Telefonica’s Sergio Asensio discusses the future trends in HR

March 14, 2014 - PRLog -- Telefonica’s Sergio Asensio, one of the keynote speakers at the 8th Annual Achieving HR Excellence in Telecom Summit (http://hrintelecom.com/), has been sharing his views on the future of HR in the Telecom industry.

Mr. Asensio who shall be discussing the balance between short-term financial pressure and long term business sustainability through innovation, took time out to share his thoughts on what are the most pressing issues in the industry today. He argued that:

‘Digital revolution and OTTs have changed radically the rules and to survive, TELCO are looking urgently for strategic allies, partnerships with the most unexpected agents…In that sense, potential M&A between giants are coming soon.’

Going further, Mr. Asensio explained that Telco has to reinvent itself – which means becoming a ‘Digital Telco’ for Telefonica. Telcos have moved into the mobile channels, through social media, text, to apps and more to maintain their relationship with clients. HR has had to adapt to this new envioronment.

According to Mr. Asensio HR must ‘incoroporate new capabilities’, such as ‘new IT, cloud, business intelligence, big data’, as this is now a business necessity. He explains that Telefonica have focused on one of the ‘4 Global HR priorities’ – that is to ‘Build talent for the future’. Several programmes have been launched to support and attract talented youth into his organization such as: Talentum and Graduates program, Think Big School and the corporate Telefonica Universitas in Barcelona.

Not only is the idea behind these programmes to gather talented tech savvy young talent but also to assist with leadership development. The Telefonica Universitas in particular are ‘focused to develop transformational leadership’ according to Mr. Asensio.

The interview naturally moved from leadership development to any new trends, changes or developments in succession planning strategies. Unsurprisingly there have been no ‘dramatic changes’ but rather the focus is on becoming more and more ‘flexible’, Sergio stated that it is important to adapt to the market, and only design succession planning for key positions as a massive plan would be at risk of being too theoretical.

Our final question centered on the emerging importance of gamification as a tool in the recruitment process. Interestingly, while acknowledging that Telefonica is gradually using gamification more and more, Mr Asensio pointed out that ‘gamification comes with a price and sometimes is not the most effective motivator. It’s a chance but it shouldn’t be the cornerstone of any model’.

We have seen gamification being used as a tool in HR but also on a wider customer experience role as well. It’s growth has been startling, and it is now being used in other industries – including Banking. While it will probably never be the cornerstone of any model as Mr. Asensio stated, it would be remiss that it will become more and more important in the future. If you are not using gamification, or are struggling with the implementation it would probably benefit you to listen to experts discussing their own experiences with using it.

If you would like to hear more from Mr. Asensio, you can watch his presentation on the threat posed by obedience and opportunity that irreverence represents to foster an innovative culture in organizations and driving transformation here (http://hrintelecom.com/special-video-feature/). Otherwise, if you are interested in listening to him and other experts discussing these highly important topics, you can do so at the 8th Annual Achieving HR Excellence in Telecom Summit, taking place between the 3rd and 5th June in Berlin.

You can find the full interview here. (http://hrintelecom.com/speaker-interviews/)

If you have any questions about this article or event contact me on ciaran.p.chapman@lloydsconferences.com