Today is HR Appreciation Day! The HR space has been going through massive growth lately and People Matters is proud to celebrate these milestones with our community.

The role of HR is shifting: from focusing solely on administrative and recruitment work to handling multiple aspects of running a business and harnessing the potential of human capital.

As the workplace continues to evolve, HR helps facilitate these developments. Whereas, before, the HR department’s goal was to recruit people from a single pipeline or profile type to fill jobs, today, HR’s goal is to understand talent holistically and recruit from a diverse pool. The responsibility of HR has also expanded to cultivating and developing a safe and equitable workplace culture.

During the pandemic, we have seen drastic changes in how we work. The crisis caused profound changes to how companies operate and how employers and employees interact. There was a rapid shift to remote work, automation, and digitalisation to meet organisational and individual needs.

With these changes, we’ve realised how some older models of HR management no longer work. What should take their place is a system that is more responsive, agile and flexible. One that, humanly speaking, revolves around greater connections, greater diversity and more positive work cultures and, operationally, lower transaction costs, unparalleled automation, and openness to shifts in work arrangements.

How HR unlocks new possibilities for business

HR can help establish the identity of an organisation. 

CHROs and other senior HR leaders must ensure that their company is living its mission and vision. The role of HR here is to provide models of ideal individual mindsets linked to a company’s values and identify moments in the company culture that translate the mindsets into a set of leadership behaviours.

HR can spearhead efforts to create value out of talent. 

The best talent must be allowed to hold critical value-driving roles. What this means is departing from a traditional approach, where talent and critical roles are interchangeable and based on hierarchy. Here, HR gets the best people into the most vital roles to create the kind of culture they envision for their company.

HR can help create an atmosphere for the best employee experience. 

Working together with people to form authentic, personalised, and motivating experiences can tap into the strength of individuals, teams, and the company itself. Similarly, HR should help companies transform their organisational model – from process, people, organisational structure, strategy, and technology. HR as a business partner can support other functional leaders in forming an iterative approach that develops core elements of the people management process.

Read more: Want better business? Hire more women in C-Suite

HR can lead in developing a dynamic workforce. 

Instead of the traditional ways of recruitment, work will be largely defined in terms of skill sets. The fast pace of technological developments has enabled individuals to quickly learn and develop skills. To deliver organisational objectives and thrive in this environment, employers must enable their workers to upskill over the coming decades.

Overall, the success and growth of an organisation will depend on how future-forward, decisive and open to change the HR function is. That's because traditional HR operating models might no longer work in the future. 

But with a keen sense of their transformative power, as shared above, HR can unlock different possibilities for businesses if companies are prepared for these changes.