CERTIFIED May. 2014 | Page 60

Finding the Right Employees for Today and Tomorrow Creating a workforce with flexibility and passion Recently, Bryan Wempen, William Tincup, SPHR, and Nisha Raghavan, welcomed Joyce Chastain, SPHR, to DriveThruHR, the daily talk radio blog that focuses on “what keeps HR professionals up at night.” Chastain’s most pressing issues include how technology has made work more flexible and the growing demands of employees for that flexibility. Brian Wempen: Welcome, everybody, to DriveThruHR. I am pleased to introduce Joyce Chastain, SPHR® [Senior Professional in Human Resources]. Welcome, Joyce. Joyce Chastain: Well, thank you very much, Brian. It is my pleasure to be with you guys today. BW: We’ve got lots to talk about. If you would introduce yourself, then I will hit you with the first question. JC: I am president and owner of Chastain Consulting, an organization that specializes in HR consulting. I have been doing that for about seven or eight years. Prior to that, I worked with a national provider of technology, some of it related to human resources. I did work as an HR consultant for a large national firm that specialized primarily in public sector consulting. Currently, I serve as the president of the HR Florida State Council. BW: Well, today I’m going to talk about the future of human resources. My first question is about the term digital generation. How do you think that affects the future of human resources? 58 CERTIFIED 2014: Volume I JC: Interestingly, I was asked to serve on a panel about 10 or 11 years ago to look at the future of human resources and what the workplace might look like in the future. One hundred of us assembled in Orlando from all parts of the country; we all thought the same thing, which was that the workplaces of the future are going to be in planned communities. We thought that employees would want to live and work and shop and go to school, and their kids go to school, all in the same geographic areas. This was when gas prices were just starting to escalate, and people did not want to drive to work anymore; they wanted to work in their own community. The idea was valid. The difference is, people are working now in a whole new way, not in a planned community but in their own homes. We’re tethered by all of the technology that we have, all of the access that we have to our files, in the cloud. We have Skype and any number of ways of communicating without actually getting in the car to go somewhere. However, human interaction will never go away, because it’s valid and necessary. But we’re going to see more organizations finding ways for www.HRCI.org