Re-envision Human Capital Management

Human capital can be defined as “the stock of skills and productive knowledge embodied in people” (Rosen, 1989, p.136) that benefits an organization. In the 4IR age, most organizations are faced with ever-shrinking pool of labor with the necessary skillset to help maintain and push the boundary of the organization’s ability to keep up with the ever changing market needs. To put it simply, things change so fast that nobody can be an expert on everything even in their own specialty areas. Digital leaders need to be willing to decentralize decision making process by pushing decisions down to those people who have the most knowledge about a subject. Therefore, organizational versatility relies on a versatile workforce development model that timely upskills existing workforce, attracts and attains talented people, and provides opportunities for employees to grow, lead, and shine.

To lead digital transformation, reverse coaching and mentoring is an effective and efficient way to break the barriers of the existing legacy systems by helping senior leaders develop new skills and understandings on the digital talents that junior leaders and new employees bring to the organization, and gain new insights and perspectives on ways of best use of these digital talents to grow the organization. Further, collaborative technologies provide opportunities to partner with other units from both within and outside of the organization. The latter, however, requires more changes to an organization’s existing workforce legacy system and prioritizes network-based digital leadership development. As shown in Figure 1 below, McKinsey Global Survey on digital transformations in 2018 indicates that organizations having organization-wide workforce-planning and talent development practices are more likely to win digital transformations.

Figure 1: Digital Transformation: Organization Wide Workforce and Talent Practices (McKinsey & Company, 2018, p.7)