EEA YouTube Show With HR Guru Dave Ulrich�The State and Future of Human Resources

Here's a recap of the latest Enterprise Engagment Alliance Purpose Leadership and Stakeholder Management YouTube show with a worldwide recognized human resources management visionary on the state and future potential of human resources management, leadership, organizational management, metrics, stakeholder management, employee engagement, and more.

This Enterprise Engagement Alliance YouTube show addresses the latest trends and developments in human resources management for the coming year and foreseeable future.

What are the hot topics in human resources management going into 2025? This EEA Purpose Leadership and Stakeholder Management show with Dave Ulrich Rensis Likert Professor, Ross School of Business University of Michigan and Partner at The RBL Group (a human capability advisory firm) gets right to the heart of the most pressing issues in human resources management today.

Click here for the show. Here are the highlights:

Human resources management is evolving to deliver stakeholder value to all stakeholders through human capability (talent + leadership + organization + HR function).

CEOs and HR leaders can improve decisions by using human capital analytics, as demonstrated by recent all return to office mandates. Most available research suggests rigid policies usually push out the best talent and make little sense given that the idea of flextime has existed for years to attract, motivate, and retain top talent.

Too many business and HR leaders measure and manage by tracking activity, rather than impact and results. When it comes to people, the opportunity is to move to the same type of analysis used in other fields, such as measuring the sales (marketing), profitability (finance), and strategic reinvention (strategy). HR should also move to measure value created for stakeholders (e.g., impact of training on customer revenue) more than activity (e.g., number of of people who received 40 hours of training).

The concept of strategic people management has evolved to focus on all stakeholders who are “humans” (not just employees, but also customers, investors, boards, communities) through not just people initiatives (skills), but also organization initiatives (culture). More can be done to move to human capability much like it took decades for total quality management to become prevalent, and it still hasn’t reached the point of “assimilation” at most organizations when its practices literally are built into the fabric and culture of the organization. While the correlations between employee and customer engagement scores is high, both scores are lower than desired, according to latest Gallup and American Customer Satisfaction Index surveys. More progress could occur faster as human capability (talent + leadership + organization) focuses more on delivering stakeholder value.

The HR technology companies have done a great job proliferating new AI apps in all areas of the business. It is important for their clients to prioritize which of these apps have the most impact on their stakeholders. Proliferation without prioritization clutters management and does not add value. The technology companies with the best potential for adding value will focus on helping organizations prioritize processes and apps that drive tangible results.

Much like TQM in its early days, companies use ad hoc approaches, fads, and the tactics “du jour” to deliver results rather than a strategic, systematic approach built into the organizational operating system. The human capability logic suggests that companies invest in talent (people, workforce, skills), organization (team, workplace, culture), and leadership at all levels to offer an integrated approach to investing in people and organization.

Too often, some in the HR field recycle concepts, such as inclusion (once called participation), skills (once called competencies), well-being (aka experience), personalization (flexibility), etc.. Rather than recycle ideas, it is important to spiral ideas forward for the new world of work.

Those working in HR will wield far more power when they focus on how they create value for all stakeholders, including not only investors, but customers, supply chain and distribution partners, and communities, all “humans” who interact with the organization. The administrative work of HR continues to be important (like accounting for finance) but the emerging and greater potential for HR is to demonstrate how investments in people yield tangible results for all stakeholders. For instance, before asking for investment resources, conduct a test if possible or find reputable research that demonstrates how an investment in leadership, people engagement, culture, or a systematic approach can increase customer revenue, investor confidence, community reputation, leading to increased business financial returns, and then test it.

What would help most organizations is an organization guidance system that helps prioritize where to invest in human capability—Talent, Leadership, Organization, and Human Resources—that best delivers stakeholder value. This guidance enables continuous improvement, not unlike total quality management. Having a guidance system in an organization with clear stakeholder outcomes, prioritized investments, and accountable results through analytics are the best ways to set time and financial investment priorities for senior management.

One of the biggest drivers of change today is the growing number of investment companies, asset managers, and even private equity organizations that have decided that human capital is another source of value creation and have developed investment strategies to improve talent, leadership, and organization. The day will likely come when securities analysts are asking questions about human capability metrics at shareholder meetings and including these metrics in SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission) reports and earnings calls.

The disclosure requirements coming out of Europe will indeed have a significant impact in helping analysts better correlate practices with outcome at scale, given that over 50,000 companies will be providing data in a format created to ensure easy analysis and comparability.

AI is a powerful tool to collect past knowledge, but human imagination envisions the future. AI offers the tremendous capabilities of an intern, but like any intern needs to be supervised by people who can detect not only what is wrong but what is missing. And, it cannot be sufficiently trained to safely manage itself transparently. Like other technological advancements, it will potentially eliminate jobs, but like all the others it will likely create a compensating demand for new work.