I was poking around in my Google Drive reviewing old job descriptions from 2020 earlier this week and they felt a little unrecognisable! The role of a People Ops leader has fundamentally changed in just five years—and I have pretty strong faith that it's about to change again.
Here's what I'm seeing...
SKILLS GOING "OUT" (or at least, no longer enough on their own):
Policy administration as a core skill
Being the "culture champion" - this now feels like a broader responsibility, building out the strategy around a unique culture in the marketplace
HR systems management as a core competency (it's table stakes now, like when we used to say "competent in Microsoft Word" on our CV)
"Employee engagement" as a vague, unmeasured concept
SKILLS THAT HAVE COME "IN"
Financial modeling and business case building for Technology evaluation (the HR tech stack exploded and someone has to make sense of it)
Data analysis and people analytics
Change management at scale (we've reorganised more in 3 years than the previous decade)
Remote/hybrid work design (not just policy, but actual workplace and ways of working design)
Strategic workforce planning (not just hiring plans, but skills mapping and scenario planning)
SKILLS THAT ARE "TBC" and Coming in the next 2-3 years
AI literacy and automation strategy (what do we automate, what do we augment, what stays human?)
Skills architecture and internal mobility (as career paths become less linear and more T-shaped and flat)
Compliance, compensation, and workforce administration in a distributed world (50 states, 20 countries, one company) , including pay transparency and equity communication (legislation is forcing our hand)
Building for the "work from anywhere" generation (Gen Z's expectations are different. Would we even call it that? Hmmm)
The job description has gone from "manage HR programs" to "be a strategic operator who happens to focus on people." What skills have you had to develop that weren't in your original remit? And what do you think we'll need to master next?