Today’s interview is with Anthony Abbatiello, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and global leader of Deloitte Leadership. He joins me today to talk about Deloitte’s newly released annual 2017 Global Human Capital Trends Report, some of the trends that emerged from the report and what they mean for leaders and entrepreneurs looking to build a business intent on delivering a great customer and employee experience.

This interview follows on from my recent interview – Building a culture of good engages customers, employees and drives business results – Interview with Ryan McCarty and Scott Moorehead – and is number 209 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Here’s the highlights of my interview with Anthony:

• Deloitte have recently published their fifth annual Global Human Capital Trends Report (2017). This year is the biggest version of the report ever and has enjoyed the participation of over 10,000 business and HR executives worldwide, of which over 60% were business leaders.
• The report is about rewriting the human capital rules for the digital age.
• The report highlights 10 big trends that leaders and organisations need to pay attention to if they want to continue to compete.
• Anthony highlighted a few of the trends contained within the report:
  • The Organisation of the future: Arriving Now
    • This is the top trend (and has been for the last couple of years) and focuses on the awareness that the design of the organisation of the future will be based on a ‘network of teams’ idea. The difference this year is that more and more organisations are putting this into practice. This is based on a recognition that historically most organizations were designed for efficiency and effectiveness, which resulted in them becoming very complicated and and siloed. However, these structures are increasingly unsuited to an era which is typified by unpredictability and disruption. Thus, organisations are now starting to designing themselves for speed, agility, and adaptability in order to help them compete. Organisations also need to build the appropriate leadership capabilities to operate in this new type of environment.
    • 88 percent of respondents believe that building this type of organisation is an important or very important issue yet only 12% are making progress.
    • Many CEOs and CHROs are struggling to reorganise around agility, employee and customer centric design and being a digital first business.
    • However, it’s not enough to just reorganise things and empower people. You also have to teach people how to operate successfully in this new environment. And, this starts with having the right leaders to enable and lead this.
  • Careers and learning: Real time, all the time
    • This next trend talks to the idea that employees now face the prospect of 60-year careers and, yet, a career for life is a broken idea. That means employees have got to be consistently learning, developing and acquiring new skills and this is forcing companies to rethink the way they manage careers and deliver always-on learning and development (L&D) opportunities that include both digital and experiential methods.
    • However, the responsibility for learning has also to fall on the individual and they need to develop a self-directed ‘habit’ and appetite for learning.
  • The employee experience: Culture, engagement, and beyond
    • Rather than focus narrowly on employee engagement and culture, organizations are developing an integrated focus on the entire employee experience.
    • As a result of the growing influence of Millennials, employees now expect a productive, engaging, enjoyable work experience.
    • Flexibility is the new currency.
    • Leveraging skills that they learnt through developing their customer experience, increasingly firms are starting to undertake employee journey mapping to help them achieve a better employee experience and one that is linked to business results.
  • Leadership disrupted: Pushing the boundaries
    • This trend highlights the trend that high-performing leaders today need a different set of skills and expertise than they would have done in previous generations. Organizations now need a different type of leader, ones who can build teams, keep people connected and engaged, and drive a culture of innovation, risk tolerance, and continuous improvement.
    • More than 44 percent of Millennials are now in leadership positions, but most believe they have received little to no leadership development.
    • But, more than 60 percent of companies refuse to invest in leadership development.
• Anthony’s recommendation to organisatons is to first understand where you and your industry are with respect to technology and disruption to ascertain which trends are the most applicable to you.
• Wow service/experience for Anthony is all about anticipatory or proactive service.
• As well as checking out the Global Human Capital Trends Report (2017), do also check out the article Better pond, bigger fish: Five ways to nurture developing leaders in an ecosystem for growth, which is a great summation of all the things that we discussed surrounding leadership today and includes recommendations for both HR and business leaders.

About Anthony (taken from his LinkedIn bio here)

Anthony Abbatiello is a Principal in Deloitte’s Human Capital practice, based out of the New York office, and is the firms global head of the leadership consulting business. Anthony has spent a majority of his career consulting with Chief Human Resources Officers, Chief Talent Officers and other C-Level executives on building high performance businesses that drive optimization and growth through HR Strategy, Talent Management, HR Service Delivery and HR Technology. At Deloitte, Anthony is the Head of Deloitte Leadership and Culture businesses.

Anthony began his career helping Financial Services clients increase the effectiveness of HR by creating innovative strategies, global operating models and bringing HR into the digital age. He also helped pioneer Accenture’s HR Transformation capabilities with the first HR Outsourcing arrangement in the Financial Services industry. Continuing to build expertise in Enterprise Business Transformation, Anthony has led key Mergers/Acquisitions and the transformation of global enterprise functions such as Operations, Finance, Risk Management and Technology.

Anthony was named one of the Top HR Trendsetters of 2014 (HR Magazine) and is considering one of the leading Advisors to CHROs and their leadership teams.

Finally, Anthony holds an adjunct professor appointment at New York University in the Graduate Program in Business teaching classes in Organizational Analysis and Human Resources.

Anthony resides in New York City and spends his personal time with friends, family and working on hobbies such as traveling, charity work and the continuous search for the best restaurants, and wine, in the world.

Do check out the Global Human Capital Trends Report (2017) as well as the article Better pond, bigger fish: Five ways to nurture developing leaders in an ecosystem for growth and connect with Anthony on LinkedIn here and say Hi to him on Twitter @apabbatielloHR.

Photo Credit: mikecogh Flickr via Compfight cc