Are we making our lives—and the lives of others—more complicated than they should be? As technology grows and permeates more of our lives, it comes with a promise of greater efficiency, better value from what we do, and an amazing experience for everyone. But does this actually happen?

In this issue of HRO Today EMEA, we look at employee engagement, recruitment, and data. In each case, there’s a sense that stripping things back a little and identifying what is really important can be crucial to efficiency and value. Employees aren’t necessarily impressed with great new initiatives designed to make them feel part of the team—they just want to do their job easily. Recruiters are being showered with yet more technology that claims it will make their job easier, when all they really want to do is find out if a candidate can do a task. If data becomes too complex or just too much, it stops being useful and starts being a problem in itself.

Are we gradually losing sight of common sense, or is this a renaissance in attitudes to the workplace? In the face of AI, we understand more of what it means to be human and what humans are and what they bring to and need from the workplace. Even as the wider news brings worries about where AI is going and what the workplace of the future might look like, it’s worth remembering that working with other people, understanding what they want, and what they do doesn’t really need any huge process or technology at all. You just need to talk.

Simon Kent

Editor-at-Large