Putting the 'H' back in HR
The business landscape is rapidly evolving in the face of technological advancements, increasing emphasis of consumer-first approach, and changing workplace psychographics. Organization’s talent approaches are also evolving to address the shifts in talent dynamics due to every-changing socio-economic demographics and new capabilities with rising automation of activities.HR must therefore, rethink the talent approach to be able to attract, engage and retain a diverse talent pool with these unique capabilities. This starts with changing inside-out i.e. enabling the HR function itself to tackle the future of work through an adaptable, flexible approach.
Why must HR adapt?
The role of HR is taking on strategic importance more than ever before. To become future-ready, organizations are keen to leverage their people-advantage, and therefore, are turning to HR to effectively attract, engage and retain top talent. HR is donning many hats- from task-oriented administrative tasks to strategic-level change agent. All these must tie in to a consistent, reliable, outcome-based talent strategy. This is very much happening- according to an Alight survey, two-thirds of respondents have a well-defined or a fully-defined HR Service Delivery model. To add real business value through this model, HR leaders and teams must embrace the new-age competencies such as agility, flexibility, learnability, digital, collaboration etc. This is possible only when HR leaders exhibit willingness to change and take proactive steps to drive change within their functions.
Key Talent Areas to Rethink and Revamp
Putting the 'H' back in HR involves a futuristic talent approach which aligns with the overall business objectives. Some of the key priorities to build the “HR of tomorrow” are:
Streamline HR Service Delivery: Research proves that a clear service model makes organizations five-fold more confident on program design and execution and twice as productive*. Streamlining HR Service Delivery to tomorrow’s talent realities means building an organization with greater integration, better user-experiences, and outcome-based thinking. Therein lies immense opportunity to streamline in terms of process, scope and coverage in the areas of performance and L&D.
Implement Technology and digitalize: Organizations with a clear HR Service Delivery model and HR Technology are three times more likely to be in the mature stages of their robotics and cognitive adoption processes.
Organizations know this: 80% of respondents are already evaluating AI and automation use cases and building scale for future investments. Huge opportunity lies in implementing process automation, machine learning and chat-bots in high-transaction functions such as payroll and benefits administration, learning administration, reporting/ analytics, and talent acquisition.
Build Data and analytics readiness: Two-thirds of the participating organizations plan to implement more robust people analytics in the coming 12 to 24 months, primarily to solve issues relating to performance, capability, productivity and retention. To achieve the desired outcomes, HR must proactively address hurdles such as the lack of consolidated data, and limited linkage of analytics to business outcomes. A culture of data-backed governance must be inculcated from within the HR team, by buying or building talent-analytics capability and infrastructure.
Upgrade capabilities: Capability building starts from within, if organizations expect to offer their customers a digital-savvy experience, employees must themselves experience digital-first within the HR function. Three-fourths of the organizations plan to increase spending on HR capability development, especially in analytics, digital savviness and change facilitation. This is a positive precursor for change.
The HR transformation journey is not without its own challenges. In a bid to go “Low Effort, High Impact” in HR, HR leaders must reduce the administrative and transactional burden on HR professionals by driving a near-zero operations focus. The journey does not end with successful implementation; sustainability of HR change initiatives is questionable even today. For example, organizations in APAC are struggling to get value out of the HR platforms they have invested in, only 45 percent of respondents stated being either highly or somewhat satisfied with their HR technology. Interestingly, there seems to be a high level of acceptance that the above capabilities are the only way ahead to become future-ready – 50 percent of respondents agreed that HR-led decisions on technology are key to driving success of HR tech investments. HR leaders must build the business case to support and showcase this view, so as to gain the backing of the Chief Executive suite, and create substantial and sustainable impact on their businesses.
The survey HR Transformation 2019 to 2020 is live. Participating in this survey will help you to take a good look at your current HR strategy and craft a holistic approach towards adaptive HR.