recruitment of personnel, although it is still very much discussed and controversial. Purists and conservatives also exist in the world of Human Resources and they tend to look with a certain diffidence at those practices that are children of the new generations. What is so revolutionary about Gamification and how can it be applied to the Talent Acquisition sphere? First of all the term Gamification means the use of typical game mechanisms within scenarios that are not commonly thought of as playful, namely, in business processes, in recruitment, in training or in development, with the aim of solving problems in a less conventional way. More specifically, this new strategy, if used in the recruitment of young talents, has the power to shake the cobwebs out from all those archaic recruiting processes. Taking the game seriously, pertinently, and conscientiously can for sure bring more than one advantage to selecting a new recruit. Gamification saves time (it is superfluous to specify that time is money, isn’t it?), slightly postponing the phase of the individual interview, in this case preceded by a test during which it is possible to propose well-designed games developed in order to test certain skills, so as to be able to carry out a first large screening of candidates according to their needs. Thanks to this approach it is possible to verify very specific skills, developing games that test in detail those skills required by a company. It is also an option that contributes a lot to defuse the tension typical of a formal interview. A choice of this type can also turn out to be a strategic move to beat the competition between companies, increasing the competitiveness of those who use it: it is important to attract candidates of great potential, to do so it is essential to demonstrate that you are a modern company, open to change and in step with trends. The demonstration of the extensive use of Gamification is provided to us by the US military, with future recruits being tested through a highly realistic virtual simulator of military operations called Battlespace. The best will be selected by the score they receive. A clarification, however, is a mandatory: it must be very clear that to “gamify” the recruitment processes it is necessary to rely on competent personnel who will carry out the process by taking care of every aspect of the matter. Improvising you as gamification experimenters may not bring you any useful results. It is a very serious strategic plan that requires a great specialization, so be very careful and remember that it is not like playing Risk with your friends!
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Author: Future Manager Research Center Discrimination is a phenomenon that, unfortunately, still continues both within the work environment and in the personnel selection processes. In fact, many candidates report discrimination in the hiring processes: HR managers of these companies have excluded them because of their age, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance or skin color. Moreover, some women say they were not hired due to the fact that they were pregnant or they had children to support. Although it is known that personal characteristics should never affect the judgment of a recruiter, sometimes they can expresses involuntary prejudices, not acquired based on a direct experience with the individual person, but by general assessments on the group to which they belong. By the adoption of algorithms aimed at the automation of the hiring process, it is possible to minimize discrimination, excluding personal characteristics irrelevant to the position, in favor of the recruitment of employees who represent the best fit for the role. In a situation where a person’s job may be in the hands of external factors, there is a need for digitization of HR processes. Artificial intelligence deals with the removal of prejudices, intentional and unintentional, of the HR staff of a company, giving priority to meritocracy and penalizing favoritism. The AI mechanisms are made to be inclusive, in order to ensure diversity in the working environment that allows a drive towards innovation and an increase in performance. Although HR digitalization has led to considerable advantages from this point of view, it is impossible to disregard the human factor when choosing a candidate. A selection based on an algorithm can be useful in the initial screening of CVs, where qualified candidates, who fit for the role, will not be denied the opportunity to be included in the next steps of selection. Subsequently, the recruiter will have to go beyond the experiences and the education of the individual, assessing the candidate’s personality and his suitability for the job position. The right combination of these two approaches can ensure the recruitment of highly qualified candidates, who are also suitable from a personality point of view, while safeguarding the diversity and variety of the work environment.
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