Implications for HRD

Although Internet of Things provides HRD with tremendous opportunities for growth, it is not without challenges. In addition to its potential for enormous economic impact, the IoT will affect the performance of a range of organizations and individuals. As every aspect of our lives becomes ever more connected, thousands of discrete data points are created by just a handful of individuals on any given day. This provides an environment conducive to hackers and cyber criminals trying to gather sensitive employee and consumer information. When the emergence of new technology outpaces security developments, the likelihood that IoT can cause security and privacy breaches for HR practitioners is great. After all, consumer data is one of the most precious assets of any organization, and assuring the security and privacy of this data in the age of IoT is imperative.
Schramm (2014)noted that IoT influence on HR is wide-reaching, from how data about workers are gathered and analyzed, to recruitment and employees’ safety. Schramm (2014) also asserted that the data results gained through IoT today would help inform and influence HR in the future. Hence, HR practitioners should carefully balance the gains and opportunities that IoT presents, with the potential security privacy issues relating to employee and other data.
As technology shapes and amplifies our culture, and therefore our lives, it is vital for HR practitioners to understand and address the implications that IoT can have in the context of different cultures. The workforce of today is global. As such, HR/HRD practitioners should also understand the implications of different symbols and meanings, and how differently they can be perceived and interpreted by various cultures.
There are important implications for all stakeholders—consumers, IoT user companies, technology suppliers, policymakers, and employees. Catching up with the velocity at which the IoT affect work design and task performance can be challenging, but taking no action will result in virtual death. As much as the emergence of IoT has presented a challenge to relatively new and emerging fields like HRD it has as well created an opportunity for the ingenious to take a leadership role and announce their relevance in a new way. We perceive two main challenges that the IoT presents to HRD:
How to absorb the big data generated through the IoT – If the existing HRD systems struggle to absorb actionable workforce analytics data to understand how history informs the future, the enormity of the big data generated by IoT can subvert the field if immediate action is not taken. HRD can create an enabling environment for research in an IoT workplace by developing a cutting-edge database that enables continuous interaction between HRD scholars around the globe about their current research aside those presented at conferences. This strategy will help HRD scholars to identify others in the field whose research aligns with their thoughts and research ideas and serve as a catalyst for collaboration and exchange of ideas for enriched scholarly work that makes a greater impact on society. Furthermore, data from such a database can help students of HRD and emerging scholars to be informed about ongoing trends in the field and save them from the needless uncertainty about the relevance of their thesis in their academic/scholarly pursuit.
How HRD can use the IoT to connect workforce development to the people analytics principle –The use of technology and statistics to collect and analyze data to help management make informed decisions on talent acquisition and development is becoming more challenging as virtual training and assessment become increasingly popular. Thus, some people can fake their presence at such training and assessment sessions or cheat with technology. This calls for HRD professionals to build a strong network to help generate a comprehensive talent data from a variety of locations and issues to help improve our work. Professionals can share information constantly and make recommendations to other professionals through a well-develop database and HRD Collaboratories (Yawson, 2009). Linkedin and other organizations have taken the lead, but HRD as a field can improve upon their idea by having professionals in the different locations contribute to one another’s work.