I would like to see a great deal of change in talent acquisition in 2021. The biggest rely on you as a TA practitioner being courageous.
I would like you to create systemic change in your organization to build a more robust and resilient economy that serves people vs. people whose purpose is to serve an economy. Building companies with Benefit Corporation status, becoming a certified B Corporation, and forming profitable worker cooperatives like the 14 billion dollars earned per year at the Mondragon Corporation in Spain. These are business models that provide a context for people to have great jobs that support healthy and resilient communities.
1. Choice making in AI. Human beings accept machines making amoral choices like traffic lights changing with a synchronized precision or our thermostat changing the temperature with my coming and going. However, people are opposed to machines making moral choices. It is time the TA community pushes back at HR technology that promises to make choices that have a legal, moral, or ethical foundation.
2. Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity: At the fundamental level, all inequities around diversity, inclusion, and equity (DE&I) start with choices. Thankfully, it has become clear to business leaders that the moral, ethical outcomes gained from an organization with more excellent DE&I manifest into higher productivity, agility, and retention, to name a few of the benefits. I look forward to TA playing a more prominent role in mitigating biases that do not have relevance in hiring the best talent possible.
3. Bridging the Skills Gap. For too long, we have suffered from cognitive dissonance and an unwillingness to address the skills gap. Systemic problems underpin the shortage of human beings who have the skills needed to get today’s work done. 2020 is the year when all stakeholders come together to repair this problem. TA must play a part in advocating for the organizations to engage in partnering with the government and education to better prepare people for the available jobs today and tomorrow.
Lorne Epstein hosts the weekly workplace radio program, The Lorne Epstein Show, where national experts share their workplace insights. Lorne is the author of You’re Hired Interview Skills to Get the Job, which has been downloaded over 500,000 times worldwide.