Abstract
The new VUCAD world (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, and diverse/digital) requires HR departments to rethink their skills. The immediate impact of COVID-19 and the implementation for massive remote work has raised HR function's visibility and its contribution to business. In fact, HR has played a leading role in responding to COVID-19. While the C-suite depended on HR to rally the workforce through the urgent pandemic disruption, true long-term value lies in the ability to drive performance across the enterprise, while getting the most from people. With this paper, we will try to contribute to this debate by providing guidance in order to determine which HR skills will be the most important ones in the post-Covid era and foresee the issues and the challenges that HR will confront in the future. We surveyed 61 HR managers across multiple and diverse companies located in Italy in an effort to learn about which skills they consider to be the most important ones before, during and after the COVID-19 crisis. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed, and directions for future research are identified.