CIPD Cork Chapter

Brookfield Health and Science Complex – (Room 101)

University College Cork

October 24th 2017

The Future of Work

Will HR be redundant?

John Barrett

Executive Director,

Human Resources & People Development

An Garda Síocána

By way of Introduction….

Let me begin by thanking the academy…for the opportunity to

come back to my alma mater

….so what happened since you left, ‘boy’?

“how can you say whether HR will be me made redundant or

not, like”

Well, I’ll try, based on my own varied and circuitous journey

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And then some other great schools….

So, to address the topic with some specificity

and hopefully some objectivity…

I want to begin by looking forward, to a time horizon of

2030 and I want to consider…

The pace and phases of change in the world around us, in a number

of dimensions, visible and perhaps less visible…

I want to very reference some data points which are well researched

about how the world of work and enterprise is and will change

I want to examine what I think HR Leadership is well on the way to

evolving into – the ways I believe HR Leadership will change and

become even more relevant and value additive….

So, If you can make the leap of change, there is no fear of

redundancy….. 4

Part 1 – Aspects of the Pace and Phase of

Change in the World Around us

The world we live and work in is changing in real time

…data analytics is the new wind gauge!

Business and product cycles are shortening; business

models are changing with an impact on service

delivery and expectations; Disruption is all around us!!

We are seeing huge gaps between the leaders and

laggards in the management of change, Governments

and Institutions are slow; start-up's get to scale and

have trans-national impact more quickly than ever.5

So whether its product, service or customer

and public expectation, we are seeing a series

of every more frequent disruptions….

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• Outside In – All

organisations must adapt to

external stimuli –

• If in any organisation, the

necessary sensitivity to

scan the external

environment and to apply

priority and resources to

expectation and

demand….If this capability

dose NOT exist, real

problems arise……

About that crystal ball…… few preliminary

observations by way of context:

In the commercial world, economic Darwinism is visible and all

around us…competition drives change; Innovation and

response to the realities of demand and supply are real time and

ever-changing…

In the institutional world, change is slower often requires far

greater stimulus to initiate and sustain….the requirement for the

‘burning platform’

HR and what it provides by way of value proposition looks

different at either end of the Bell Curve 7

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What lies ahead and over what time frame?

Why have we selected a 2030 time horizon?

• Looking 145 months forward, we are at the

end of 2030

• Looking 145 months back we are pre

the commencement of the 2005 Act

and pre the publication of the second report

of the Morris Tribunal

• Adopting an MMXXX horizon allows us draw

some powerful contemporary lessons

290 months from Morris to the MMXXX horizon

2005 25/10/ 2017 2030

Politically what will

Ireland MMXXX look like? • Macro view….Politics and

Policing

In Europe….

• Fragmentation?

• Brexit & Scotland

• An Independent Catalonia

• The League of the North

• The accession of Turkey?

• The rise of the Right

• Germany

• Austria

• Hungary

• Poland

Domestically….

• Coalitions – the norm?

• Will a centre / centre left still be

established?

• Whither the referendum on

a 32 county Ireland?

• Will Ireland be a UK II for

inward migrations?

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Ireland MMXXX

Political Landscape

The Economic

Topography

The Demographic

Trends

The Technological

World

The Living Environment

Expectation, Policing Service

Delivery &

Δ/t

Economically what will Ireland

MMXXX look like?

• The exchequer engine to

fund the service?

• GDP US$ 513.9b (352.4b 2017)

• GDP Per Cap $89,760 ($65,810 2017)

• Our proportion of total world trade

will decline

• Our growth prediction for 2030 is very

• tax treaty dependent.

• There will be an even greater disparity

of regional wealth distribution

• Urbanisation will intensify and

problems of housing and traffic will

become even more accentuated

• Regional and Community Policing will

have to address very different

challenges

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Ireland MMXXX

Political Landscape

The Economic Topography

The Demographic

Trends

The Technological

World

The Living Environment

Expectation, Policing Service

Delivery &

Δ/t

So what will our

demography look like?

• The patterns of a developed

economy?

• Population 5.203m (4.792 2017)

• Pop Growth 0.536 (0.914 2017)

• Life Expectancy 83.35 (81.63 2017)

• Pop ≤ 15 yrs 899,000 (1.039m 2017)

• Pop ≥ 65 yrs 967,000 (669,000 2017)

• As a consequence, the service delivery

modalities and expectation for policing

will change and become customer led

• Technology enabled home and personal

protection will be a reality; behavioural

data tools for crime prevention and

evidence gathering?

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Ireland MMXXX

Political Landscape

The Economic Topography

The Demographic

Trends

The Technological

World

The Living Environment

Expectation, Policing Service

Delivery &

Δ/t

So whither the

technological world? • Ireland to become ever more

connected

Gartner trends for 2030…

• From Global to Personal

• From hierarchies to meshes (the

ongoing rise of peer to peer)

• From fixed assets to fungible

(replaceable) assets

• From devices to connected humans

• From big data to algometric

business

• From resources to smart materials

Evidence becomes ubiquitous

Privacy will be redefined

Insurance and personal behaviours may

be aligned by data

Justice processes will move adopting

supply chain concepts

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Ireland MMXXX

Political Landscape

The Economic

Topography

The Demographic

Trends

The Technological

World

The Living Environment

Expectation, Policing Service

Delivery &

Δ/t

So what will the

living environment

MMXXX look like?

• Environment will more visibly

impact both demand & supply

• Temperate regions will be migration

targets

• Carbon will be a taxable by-product

and will have a negative utility charge

• Cars will be predominantly hybrid or

electric

• Insurance may be levied by activity

and behaviour

• Services will be more bespoke and

retail will have moved dramatically

to the cloud.

• ‘Big brother’ will silently observe

even more and retina, palm and

DNA profiles will replace PIN

• Static camera and drone observation

technology will be commonplace in

domestic, roads and crowd policing

• Police interfaces will have a digital front

• end aggregator with data, analytical

technology

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Ireland MMXXX

Political Landscape

The Economic

Topography

The Demographic

Trends

The Technological

World

The Living Environment

Expectation, Policing Service

Delivery &

Δ/t

So what will service

delivery expectations

look like in Ireland MMXXX

• Policing to be a public service with

visible and consistent quality

and delivery metrics

• Interface with AGS will be more

process driven and consistent and less

intermediated by the person

• The public will increasingly engage

through transparent media and expect

service transparency in return

• Process simplicity and response will be

expected as the tools for service

become ever more ubiquitous

• External supervisory agencies will

demand access to input/output

measures as a matter of routine

• Significant and ongoing behavioural

adjustment and adoption of ever more

frequent delivery modalities will be

required to meet expectation

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Ireland MMXXX

Political Landscape

The Economic

Topography

The Demographic

Trends

The Technological

World

The Living Environment

Expectation, Policing Service

Delivery &

Δ/t

Environment will more visibly

impact both demand & supply

So what can we now say about Δ/t and

Ireland in 2030?

The pace of societal change is fast and accelerating

Many of the most powerful drivers of societal change and

service expectation are external to national control, they are ‘on

trend’, and

These trends will exert profound changes in the expectation

and demand profiles for policing and security services in

Ireland by 2030

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Δ/t, Change

over time

“When the pace of change in

the external environment

exceeds the pace of internal

change in any organisation, the

seed of disaster are already

sown”.

Jack Welch

The essence of the challenge

is the I/O Ratio, and the

Social Processes which

govern it

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• The phases of change internally

and externally are out of sync…

The Frequency of

Societal change….

The slower ability of

the Garda Organisation

to adopt to change

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Just a couple of data points I would ask you

to reflect upon…what will 2030 look like?

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We are in the Pac-Rim Century – Competition

for Scarce Resources is geopolitical

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Part II – The World of Work and the visible

trends that are and will define it….

Millennials…The majority of the intake next year to

this university will have been born in this century

Work is an access point to skill acquisition,

opportunity (more broadly than money) and meaning

and personal fulfillment…

Convention around life cycle phases, family, attitude

formation, preference, the relationship between life

and career expectation is radically changing…

HR as a contributor in many organisations is

struggling to mediate between the external dynamic

and internal orthodoxy…19

The context of generational change…the

impact of social forces on the world of work

As is…

• Economic recovery and

demand for skills…but it is

now supplied by a

population looking for

more than ‘traditional

opportunity’

• ‘Churn’…this for now, that

for later…the passport CV

and ‘geographic

unboundedness’

• Self directed learning as

an essential ingredient in

the employment offering

Will be

• CBRE and Genesis

recently released a report

Fast Forward 2030: The

Future of Work and the

Workplace

• The Holistic Worker;

• Lean, Agile, and Authentic

Corporations;

• The Sharing Economy

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Part III – So what will endure for HR Leaders?

What will the function evolve into by the end

of the 3rd decade of the current century?

The HR function will have evolved beyond its current

boundaries…

– From sophisticated compliance to a commitment to

nurturing positive cultural and ethical constructs…

– From policy generation and program delivery to integrated

and adaptive modelling – including the role modelling of

appropriate behaviours in key areas such a leadership,

learning and the management of meaning. (Theory O and

Theory E)

– HR leadership will demand deep operational and business

knowledge, a real facility with strategy and data, skills in

negotiation, in organisational change and informed and

courageous advocacy 21

HR Leadership the future dichotomy…

It will be about building the agility capability to

respond to change…while keeping the authentic

essentials constant and respected….

The situational leadership will be about translating the

needs of the competitive environment into

appropriate organisational responses, AND

Maintaining an appropriate ‘ethical foundation’ deep

in the organisation….

Effective change is always ‘grounded’ and HR will

never be redundant while it can influence and guide

effective leadership.22

So, what does that mean for my current

office and employer?

The essential first step is we begin to listen…active

listening to our ‘served base’ – the citizens of, and

visitors to, Ireland and all the organisations we

partner with

That we adopt an open and authentic dialogue with

those organisations who oversee and influence our

strategy, performance and delivery

That we engage with all levels of our internal

organisation…and do so authentically, meaningfully

and on an ongoing basis.

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And so to conclude…Human Resource

Leadership Skills will, I believe…

Be more crucial, more value additive, more aligned

with the USP of successful enterprises, than now!

In a world of Resource Scarcity, AI, Additive

Manufacture, CGD, Deep Data, Ubiquitous Global

Connectivity, Meshed Supply Chains, Peer Driven

Trends and Huge Consumer Influence…

Organisational Culture, Governance Standards and

Ethics will become ‘brand critical’

Visionary HR Leadership requires that we all embrace

that hugely challenging agenda right now…

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