HR will be dead by 2020 – Vineet Nayar at the 14th National HRM Summit

The 14th HRM National Summit of AIMA featured some of the top HR professionals and delegates from Industry, Government, Media, and Academia.  Below is an excerpt from an enlightening speech by Mr. Vineet Nayar, Founder, & Chairman Sampark Foundation and Former CEO, HCL Technologies at the 14th National HRM Summit on the topic ‘HR Organisation in the Age of Automation’.

Vineet Nayar addressing 14th National HRM Summit

Vineet Nayar addressing 14th National HRM Summit

When I talk to HR community I am reminded of a CEO I met a few years ago. This was the CEO of the company called Kodak and especially people of my age would remember that each one of us had a Kodak moment of our life where we took very selective photographs because you could take only a few photos at a time. The world was different at that time, it has changed now. And When I met that CEO I asked him “Didn’t you know that the digital photography will make Kodak, as a company, obsolete?”. He told me that he knew about it at least 10 years before. I am an advisor to the McKinsey Leadership institute when I met the McKinsey team which was involved in advising Kodak, I asked them that if they knew ten years in advance that Kodak was about to die why didn’t  they do something about it. They told me that they did  a very interesting research, over 6 decades, of the companies who lost their market share and there were two conclusions: Anybody who loses market share or becomes obsolete knows at least 5 years in advance that they are going to become obsolete and the only reason they become obsolete is because they don’t do anything about it. So they were the part of the gang that became obsolete.

So one thing I would definitely predict is that the HR is going to be dead by 2020. The three megatrends change happening in the world will make the HR job obsolete.

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