Speaking at CIPD conference 2021
I was in Manchester this week to speak at the CIPD conference – my first in person event since Riga and Vilnius last year (though those were rather strange events, being restricted to my hotel and the conference centre, and with visits from doctors in full PPE gear to do my covid testing).
I spoke about digital transformation and its impact on the conference’s theme, which is improving working lives.
My main suggestion was that digital transformation is still the main opportunity we have to improve business, and the way people work. It’s not as big an agenda as climate change, and what’s going on in Manchester is nowhere near as important as what’s being discussed in Glasgow, but it is our (HR’s) most important opportnity to improve the way our world works.
Digital technology is also not necessarily going to the the greatest disruption within the 4th industrial revolution, as compared to, for example, the advances taking place in physics and biology with nuclear fusion and gene splicing etc. But it the most important opportunity right now.
And just as we’ve reached new peaks of covid infection, it’s also rather unfortunate timing for both conferences. And dealing with the pandemic is also more important than managing digital transformation. The pandemic has also ushered in new ways of managing business, and people. But again, making digital transformation a success potentially offers even more opportunities.
Because yes, working remotely, and now in a more hybrid approach, has been a profound transformation in the way we work. But it’s not actually changed very much about they way business works. Digital transformation does offer this opportunity, eg for us to start working in a more distributed way organisationally rather than just geographically.
More information here: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/digital-hr-transformation-training
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Jon Ingham
HR Strategist, Trainer, Learning Facilitator at the Jon Ingham Strategic HR Academy
