How should companies eyeing growth and expansion in 2024 scale its HR practices to align workforce expectations and drive produtivity? According to the HR Evolutions Perspective 2023: Empower and Evolve research study, both raising experience and clear focus on building capabilties is the need of the hour

People Matters and Darwinbox jointly conducted the HR Evolutions Perspective 2023: Empower and Evolve research study, the largest HR trends analysis in the APAC region. With responses from more than 1,200 HR practitioners, 350 CXOs, and about 1,500 employees, the report highlights many interesting facets of the HR landscape in Asia.

As a part of this endeavour, we talk to experienced HR leaders in the APAC region to decipher how industry trends impact their internal transformation of people practices and leadership development.

In this edition of Experts Take, we are joined by Vikrant Khanna, Global Head - Value Management, Advisory & Solutions at Darwinbox who speaks to Swasono Satyo, CHRO at TechConnect (erstwhile Sinarmas Mining).

Pak Satyo and highlights the following in the conversation:

• Creating a central value system and culture in large conglomerates
• The benefits of transforming employee experience
• How HR can help prepare for an uncertain future

Unity in diversity: Managing people in a large conglomerate

With a conglomerate like Sinarmas that has over 1,000 companies and subsidiaries, the challenges of HR are manifold. On the one hand, every business needs to maintain its individuality, and on the other, the entire group must have a unified view of culture, leadership and people practices. To increase people's agility and adaptability in such a scenario, Pak Satyo explains that the entire HR function is focused on protecting and sustaining the business for the next 100 years. The team maintains this focus through the following three levers:

• Transforming organisational excellence: By integrating the idea of individual and business excellence in everyday work processes
• Transforming people capability: By building niche capabilities in technology, engineering and other STEM subjects
• Transforming learning and development: By providing future-driven learning programs that anticipate the skills and competencies of tomorrow

As Pak Satyo explains, the goal is to build resilience and agility today so the business can thrive for the entirety of the next century. Another conscious change in the HR strategy has been to actively align with business goals and support the CXOs of all organisations in the group to align business processes, policy, culture and structure.
HR’s role in transforming the employee experience

The most effective way HR can restructure and enhance the employee experience is by reducing uncertainty in everyday work processes. Pak Satyo says that Sinarmas follows the 3R approach - Rebuilt, Rewire and Recoup - to increase the quality of work, build stronger teams and increase adaptability. He adds that ESG values also play a pivotal role in reducing uncertainty, as they promote higher transparency, accurate communication and sincere integrity in the organisation.

Similarly, using technology to manage people can increase the effectiveness of HR’s efforts in building a seamless employee experience.

Building your employee experience to mimic the ease with which consumers can place an order online while making it more interactive is vital to keeping engagement levels up. At Sinarmas, there is a single platform that takes care of every employee step, from hiring to retiring, which makes the employee journey and experience more pleasant and centralised.  

HR transformation: Gearing up for an uncertain future

The first step in transforming the internal HR function is to educate HR leaders and managers about the skills and competencies of the workforce. The pandemic allowed HR to reimagine how to use technology to stay connected, drive culture and obtain results. We need to learn how to align HR and business goals for better digitalisation, talent development and individual progress.

Once HR is able to strike the delicate balance between business strategy alignment and people-centric workplace culture, it can be easier to set goals that cater to future uncertainty and challenges. Another critical area of focus for HR should be leadership and change management to address potential resistance and expedite transformation processes. Using new-age people analytic tools, along with modified traditional approaches, like updated comprehensive OKRs, HR leaders can change internal processes and help the workforce to adapt effectively.

Building leadership pipeline and superjobs: HR’s top priorities in 2024

To build organisational agility and promote talent mobility, HR must focus on identifying people who have the capability to perform in critical roles, equipping them with decision-making authority and creating a meritocracy system for promotion. This also includes creating superjobs - roles that cut across functions and enable people or managers to develop and plug specific capability gaps - so that there is a group of problem-solvers in the workforce. At the core of organisational and HR transformation is developing a mindset that embraces new ways of working using new technology and innovative people management practices.