HR will increasingly become a transformational function responsible for establishing a tailored labour model while becoming a leader within workplaces. At the same time, HR must continue to maintain collective links, a relationship regulated through arrangements that go beyond individual workers. Ideally, HR should be careful in integrating individual agility and disparities to optimise collective intelligence and performance. To successfully reconcile individual and the means of collective interests, Mettling and Barre suggested that HR function of tomorrow must adopt different posture, such as follows: 

Posture #1 Watchdog

In this posture, HR must be able to develop advanced workforce planning strategies and capabilities consistent with the needs of professional communities to support the make or buy strategy which adds value. Other responsibilities include: 

• Advise professional communities on how to take account of HR issues in their priorities and strategies.
• Reinforce generational intelligence, listen to weak signals of HR innovations, and ensure that the HR function remains open to outside influences and particularly start-up ecosystems. 
• Use Big Data to identify and anticipate trends. Armed with “analytics,” HR can offer solutions that allow employees to enhance and develop their capabilities to the fullest while respecting individual choices and the need to keep personal data confidential. 

Posture #2 Developer

Being a developer means being able to sustainably reinforce the employability and personal development of employees while anticipating individual needs and orchestrate the development of individual capabilities. Here are other responsibilities: 

• Establish and update advanced databases of internal and capabilities, directly accessible to all employees.
• Adapt individual and collective recognition mechanisms to specific market characteristics, the scarcity of capabilities, responsibilities entrusted to the employees, risks taken, etc. in order to retain the best talent. 
• Redefine employee assessment models with a fresh vision of needs and profiles. Encourage managers to exercise their assessment responsibility in a spirit of transparency, for the benefit of everyone concerned. 

See also: HR Learning: 2 Types of Employee Engagement State

Posture #3 Composer

HR as a composer means being able to integrate different types of expertise. HR will consequently reinforce its “project leader” capabilities, becoming a critical point of contact for employees, while providing responses in cases where different types of expertise must be aggregated. HR should also be able to: 

• Rely on employee’s initiative, by providing people with the digital tools required to carry out a certain number of administrative tasks themselves, as well as rely on business line managers by providing them with some tools to let them take more responsibility for some individual HR dimensions.
• Detect talent inside and outside organisation and develop a favourable culture and values to attract and retain talented people.
• Establish new mobility and staffing mechanisms to develop a potential talent pool for each project, building on each new assignment. 
• Integrate different expectations, and tailor HR practices to these needs. 

Posture #4 Transformer

HR should promote company values and vision with professional communities and enable the concrete application of these values by contributing in a proactive and enlightened manner to decisions concerning employees. HR should also be a designer of more agile and efficient organisations and work methods that break down silos and add value, ruthlessly eliminating tasks and activities that are not needed anymore. Other responsibilities include: 

• Help professional communities establish new agile models rapidly by establishing positive collaboration and communication with employee representative bodies. 
• Define and establish new leadership models by recruiting new profiles from outside the organisation to diversify teams and recognizing risk-taking and sense of initiative.

Posture #5 Mediator

As a mediator, HR would be expected to develop the initiatives required to improve the quality of life at work – invest in comfort and collective spaces. HR also should ensure that digital systems are “humane” which allow people to disconnect in a world where the line between personal and professional life is increasingly blurred, instil a culture of digital responsibility., as well as imagine new labour and work models offering more personal flexibility and responsibility. 

Posture #6 Operator 

HR operators are able to resolutely digitise HR activities and aim to eliminate paperwork to focus management resources on other activities that generate more value. They also use digital tech to develop unique individualised employee experiences and develop mobile applications to provide responses in real-time whenever possible. They should also be savvy to use digital to maximize the efficiency of key HR processes, such as recruiting, onboarding, training, attrition, etc. and become an ambassador of a “humane” digital culture.

In conclusion, HR posture must consequently evolve in three ways: transparency and performance-based commitments, greater and more visible integration, and tailored management systems and invisible contribution tracking systems. Since HR bears as much responsibility for the successes and failures of a company, it must accept and keep service level commitments and regularly measure its economic performance with relevant KPIs. HR, too often relegated to a back-office role and hiding behind administrative tasks, must necessarily be integrated more closely into operational teams. 

Read also: Leadership and HR in The Digital Age: Q&A with Cheri Alexander, Faculty Member at the University of Michigan, Ross School of Business