What’s your skills capital?

Today I provide the opening keynote for the annual Monster Government Solutions Human Capital Management conference for government HR folks in Washington, DC. I’ll be focussing on a look at “human resource issues of 2010”, and how we need more flexibility as we battle the depth of the looming skills crisis. I’ve framed my talk around these themes:

1. Rapidity, not rigidity: we need to prepare for rapid skills evolution
2. Science, not technology: the root of HR change is found in the rapid rate of scientific change, and it is causing rapid, rapid change with ever trade, career and profession
3. Complexity, not simplicity: a key result is that for everyone, “what you need to know to do your job is increasing at an exponential pace
4. Volatility, not normalcy: we also need to ensure we are ready for a future in which the unexpected and unknown can have a dramatic new impact on skills issues
5. Transformation, not training: we need to adjust our HR thinking for the “just in time knowledge skills”
6. Continuity from flexibility: the depth of the boomer skills exodus if of such a degree that we’ll need a lot of flexible work policies in order to retain them
7. Attraction, not retention: at the same time, we have to play into the unique career attitudes (i.e. there are no careers, only stepping stones) within Gen-Y
8. Variability, not structure: Hollow companies will form the basis for all future corporate success due to the skills crisis
9. Lifestyle, not loyalty; statistics show that most everyone in a full time job is stunning unhappy. We can do better
10. Imagination, not administration: solving the emerging HR crisis requires new ways of thinking and a willingness to do things differently

HR professionals today must prepare for a skills future that is going to be far more challenging thing we’ve ever seen, and need to think dramatically differently — that’st he focus of my human resource trends keynote today.