The Annual Sackadamus FOT Predictions have become legendary, primarily for their uncanny accuracy and for the simple fact no one is willing to go out on such a limb within the industry. Back in 2009, it was I who predicted the take off of video interviewing/video profiles! I also predicted Healthcare reform would go nowhere, so 50/50 seems to be good odds in this predicting game.
In 2013 I predicted that the unemployment rate would fall below 7%. Bam! You’re welcome. Also, I said people would stop calling Millennials Millennials, and I think for the most part the concept of time-in-life has taken over the conversation. Most of what I said last year was right on. It’s alright to be frightened, it’s a natural response. But you have nothing to worry about—I’m still here to feed you, my little baby birds.
So, what are Sackadamus’ predictions for 2015? Here you go, my followers:
1. Dr. Oz will tell 15,000 HR ladies at SHRM National that in order to lose weight, they must release the weight of the problems they carry around—that are their employees. Release the meat coat that is your employees’ problems and breathe the light of freedom. I wish I would have been in that conference room at SHRM when someone said, “You know who we should get? Dr. Oz!” I would have punched that person in the mouth.
2. HireVue will take the next step in digital interviewing and create a virtual headset that will allow us to virtually interview candidates in the environment of our choosing. They’re already getting pretty Big Brother-ish with their predictive analytics. What’s next?! I’ll tell you: virtual reality. Want to know how a candidate will perform in the job? Well, just throw them into the middle of it! Call of Duty… but for Accountants and Sales Managers. It’s going to be awesome. Get on that, Mark Newman!
3. Facebook at Work (or some product FB hasn’t named yet) will start to suck the lifeblood out of LinkedIn. It won’t be fast—we need to draw this out a little. Watch LI slowly grasp for straws and try things, each one failing dramatically. What, you don’t want to pay for video on your profile!? No, really it’s the next big thing. What about enhanced 360 images of yourself? No, not that either. By the way, has LI figured out letting everyone write posts is like letting no one write posts? No, probably not.
4. Sackett & Dunn (the HR Firm, not the law firm or country music act) will be on stage at SHRM National in Orlando. That’s not a prediction; that’s fact. The prediction is it will be standing room only, so get there early. We’re bringing techy back! Get it? Like, we’re bringing sexy back, but we took sexy and replaced with techy, and we’re going to help out the HR pros on what’s really important to consider when trying to look at HR tech. Plus, we’re sexy—in an HRish sort of way. Which is to say, we’re not.
5. Your old employees are going to retire, finally. The recession is over. Their 401Ks are back. That means they’re gone! My prediction? You are not ready for this. Also, HR Tech has failed to give you a solution on helping you with this knowledge transfer problem. I predict every HR technology coming will begin marketing that they have a solution, which isn’t really that they have a solution, but you are desperate for a solution, so you’ll buy the partial solution they have. 2015 will be a year where real HR Pros earn their keep. Retention, succession, knowledge transfer, and talent attraction are all back in a big way, and most of us are underprepared.
6. Alternative Work Schedules become a popular topic. See above. Not flexibility, alternative. I know 70-year-old George doesn’t need five days a week to mentor my newbie Jenny. Jenny just needs access to George’s brain every once in a while. HR can make that happen, without keeping George on a full-time gig. Hiring managers are uncomfortable with this type of thing. They’ll need to get over this.
7. “Predictive Analytics” will replace “Seat at the Table” as the most overused phrase in the HR space. That’s a big leap in my predictive model, right!?
8. “HR Business Partner” will go away and “People Operations” will be born. Here’s the bold shift. Currently in HR we believe we are put on this earth to support the business. We’ve worked really hard to get this concept engrained. The business needs to know we support the business. We kind of right-ditched, left-ditched this one. The concept of “People Operations” goes back the other way. What if our job, our goal in life, was to actually support our employees!? Actually make them better. The best. Give them development and an environment where they would completely kick our competitors ass. What if our real goal in HR was to support the employees?
Those, my loyal readers, are Sakadamus’ predictions for 2015. Fear not.
If you Google “Tim Sackett” you’ll find our Tim, and a truck driver chaplain. Our Tim is NOT the truck driver chaplain, although how awesome would that be if he was!? He is a prolific writer in the HR and TA space who just happens to also run an Engineering and IT contract staffing agency (HRU Technical Resources) out of Michigan. He also writes every day at his own blog, the Tim Sackett Project. Weirdly, he’s known as an expert in workplace hugging, which was kind of cool years ago, but now seems painfully creepy, but we still love him and he’s fairly harmless. Tim is also on the board of the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals (ATAP), lifetime Michigan State Spartan fan, husband to a Hall of Fame wife, 3 sons, and his best friend Scout. He also wrote a book with SHRM called The Talent Fix, you can find it on Amazon.