As organizations embrace how some talent will come and go based on their own freedom preferences, there will be certain core employees who represent a more permanent foundation of the company. Retaining these people will be imperative and employers will take a more proactive approach in shaping the individual employee experience within the organization.

This design thinking will lead companies away from structuring around function and processes, and rather center them around the employee, to create a compelling, enjoyable, and frictionless work environment.

• Intelligent, personalized and self-directed learning platforms 
• AI-based employee coaching 
• Data-driven intelligent career management and talent mobility 

Although a source of inspiration for funny Dilbert comics, unnecessary hierarchies create massive inefficiency (≈$3 trillion per year) and frustration.

This trend of flattening organizations will continue to spread in favor of empowering small teams and individual contributors.

• Automated/AI-based people management 
• Tools to simplify and improve asynchronous and remote teamwork 
• Digital services to manage corporate culture development and alignment 

The general perception of HR isn’t all sunshine, and many see it as the evil bureaucrats who bring bad news to people getting laid off. But as the war for top quality talent intensifies, HR will transition its role to become a key organizational asset.

HR decisions and tactics around individuals will become more decentralized and sit within teams; every team lead will “work in HR” and will own their own talent management.

• Automated candidate sourcing of passive talent 
• AI-based succession management 
• HR analytics platform 

Companies will look at individual tasks as opposed to entire jobs. It’s unlikely machines will be able to do everything in the foreseeable future and instead, the winning model will incorporate machine + human where part of the value creation will come from machines and part from humans.