Human Resources Evolution: From "Simply Focusing on People" to "Managing All Value Creators"

Driven by both the iteration of digital technologies and the transformation of organizational forms, the traditional boundaries of human resources management are gradually being broken and redefined. HR, which used to focus solely on the single management element of "people creating value," is undergoing a profound role transition.

Driven by the dual forces of digital technology iteration and organizational form transformation, the traditional boundaries of human resource management are being gradually broken and redefined. HR, which once focused solely on "people creating value" as the single management element, is undergoing a profound role transformation. HR leaders are shifting their focus from simply caring about individual employees to coordinating all people and things that create value for the organization in the workplace, including "technology." This evolution is the inevitable result of the combined effects of the deep integration of technology, the upgrading of organizational needs, and the iteration of HR's own capabilities. Its core is to break the binary opposition perception between "people" and "technology" and build a new paradigm of human resource management where "people + technology" coexist symbiotically and jointly create value.

"Technology" expands the value - creating subjects, extends the boundaries of HR management, and increases the complexity of "technology" collaboration

The evolution of the HR role is essentially an external reflection of the fundamental change in the logic of organizational value creation. In the traditional human resource management model, the core work of HR revolves around the entire life - cycle of employees, focusing on core modules such as recruitment and allocation, training and development, compensation and incentives, and employee relations. The management object has always been the single value carrier of "people." Meanwhile, the value creation of the organization mainly relies on the physical and mental labor of employees. "Technology" only exists as an auxiliary means and does not truly participate in the core links of value creation. Naturally, the focus of HR's work is limited to optimizing the employee experience and stimulating individual potential.

However, with the deep integration of digital technologies represented by artificial intelligence into the workplace, the main structure of organizational value creation has changed significantly, expanding from "pure people" to a composite form of "people + technology." Nowadays, "technology" is no longer just a simple office auxiliary tool but has become a value - creating subject as important as employees, jointly forming the organization's "value - creator matrix" with employees.

Therefore, in many organizations, we can clearly see a significant change: Some HR systems focus on supporting core human resource operations, automating basic tasks such as attendance punching, salary calculation, and employee file management, greatly improving the efficiency of HR work; Some HR systems focus on breaking down the service barriers between departments, enabling business linkage among HR, IT, finance and other departments, allowing employees to complete process handling without switching between multiple systems; Some HR systems cover the entire scenario of employee collaboration and feedback, from goal setting, performance tracking to team communication and opinion collection, forming a complete work closed - loop. These systems are deeply embedded in all aspects of organizational operations and have become an indispensable key support for value creation.

This change is more prominent in large - scale and diversified organizations. These organizations often cover multiple brands, multiple business lines, and multiple independent teams. From a management logic perspective, they are more like an "aggregate" composed of multiple independent "sub - organizations." To meet the business needs of different "sub - organizations," each department and team often introduce various HR systems according to their own needs, resulting in a sharp increase in the number of relevant systems within the entire "aggregate," sometimes even reaching hundreds. These systems come from different suppliers, with inconsistent technical standards and non - interoperable data. This not only leads to scattered value creation and makes it difficult to form a synergistic effect but also causes problems such as low management efficiency and fragmented employee experience. Employees may need to be proficient in operating multiple systems to complete their daily work, and HR also needs to extract data and carry out work in different systems, greatly increasing the transactional workload.

The complexity of "technology" collaboration is reflected in the decentralization of "value creation"

The formation of the "value - creator matrix" not only injects new impetus into organizational development but also brings a series of management pain points, forcing HR to break out of the traditional work boundaries. These problems are concentrated in three levels, directly restricting the integrated upgrading of organizational value.

First, the fragmentation of "technology application" leads to low efficiency of "value creation"

In a scenario where multiple systems and tools coexist, due to the lack of a unified technical architecture and integration standards, "data islands" are formed between different systems or tools, making it impossible to achieve information sharing and business collaboration. For example, subsidiary A of a group uses system A for recruitment management, and subsidiary B uses system B for recruitment management. The data of the two systems cannot be interchanged. The group HR has difficulty in grasping core information such as the overall recruitment progress and the distribution of talent quality, and can only collect data manually. This is not only time - consuming and labor - intensive but also prone to data errors. At the same time, the fragmented "technology application" also increases the learning and operation costs of employees. Employees need to spend a lot of time adapting to the operation logic of different systems or tools, which actually reduces work efficiency.

Second, the cognitive misunderstanding of "emphasizing technology over value" leads to resource waste

When some organizations introduce HR technology, they blindly pursue technological advancement and overly focus on the functional complexity of systems or tools, while ignoring their compatibility with the organization's "value creation" needs. For example, some organizations spend a lot of money to introduce intelligent HR systems but only use their basic office functions, and the value of advanced technology cannot be fully realized; Some organizations continuously add "technology applications" to cover specific needs without considering the compatibility between systems or tools, resulting in technological redundancy and management chaos, increasing financial costs and dispersing the core focus of "value creation."

Third, the imbalance in the collaboration between "people" and "technology" leads to a trust crisis and fragmented experience

In the process of "technology" implementation, some organizations overly pursue efficiency improvement and ignore the humanistic care and privacy protection of employees, resulting in employees' resistance to "technology." For example, some organizations use AI tools to comprehensively monitor employees, including working hours, chat records, and browsing content. This excessive monitoring behavior seriously violates employees' privacy and damages the trust relationship between employees and the organization. At the same time, employees in different departments and positions face different technological environments and service processes, lacking a unified experience standard, which leads to a decrease in employees' sense of identity and belonging to the organization.

The core of these problems is that the traditional HR model only focuses on individual employees and cannot coordinate and manage the composite "value - creation" chain of "people + technology." When "technology" becomes one of the core value - creators, only focusing on the employee experience can no longer meet the needs of organizational development. HR must break through the limitations of the traditional role and assume the new responsibilities of "integrating technological resources, balancing the relationship between people and technology, and unifying the standards of value creation."