The HR Evolution Perspectives 2023: Empower and Evolve is a comprehensive study based on the responses of over 1,200 HR practitioners, 350 CXOs and 1,500 employees. Jointly conducted by People Matters and Darwinbox, this is the most extensive report of its kind in the APAC region and aims to demystify what the future holds for talent management and HR transformation. As a part of this study, we are interacting with renowned APAC HR leaders to get their perspective on managing people’s challenges and expectations in a volatile talent market.

For the current episode of Experts Take, we had a riveting discussion with Emman Salazar, Vice President - HR at S&R Membership Shopping. Emman is a human capital strategist and a human resources management leader. He specialises in creating value-added HR solutions to drive business profitability, enable transformation and improve employee experiences. A multi-awardee HR leader, Emman is also a certified facilitator and an experienced speaker. In this article, based on the discussion with Emman, we dive deeper into the following aspects:

• Managing people challenges in a hyper-growth business environment
• Building employee experiences and HR service delivery solutions for maximum engagement
• Leveraging technology  to reimagine a new workforce and HR function

Creating talent management frameworks in the era of hyper-growth

Emman says that people are integral to driving business transformations, growth and profitability, so organisations need to think beyond numbers and headcount. Currently, we are at a junction where businesses and skills are rapidly transforming, and at S&R, the mantra has been to help employees grow by bringing HR delivery systems and the people's agenda to the fore. Creating effective people management frameworks and aligning business strategy with the human capital management approach is pivotal. While technology will be critical in implementing change, HR and business leaders need to manage various other people's challenges, such as diversity, culture, engagement and upskilling, to prepare for the future.

While rapid growth in the workforce is naturally challenging, HR leaders must influence business decisions to manage current and future people's challenges. The interesting aspect of this disruptive business environment is that organisations across the globe are facing similar people challenges, which puts the focus back on delivering relevant and engaging people solutions that leverage technology and diversity to build the organisation's cultural fabric. To achieve this, HR professionals are slowly stepping back as owners of transformation processes and taking the role of orchestrators in pursuit of empowering managers and building a positive employee experience.

Designing purpose and experience-driven employee engagement programmes

At S&R, the focus has been on building an employee experience that creates a supportive, engaging and productive environment for people to thrive. The underlying philosophy is that happy employees will provide stellar customer service to members and drive profitability naturally. Like customer touchpoints and pain points, the organisation has identified vital employee touchpoints and experiential challenges to designing engaging HR service processes. This alignment between HR programmes and employee experience has allowed HR leaders to influence business leaders by showing accurate and reliable people data.

Emman adds that, at its core, every transformation exists at the intersection of technology processes, systems, mindset and culture, which makes it important to create people programs that drive business results. Understanding how to make employees feel connected and welcome is integral to building talent management practices that hire, engage and retain top talent. While most organisations are catching up with existing challenges, the fundamentals of HR service delivery determine the rate of adoption and engagement at most workplaces. At the end of the day, transformation isn’t so much about new technology but assessing people’s readiness to embrace new tools and create new workflows.

Leveraging technology and creativity to solve people’s challenges and add value

The transition from legacy systems to modern cloud-based solutions has created many subsystems in dire need of consolidation. Emman explains that functional integration should be a top priority for CHROs as individual and siloed processes will eventually make HR service delivery more complex. HR practitioners should consider themselves as digital migrants who are willing to change the traditional way of working to leverage modern technology effectively. Once the primary challenges of the HR tech architecture have been fixed, technology will accelerate any transformation that business leaders envision.

For instance, as S&R simultaneously solves the business challenge of efficient inventory management and the people's challenges of engagement, HR must provide solutions that use people’s capability to solve business problems. Using different people analytics to get accurate and real-time HR data can go a long way in making the entire function more receptive to feedback and data-driven insights. The days of fighting for a seat at the table are behind us, as HR leaders are now a core part of the business leadership team, working to transform the organisation by aligning strategic and people goals. With increasingly sophisticated technology available at their disposal, CHROs have no excuse to stay obvious regarding their workforce productivity, engagement and motivation levels. So, it’s time for HR leaders to reimagine their purpose in a data and AI-driven world, understand where they can add value and create solutions in tandem with other business functions to generate sustainable business growth.