The biggest tech trends impacting leadership services in 2018

Digitalization and technology development seems to be on every company’s agenda these days. We see huge potential for utilizing the power of technology to enhance the professional leadership services industry.

Through our global tech survey, we asked 3251 people across 81 countries the question: what technologies are important to your organisation now, and in five years' time? This is what we found:

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At the top of the charts of growing importance are Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and AI. These are the ones to watch! So what are they?

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Creating systems that learn, adapt and potentially act autonomously will be a major battleground for companies throughout the next few years. The ability to use AI to enhance decision-making, reinvent business models and ecosystems, and remake the customer experience will drive the payoff for digital initiatives.

For recruitment, this could have implications on search engine efficiencies (scanning, sorting and prioritizing CVs), to chatbots in candidate administrations, all the way to the assessment & development phase: using AI to assess personality and culture fit.

For further information on the topic, we found McKinsey's An Executive Guide to AI particularly useful.

Virtual & Augmented Realities (VR / AR)

Virtual, Augmented and Mixed realities are changing the way that people perceive and interact with the world. Mixed reality, a type of immersion that merges and extends the technical functionality of both AR & VR, is emerging as the immersive experience of choice providing a compelling technology that optimizes its interface to better match how people view & interact with their world.

For leadership services, alternate realities have a multitude of practical applications. For example, one could use AR to test practical skills of an applicant before hiring. VR could also be used to showcase office culture &/or board dynamics - for both screening and on-boarding purposes. Furthermore, mixed realities have a strong role to play in employee onboarding - allowing candidates to experience a "day in the life" prior to the real deal.