Wednesday 18 December 2019

HRZone’s 10 most popular articles in 2019



It's great to be included in this compilation of 2019's most popular articles on HRZone, with "Supporting the business isn’t strategic HR – people centricity is". 
Here's our round up of the 10 most popular HRZone articles of the year: https://lnkd.in/dNhV63z Thanks to Stuart Duff, Megan Reitz, John Higgins, Jon Ingham, Fiona Adler, Blaire Palmer, Max Blumberg, Garry Turner MCIPD and Leena Nair for your fantastic contributions!


I'd definitely recommend reading this and the other articles if you've not done so.

Tuesday 17 December 2019

CMSWire Future of Work webinar




I'll also be providing some predictions about the future of work and technological disruption in this webinar with CMSWire and Workgrid (digital workplace) software at 6pm BST on 22 January:

Being prepared for the “future of work” is no easy task. With new technologies coming out virtually every day that promise to revolutionize the workplace, it’s impossible to know what you should be focusing on.

Join CMSWire and Workgrid in this live, hour-long interactive discussion and we’ll discuss the big predictions from top digital workplace thought leaders. We’ll share what you need to know to prepare your organization for success in the coming decade.

Featured panelists for this discussion include:
  • Gillian McCann, Co-Founder and Head of Cloud Engineering & AI for Workgrid Software
  • Sharon O’Dea, Co-Founder of Lithos Partners and Senior Principal Consultant for Infocentric Research AG
  • Jon Ingham, Human Resources & Organization Development Consultant and author of “The Social Organization”
  • Brett Caldon, CEO and Co-Founder of Workgrid Software


You may also be interested in my posts from CSMWire / DWG's Digital Workplace Experience in Chicago in 2018:

Monday 16 December 2019

11 HR tech trends to watch in 2020




I'm in this article by Sage People on 11 HR tech trends to watch in 2020:


1. Go beyond functionality to add true value for employees
The right HR technology doesn’t just automate tasks for employees – it enables them to contribute fully, and leverage their potential as unique individuals, explains Jon Ingham, author of ‘The social organization’.

“Approaches need to move towards liberating and empowering people,” he explains. “HR tech needs to support this change”.

Jon adds that that something else the sector can expect to see over the next year is a shift towards managing teams, groups, and networks – rather than just individuals: “HR systems, therefore, need to focus much more on the value of a group, enabling us to measure and reward the performance of teams, not just individuals”.


You'll also find more on my predictions for greater people centricity in 2020 in this article at HR  Zone:




Jon Ingham, 
info@joningham.com, +44 7904 185134

Tuesday 10 December 2019

For Love or Money 3: Opportunities for Re-engineering




I've had a chapter on reward included in MuseumEtc's book, 'For Love or Money': Re-engineering the Way Museums Work. However, I would hope the content will be relevant for people working in other sectors too.


The changes required to support both customers and employees / workers are often going to be very significant and may require radical re-engineering rather than more incremental improvement (although implementing these radical changes in an ongoing, agile manner is often the very best approach).

As shown in figure 3, re-engineering means developing new processes and services to meet particular objectives, without being constrained by the way things are currently done. However a key requirement in today’s digital age is that these objectives now need to refer to employee expectations as well as business and customer needs. In addition, redeveloping processes and services to meet these needs will often benefit from including design thinking, personas and journey maps to help ensure interactions with employees at key touchpoints within or around the process are as positive as possible.

Once processes and services have been redeveloped it is possible to identify new roles and skill requirements to support these, allowing staff appropriate discretion to identify new ways of meeting customer needs in order to provide exceptional experiences.

These roles can then be grouped together to provide new jobs and gigs to be performed by people acting in the different segments of the workforce. These jobs and gigs need to be supported by the use of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotic process automation and robotics (Jesuthasan and Boudreau, 2018), as well as outsourcing, to ensure core, contract and peripheral staff can concentrate on the most valuable activities, as well as the digital gig working platforms required to support contingent workers.

These jobs and gigs can then be grouped together into an updated organisation design. Whilst most organisations, in the museum sector and elsewhere, have traditionally organised themselves using functional and divisional structures, they are increasingly using new organisation models (Ingham, 2017) based on project teams (the main opportunity for contract and especially contingent staff), and communities and networks (core, peripheral and contract staff). They are also increasingly using new approaches such as self management. Museums should also look at using these more modern approaches, particularly as they tend to support people’s sense of purpose and empowerment, helping them to add value to their customers.

Based upon the above steps, museums can then check whether they have the right people working in these redesigned roles and reselect people into them as appropriate. Museums should also think more broadly about recruitment pools which may help them improve the diversity of their workforces.

They also need to set up mechanisms to support changes in the workforce, such as the HR and management processes required to support the various workforce segments. One particularly important requirement is to update the museum’s reward strategy and practices.

Monday 9 December 2019

HR strategy in the 2020s - have you been paying attention?




Yes, it's prediction time again, and I'll be sharing a few thoughts in a couple of different places. First up, in HRZone on HR Strategy.

You'll hopefully know that I think strategic HR is all about focusing on people, not ever tighter alignment with the business (eg this post recently).

My new article is about all the stuff going on with people that explains why this focus on people is essential (and that therefore, if we don't do it, someone else will!):




Jon Ingham, 
info@joningham.com, +44 7904 185134