Interview with Professor Stefano Antonelli
Please find below a brief outline of our conversation with him, you could find the full version on our website
The HR role in the Corporate, Consulting and Academic world.
According to Professor Antonelli, HR practices have changed significantly over the last few years and incurred in a remarkable transformation. That is due to the fact, to some extent at least, that the outside world forced us to face some very different kind of challenges compared to the past. We are not only talking about COVID-19 these days, since the age groups that we are working with radically changed. That is why when we are talking about Human Resources Management and Future Development Plans we need to consider them.
Professor Antonelli puts his focus 3 specific dimensions of change:
Globalisation: it is a keyword that produced deep changes for the Companies’ strategies. We experienced the expansion of Companies, thanks to the internationalization, through M&As. In point of fact, these years see also a major change in the reference global context.
Culture: Women’s role, for instance, within Companies, has changed significantly in the last few years, as well as the role that younger employees play and how people of different age gaps could work together. Within the corporate world, you can certainly find people from different generations and this represents a huge change.
Digitalization: Technology is forcing us to work in a different way. We are now seriously considering a more agile and flexible way of working. Particularly, we are analyzing different models to handle specific businesses and their people.
Each organisation has been rocked by these phenomena. In the Consulting world particularly, we noticed a transition from medium-sized generalist Companies, to Companies that have big dimensions but specific expertise (the so called “Big Four”, for example), to SMEs, Niche Companies, with one or 2 areas of expertise, that can confidently embrace the new business models.
Even University has changed significantly, becoming more international. In the recent period in particular, it has also become more technological. Professor Antonelli confirms that University Cattolica immediately reacted to the Coronavirus lockdown in order not to cause any delays in the lessons, exams, and graduation days. Everything is running smoothly even if the University’s classrooms are closed and this emphasizes how Digitalization can help us even in areas that seem more traditional to us.
Transformation of the HR practices according to the business transformation
Professor Antonelli explains how HR practices are undergoing a tectonic shift. For many years, the HR function has been considered as a typically administrative one, then soft skill aspects became very important. Nowadays we start thinking how to put people back in the spotlight, so the concept that we are developing or what we would like to achieve is “People Centricity”.
People Centricity has a very clear meaning: people have the chance, without too many intermediaries, to think and discuss about their professional development, their own future, and their career path. We are at a stage where people, having so much available information, can discuss with their bosses many HR-related matters. The availability of the systems allows people to access to any piece of information regarding how they should be treated and how they can grow within the organisation.
The HR function should become a Process Facilitator. It is not the HR that handles people, it is the boss, the so called Line Manager, that manages them. The role of the HR becomes a supporting one, enabling the Line Manager to be empowered in managing his own resources in a working environment, where all sorts of information are available for the staff.
After COVID-19, which elements will disappear, and which ones will remain with us in the future?
According to Professor Antonelli, we will remember that it is more important to organize our work by objectives rather than by tasks. It is possible to work remotely or do smart working if the objectives are clear and transparent. We cannot think to organize our work by tasks and not work from our office.
Secondly, the central role of planning emerged: the prerequisite to smart work is the planning of one’s time, that is to say, planning well with regard to decision making. Smart working or working remotely tends to make people more efficient and focused on the available time that they have.
The last important point is that if the individual has a clear objective to reach, he/she is more productive, whether the individual sits at the office or not. The objective could be reached anywhere, what is important is that the objective should be clear.
Professor Antonelli highlights a few important points that he would like us to consider.
The first one is the loss of the “emotional part”, it means that part of “working together, staying together to work better, doing teamwork, finding more common points, helping out each other more, giving and receiving a constant feedback.” It will be essential in this phase to restore this relationship, that might have become quite cold, impersonal, and oftentimes, we might have lost it. We do not consider that a more casual approach was just useless, it was often a great tool for making good decisions. Technology supports us, but it cannot replace the “human side” that is built by being close to each other, by being available, by chatting over a cup of coffee, through handshakes. Smart working could be a winning strategy, while a total remote working could help only in extreme emergency cases.
In this period, different functions could work very well, however they probably have missed the chance to have Interfunctional Integration that builds up, thanks to informal connections, contacts, and sometimes positive compromises. There is a risk that we might have lost some of the investments that we make in the past on relationship building within the office. Finally, according to Professor Antonelli, as next task, we will have to restore the relationship and the cross integration of functions, paying more attention to avoid a return in a form of organisation split.