The role of HR and IOs. The Workplace 2025

The Role of HR and IO Psychologists: Workplace 2025 | Govender, A

GOVENDER, A 1

The Role of HR and IO Psychologists: Workplace 2025

Ashlin Govender

(2016)


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 3

THE INDUSTRIAL AND ORGANISATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST (I-O) VERSUS

THE HUMAN RESOURCES (HR) PRACTITIONER ........................................................... 3

THE WORKPLACE – 2025 ..................................................................................................... 4

Hero leadership to collective leadership .............................................................................. 7

Intellectual property to agile co-creativity ........................................................................ 8

Employment value proposition to personal value proposition .................................. 10

Sameness to segmentation ..................................................................................................... 11

Fatigue to sustainability ........................................................................................................... 14

Persuasion to education ........................................................................................................... 18

CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................... 19

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................... 21


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INTRODUCTION

The aim of this literature review is three-fold. First, the scope of practice

of the I-O psychologist versus the HR standards and competencies of the

HR practitioner will be overviewed. Secondly, six key shifts in HR will be

highlighted, with specific emphasis on the characteristics of the workplace

2025 and the forces that are shaping work and talent attraction,

retention, strategic human resource management and performance

management. The impact of the workplace 2025 on organisations from

an HR and I-O perspective within the global and South African contexts

will be examined.

THE INDUSTRIAL AND ORGANISATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST (I-O)

VERSUS THE HUMAN RESOURCES (HR) PRACTITIONER

In terms of the HPCSA’s Scope of Practice for Industrial Psychologists,

the industrial psychologist’s duties include research design,

implementation and reporting; imparting their professional advice on key

issues within their scope of practice; assist in the formulation and

implementation of policy and interventions pertaining to I-O; designing

and implementing training interventions and interventions aimed at

diagnosing poor performance; and employing psychometric assessment


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for various purposes. All I-O Psychologists must be registered with the

Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA).

On the other hand, HR Practitioners can voluntarily register with the

South African Board for Personnel Practitioners (SABPP). Thirteen

standards and competencies form the scope of work of an HR

practitioner as follows: strategic HR management, talent management,

HR risk management, workforce planning, learning and development,

performance management, reward and recognition, employee wellness,

employment relations management, organisation development, HR

service delivery, HR technology, and HR metrics. HR Practitioners can

practice in any one of the particular areas or become a generalist that

are exposed to all standards and competencies.

THE WORKPLACE – 2025

There are emerging forces that are shaping the planet and which will

have a profound impact on the world of work by the year 2025 and

beyond (Gratton, 2011). To illustrate the effects of these forces, by the

year 2020, migration will be doubled to Europe; more than half of the

world’s companies will compete on a service basis; price fluctuations and

social unrest will be caused as a result of demand exceeding the supply of

natural resources; India’s demand for steel will quadruple and China’s


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double; cloud services is expected to earn $241 billion in global revenue;

and 5 billion people could have access to the internet (Deloitte, 2013).

Fast forward to 2030, the world population will grow to 8.3 billion

people with a growth rate in the developed world growing at a pace

seven times slower than that of the developing world; new professions

will spurn; China will be the world’s largest economy; the collective

economy of the ‘Next 11’ countries which include South Africa, Turkey,

and Indonesia will overtake the EU’s 27 countries; thought recognition

may come as a result of a 10,000 fold improvement in computing

power; and the worlds talent will predominantly come from China, India

and Brazil (Deloitte, 2013).

According to Gratton (2011), the nature of work in terms of what it is,

how it is done, where it is done and with whom it is done will change by

the year 2025 due to the influence of five major forces that will play an

increasing role in shaping work. These major forces exist in the dynamic

environment and comprise the accelerating trends of technology,

globalisation and carbon resources which have a dominant impact on the

world of world today; as well as accelerating demographic challenges and

societal trends that will be in full force by 2025.

Organisational success will be strongly influenced by how effective HR is

in responding to these dynamic forces. Boudreau and Ziskin (2011)


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highlight that HR’s future effectiveness will be defined by how well it

spans the multi-level boundaries of functional HR expertise, effective

organisations and the major forces of the dynamic environment. This

means that the degree to which HR initiatives are successful; which

include initiatives such as strategic human resources, talent management,

performance management and learning and development; will be

dependent upon how well HR incorporates organisational aspects such as

structure, leadership, social responsibility, diversity, sustainability, and

aspects of the dynamic environment which include globalisation, climate

change, geopolitics, labour markets etcetera into formulating,

implementing and evaluating HR decision-making and interventions. I-

O’s will assist HR well as their scope of work integrates with strategy in

terms of formulating strategy, assisting in the alignment of the

organisation with its strategic direction and implementing the desired

strategy (Henson, 2012). Furthermore, I-Os as scientists, will conduct

empirical research that will help inform HR and management decision-

making within the organisation.

According to Boudreau and Ziskin (2011), there are six shifts that will

constitute the future HR strategy, these shifts include a shift from hero

leadership to collective leadership, intellectual property to agile co-

creativity, employment value proposition to personal value proposition,

sameness to segmentation, fatigue to sustainability, and persuasion to


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education These shifts will now be discussed in more detail with regards

to the 2025 workplace:

Hero leadership to collective leadership

Due to the increasingly turbulent nature of the business environment, it

is very risky to solely depend on ‘hero’ leaders, the larger than life figures

that most admire and look up to, to drive organisational success and

sustainability. Instead, HR should strive to identify, nurture and embrace

leadership at all levels within the organisation by embracing and

promoting a culture of “shared” leadership. As greater numbers of people

are becoming knowledge workers and work in teams, with flatter

organisational structures, collective leadership will become more of a

norm. HR must also understand the dynamic environment as a

foreseeable trend will emerge where an increasing number of HR

strategists have backgrounds in other field such as economics and politics

(Boudreau & Ziskin, 2011). It is also important that HR professionals

possess certain competencies in the South African context that will assist

the organisation to achieve sustainability and success, such as professional

behaviour and leadership (leadership and personal credibility, solution

creation, interpersonal communication and innovation); service

orientation and execution (talent management, HR risk, HR metrics and


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HR service delivery); and business intelligence (strategic contribution, HR

business knowledge, HR business acumen and HR technology) (Schutte,

Barkhuizen & van der Sluis, 2015).

Intellectual property to agile co-creativity

This entails acknowledging and harnessing the trend that innovation and

creativity can come from anywhere in the organisation and not just from

traditionally assigned roles associated with same. Future strategic HR

should focus on creating innovative cultures that motivate staff to create

something bigger than themselves; utilising the power of social

networking to communicate and social media to distribute information

and innovate; and utilising crowdsourcing for input from people inside

and outside the organisation to provide solutions to complex issues

(Boudreau & Ziskin, 2011). South African organisations still need to fully

embrace the promise these technological innovations can contribute to

the workplace.

One aspect which will have a direct bearing on how creative one can be

and the degree to which organisations innovate and the speed to which

information is shared is technology. According to Gratton (2011),

technology has greatly reduced the cost of computing which has

simplified the manner in which work can be carried out, and which has


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replaced some work with robotics and complex data analytics. Increased

connectivity in the world has resulted in a greater capacity to share

knowledge and ideas across borders which may make the possibility of a

“global consciousness” possible in the future. Cloud technology, virtual

communications systems, robots and cognitive assistants will have a great

impact on the way in which work is done. Cloud technology will help

make available, applications, resources and services throughout the world

through its global infrastructure which will support innovation and result

in the talent of organisations being kept in the organisation’s meso-

environment of small businesses. Due to increased global connectivity,

more work will be performed virtually which will necessitate the use of

virtual communication systems which will include holograms and avatars.

Cognitive assistants are priority and bundling mechanisms that serve to

arrange and prioritise knowledge and tasks for workers, and which may

replace low to medium skilled jobs in the future. Both cognitive assistants

and robots may play a more influential role in manufacturing (Gratton,

2011).

Also affecting innovation is the increased standards in the quality of

education and the growth of multinational companies in the developing

markets, especially in China and India, which have resulted in the

creation of a global talent pool (Gratton, 2011). This will have a direct

impact on frugal and low-cost innovations which will become a more


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global phenomenon as these innovations will be developed primarily in

the developing markets and transferred to the rest of the world

(Gratton, 2011).

Employment value proposition to personal value proposition

An organisation’s stakeholders’ image of the organisation may even

surpass those of prospective employees in terms of importance to an

organisation, as upholding a positive organisational image in a volatile

business environment assumes a key strategic priority. Further, HR must

mass-customise the organisations value proposition to attract, develop

and retain specific “segments” of employees such as key talent or a

cohesion of generational cohorts (millennials in particular) than by merely

adopting a ‘blanket’ approach by say, branding the organisation as being

a family-friendly environment or being technologically advanced to

everyone (each segment has different needs) (Boudreau & Ziskin, 2011).

Gratton (2011) point to a generational cohesion in 2025, dominated by

millennials and generation X. Therefore, a strategic priority for HR is to

offer mass-customised value that speaks to each generational cohort’s

needs in order to ensure a fair mix of diversity that will inspire

knowledge sharing between the generations and a culture of open

innovation. Increased longevity will result in people still being productive


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into their 70s and 80s. Companies will have to embark on interventions

to shift mind-sets about older workers whilst seeking roles to

accommodate their meaningful contributions to the organisation. Due to

the different needs of the generations, pension provisions may be a source

of conflict between the generational cohorts, especially for the older

populations of the West. Millennials will possess increased authority and

influence in the workplace and will get their needs felt as a result.

(Gratton, 2011).

Sameness to segmentation

Contrary to the view of Hagen, Udeh and Wilkie (2011) whom

emphasise reducing status differences between segments as an effective

way of managing human capital; the likely future trend will be talent

segmentation as people will be considered in terms of their contributions

and/or value to the organisation and which nuanced segmentation must

be flexible to adapt to a dynamic environment that prioritises talent

attraction, development and retention (Gratton, 2011; Lawler, 2011).

The strategic HR challenge is to manage employees differently (unequally)

but fairly (fair discrimination) through customised policies and

procedures per employee segment and to ensure that employees are

satisfied with this arrangement. In South Africa, with a strong and


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influential organised labour presence, this may pose a challenging

strategic HR issue as the general South African labour psyche interprets

unequal (but fair) treatment as being unfair discrimination. The

Employment Equity Act of 1998 protects the right of all employees by

ensuring that employers do not unfairly discriminate against them in

terms of any arbitrary ground including race, gender or marital status.

Furthermore, unequal treatment of employees may be a challenge

considering that the provisions of the Labour Relations Act, Act 66 of

1995 emphasise consistency in the treatment of employees, which if not

adhered to may amount to an unfair labour practice (ULP) as per

specific provisions within the Act.

Therefore, one can deduce that I-O Psychologists will need to provide

greater input in co-creating organisational strategy, where the challenge

is to promote segmentation through empirical research that supports a

non-homogenous treatment of staff within a somewhat rigid South

African legislative framework. This may become a fractious issue

considering that the primary purpose of segmentation is talent retention,

as a substantial proportion of South Africa’s scarce skills talent still

resides with the white minority demographic of the country.

Gratton (2011) posit that rapid urbanisation in the emerging markets

will allow for clusters of talent, creativity and innovation to be created,


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of which clusters were previously associated with cities in the developed

world and which may affect an organisations’ decision on where to locate

as a result. According to Chabault, Hulin and Soparnot (2012), a cluster

comprises a group off competing organisations in the same industry

which are situated in the same geographical area. In order to attract and

recruit talented individuals to a cluster, authorities may offer incentives

for talent to relocate to the area (such as tax exemptions and child care

cost assistance); international events are organised that promote the

image of the cluster; and technology collaborations are initiated. Practices

designed to develop talent may include companies sharing talented

individuals on a temporary or permanent contract or secondment basis

so that identified talent develops through being exposed to the different

organisational environments within the cluster; and identifying positions

with transferable skills within the cluster and ensuring that talented

individuals are rotated within the cluster. Practices aimed at retaining

talent include offering global career opportunities and inter-cluster

mobility of talent (Chabault, Hulin & Soparnot, 2012).

Therefore, practicing talent management in clusters, adopting the

practices employed by countries such as the USA and France, will become

central to countries, clusters and organisational ability to attract and

retain the best talent in future, and which should form a core strategic

HR and I-O imperative in the ‘war for talent’ within clusters. However,


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most of the worlds businesses are located outside of these clusters.

Therefore HR and I-O will need to work together to engage in global

talent management practices (Tarique and Schuler, 2010) to cultivate

and nurture talent in an ethical manner (Swailes, 2013) if organisations

are to be truly successful. The talent programs run by HR should

recognise talented knowledge workers where these knowledge workers

are offered collaborative opportunities to develop their ‘knowing why’

(values, work-life balance), ‘knowing how’ (skills and expertise) and

‘knowing whom’ (professional social networks) competencies with

individuals, organisations, community and the industry through project-

based work, bonding and bridging (Arthur, Defillippi and Lindsay,

2008). Of course, HR will determine how much of talent is needed after

conducting a workforce planning exercise; and the I-O will design the

talent screening interventions and utilise psychometric assessments to

identify the talent for the program.

Fatigue to sustainability

Employee fatigue occurs as employees become exhausted and burnt-out,

which is an issue that HR and I-O must reduce in order for organisations

to effectively deliver on triple bottom-line sustainability - which focuses

on delivering on the key aspects of “people, planet, and profit”


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(Boudreau & Ziskin, 2011). As the coming decades ensue, the price of oil

will continue to play a significant role in the world. However, there will

be a growing consciousness created around sustainability as the easily

accessible carbon resources of the world become spent which will force

companies and workers alike to seek more energy efficient ways of

working with minimal impact on the environment. Therefore, younger

workers may consider the environmental record of the organisation

before taking up a position at the organisation. In view of this employer

branding issue, as well as the greater need to reduce commuting time to

work by encouraging greater numbers of people to work from home,

sustainability will become a core strategic HR imperative that will inform

policy (Gratton, 2011). To reduce fatigue and burnout, HR will devise

more flexible work programs for both sexes. There will be a greater need

for work-life balance for both men and women which may cause

organisations to rethink the design of jobs so as to allow for more flexible

working conditions (Galinsky & Matos, 2011; Gratton, 2011). Men in

particular will begin to trade-off various aspects and roles of their work,

career and family lives as they endeavour to become a more “balanced

man”. (Gratton, 2011).

Another method to reducing fatigue and burnout is by stimulating its

polar opposite, employee engagement, through effective performance

management. According to Mone, Eisinger, Guggenheim, Price and Stine


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(2011), a goal setting approach to performance management can help

drive employee engagement in organisations. It entails a collaborative

setting of performance and development goals; providing ongoing,

honest, constructive feedback and recognition that links positively with

employee development and engagement; managing employee

development through coaching, offering training and opportunities for

career growth; building a climate of trust and empowerment; and

conducting mid-year and year-end appraisals effectively. Such an

approach is also supported by Gravina and Siers (2011) whom further

explicate that performance management systems should comprise an

evaluative component (performance appraisals) and a developmental

component as well, where performance data is an output of the

performance management process not an input.

According to a survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (2014), by

2016, 80 percent of the global workforce are likely to be millennials,

and more than half of them (41%) would like to be recognised for their

work on a monthly basis, whilst 78 percent of millennials believe that

utilising technology will make them more productive in their work. The

survey acknowledges that performance management systems, if

implemented correctly, have tremendous reward, but most are often

difficult to manage administratively and fail as a result. The survey seeks

to reposition employers’ focus to encourage informal dialogue through


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technological tools, with all HR functions being tailored to support this

performance management approach.

Noteworthy is the view of Pulakos and O’Leary (2011), whom

acknowledge many challenges which pertain to the design and/or

implementation of the popular performance management practices in

use today. That is, cascading organisational goals to individual employees

can be difficult to execute well and is time consuming; goal-based

performance management systems may fail due to the difficulty in

devising goals for knowledge workers and for positions where the

employee’s performance is dependent on factors outside the their span of

control. Further, rating competencies may not work due to inconsistent

ratings across managers which may create a perception of unfairness and

low morale, and leniency to preserve effective working relationships

between manager and subordinate; and gathering performance

information from multiple sources may be costly, less accurate as those

assessing may not be suitably qualified to make an evaluation of one’s

performance and workers may collude with one another if the

performance assessment is linked to outcomes. As a result Pulakos and

O’Leary (2011) advocate that performance management system changes

should not continue, and instead more energy should be devoted to

building manager-employee communication and relationships through

building trust, conducting effective performance conversations, diagnosing


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the cause of performance problems, delivering and reacting to feedback

delivered in an appropriate manner, and focusing on post-training

interventions. An HR priority should be to promote a shift in culture

which will allow managers and employees to see performance

management as being value-adding as opposed to a mere administrative

necessity imposed by the organisation. Organisations could utilise

integrated organisational performance management as a means to

achieve this by integrating operational performance throughout the

organisation so that the strategic goals are met (McGrath, 2010). In

order to determine the current culture of the organisation, the I-O will

conduct an organisational culture survey that will assess the culture as

measured by various factors (which will include performance

management dimensions). Feedback would be fed from the I-O to HR

and management. HR would then drive the implementation of the

culture-shifting solutions within the organisation.

Persuasion to education

Over and above human resources role to persuade line management to

adopt and implement appropriate human capital interventions, HR

should play a greater role in understanding, educating and influencing


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leaders’ mental models so that these decision-makers make appropriate

human capital decisions (Boudreau & Ziskin, 2011)

Further, employees, as a result of working in diverse working

environments, will become more ‘reflexive’ as they gain multiple views on

aspects of life and will start to develop a deeper understanding about

how their working lives can be constructed to prioritise what is

important (Gratton, 2011). I-Os will need to conduct research to

investigate employee needs and any emergent trends to best design

solutions and implement through HR policy/interventions as necessitated.

CONCLUSION

The scope of practice of the I-O psychologist versus the HR standards

and competencies of the HR practitioner were briefly outlined. Secondly,

six key shifts in HR were highlighted, with specific emphasis on the

characteristics of the workplace 2025 and the forces that are shaping

work and talent attraction, retention, strategic human resource

management and performance management. The impact of the

workplace 2025 on organisations from an HR and I-O perspective within

the global and South African contexts was also examined.

In the dynamic, turbulent “workplace 2025” environment, HR and IOs

would have to understand the complexities and opportunities that


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interact with their organisations better than ever before. This will call for

a diverse set of skills and competencies to best develop, implement and

monitor practices to successfully drive employee performance and overall

organisational success.


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Boudreau, J.W. & Ziskin, I. (2011). The future of HR and effective

organizations. Organizational Dynamics, 40, 255-266.

Chabault, D., Hulin, A. & Soparnot, R. (2012). Talent management in

clusters. Organizational Dynamics, 41, 327-325.

Deloitte. (2013). It’s (almost) all about me Workplace 2030: Built for us.

Retrieved from

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-capital/deloitte-au-hc-diversity-future-work-amp-2013.pdf

EMPLOYMENT EQUITY ACT OF 1998

Galinsky, E. & Matos, K. (2011). The future of work-life fit.

Organizational Dynamics, 40, 267-280.

Gratton, L. (2011). Workplace 2025- what will it look like?

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Gravina, N. E., & Siers, B. P. (2011). Square Pegs and Round Holes:

Ruminations on the Relationship Between Performance Appraisal and

Performance Management. Journal of Organizational Behavior

Management, 31(4,) 277-287.

Hagen, A., Udeh, I., & Wilkie, M. (2011). The way that companies should

manage their human resources as their most important asset: Empirical

investigation. Journal of Business & Economics Research (JBER), 1(1).

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LABOUR RELATIONS ACT 66 OF 1995

Lawler, E.E. (2011). Creating a new employment deal: Total rewards

and the new workforce. Organizational Dynamics, 40, 302-309.


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Mcgrath, C. (2010). Integrated organizational performance management.

The Industrial- Organizational Psychologist, 47(3), 17-19.

Mone, E., Eisinger, C., Guggenheim, K., Price, B., & Stine, C. (2011).

Performance management at the wheel: Driving employee engagement in

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PricewaterhouseCoopers. (2014). Rethinking your performance

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Pulakos, E.D., & O’Leary, R.S. (2011). Why is performance management

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Schutte, N., Barkhuizen, N., & Van der Sluis, L. (2015). The validation of

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Tarique, I. & Schuler, R.S. (2010). Global talent management: Literature

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Journal of World Business, 45(2), 122-133.

Swailes, S. (2013). The ethics of talent management. Business Ethics: A

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The role of HR and IOs. The Workplace 2025

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