Design Thinking for HR

Amidst how VUCA the world has become and the effect Industry 4.0 has further reigned upon the VUCA terrain, the emergence of another megatrend hit our company on the “inside”. The millennials. This has added pressure to the Management in terms of being ambidextrous on confronting both challenges from the external front as well as from the internal environment. Subsequently, as an overarching objective, it is imperative for our company to embrace the changes and transform digitally to meet the demands of and leverage on the industry 4.0.

They, being the digital natives, have demanded a new perspective in managing them effectively, which not only impacted our company but also many companies across industries. Our company’s HR department has traditionally been posting our employees’ handbook, policies and employment information in our intranet for all employees to refer to in times of doubt; in view that we have already prepared well before for the millennials. It worked with the Gen X and the senior employees, however, it did not really worked well with the millennials. This was evident in our increase in enquiries from the digital natives and their oversight of policies since they have joined our company. In a typical month, our HR department received about 20 HR queries from a company’s strength of 80.