Canadian HR Reporter

www.hrreporter.com 29 innovating, says Gobrin. "What is universal is that we have to care, we have to listen, we have to include, we have to respond. And this is a real investment that we have to make in the people side of the busi- ness. That's what makes the difference. Without the people, none of this would work. I think the easiest place to reflect on this is the higher value that frontline workers have all of a sudden played and that they used to be at the bottom of the pole and now, all of a sudden, they are the heroes of almost every industry." When everything's upside down, you have to throw away all the assumptions and start from the beginning to rein- vent the way that you really would like things to be, says Gobrin. "People are much more open to making mistakes… because everything is in test mode right now. I refer quite frequently to the concept of being in this paradigm shift that we're in now where it's not been a gradual transition from the old into the new ― it was a shock and something that changed overnight and something that we don't yet quite understand, and that has created a huge amount of opportunity for lots of people." That can mean people stepping up into new roles or having to pivot a product, "things that used to be legacy and it gives you a chance to build them from scratch and because of the urgency of the time to do things much faster," says Gobrin. "A lot of my colleagues are saying, 'It took us six months to have a conversation and now all of a sudden we're getting approval in six minutes.'" Focus on people amid move to AI, automation Judging by KPMG's survey in 2020, remote work is here to stay and more automation and AI will be rolled out, says Melnick. "What we're saying is let's look more closely at the why and the how from a people [standpoint]… If we do that purely for the sake of efficiency, what's going to happen?" People are often resistant to change because they fear for their mental health and for their jobs, he says. "They fear for what could go wrong and affect customers and then, two, the people most likely to face job loss or hourly reductions are people in the entry-level or administrative roles, which tend to be filled by women, people of colour, immigrants," he says. "We can see organizational resistance making it harder to digitize and, in the event that we do actually implement some tech, the job impact will damage the community, it could damage the brand and it could damage employee engagement." So, employers need to be clear on why they're carrying out digitization, and it needs to be a positive story for customers, employees and the commu- nity, says Melnick. "The ' how' of digitization needs to include the people lens as much as the technology lens. It leads us to realize the importance of future options for the people in terms of new job designs, alter- native career paths, upskilling programs as well as better resources and support for remote work, diversity, psychological safety," he says. "And, often, we see companies run these things as separate programs or initiatives ― they're not really connected and I'm not really sure a typical employee is actually piecing together the whole story of what we're doing, why we're doing it and how we're going about it for the greater good." To operate well in the future with auto- mation and AI, people need to under- stand the professional side and the process, the technology and the data, and be able to lead teams and manage all this complexity behind the scenes, says Melnick. To that end, HR functions should do more to cultivate the oper- ational side of the department, such as mentorship and training to develop multi-skilled people, he says. "It's not enough to just be an HR professional who designs policies and adjudicates. You've got to become familiar with tech and data and processes and the various techniques and skills that come with that." To evolve, it's really about taking advan- tage of technology that is available to bring the employee, the candidate and the employee experience into the 21st century, says Goodman. And while there are great applicant tracking systems available, there's room to do even more. "Especially since people are taking on new careers and deciding to sail the world last minute to get away from the virus or whatever they're doing, we really need systems to be able to pick it up so that we don't have to waste time on this transactional stuff and that nothing falls apart if you're admin- istrator of whatever doesn't show up tomorrow." CHRR "The main thing was to bring people together, treat it as a dialogue, not a top-down communication because we haven't been through this before either and we needed [their] ideas and to be flexible together." Scott Goodman, Avante Logixx 32% Percentage of CEOs more confident about growth pros- pects for the global economy (compared to 32 per cent who are less confident) 45% Percentage of CEOs more confident about growth prospects for their country (compared to 29 per cent who are less confident) 55% Percentage of CEOs more confident about the growth prospects for their sector (compared to 23 per cent who are less confident) 67% Percentage of CEOs more confident about the growth prospects for their company (compared to 17 per cent who are less confident) Source: KPMG 2020 CEO Outlook: COVID-19 Special Edition CEOs CONFIDENT ABOUT GROWTH

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