HR, THE ETERNAL OBSERVER AND GIVER, HAS BEEN DRAGGING MARLEY’S CHAINS AND A LEGACY ANCHOR, WEDDED TO ARCHAIC DATA HARVESTING PROCEDURES ON UNWIELDLY, TIME LAGGED XL SHEETS. ALL THIS REPRESENTS THE ABSOLUTE ANTITHESES OF SPEED-TO-CHANGE AND AGILITY? AS WORKFORCE STRUCTURES FLATTEN, SILOS ARE FILLED IN AND MERITOCRACY REPLACES BOARDROOM DECREES AND DIKTATS, HR IS SUFFERING AN “US AND THEM” PARANOIA, FEARFUL THAT INITIATIVES ARE WIDELY RECEIVED AS IMPLEMENTED “FOR HR, BY HR”.

Long before the pandemic, HR’s role began to shift from its process-driven roots, to being at the heart of business transformation and driving the employee experience agenda. It has become central to how businesses have responded to the seismic change in ways of working and now needs to move beyond the storm to help manage a new set of risks – the talent war, cost of living, recession and the redefinition of the traditional role – which will require continued evolvement from functional to empowering.

HR teams need time to focus on developing strategies that remove barriers to emotionally engaging with employees, support the recruitment of a resilient and adaptable workforce and harness people analytics to understand performance and development needs across the organisation. People strategies need to be business-driven, aiming to deliver high performance, while creating agility to respond to change and developing a culture of continuous improvement. They need to ensure policies are inclusive and evolve with the needs of society and the business, providing assurance that people are treated fairly and consistently. Many organisations are renaming leadership roles within HR to be more people focused, such as; Chief People Officers, Chief Talent Officers and Chief Experience Officers. My view is that the department as a whole needs a brand and a mindset that conveys the vital role it has in creating, developing and maintaining healthy organisations where people can thrive. Some organisations have already recognised this and are renaming their HR departments as People Operations or People Teams, which better aligns with their purpose. There are still many organisations suffering from a “them and us” mentality, where employees feel disconnected from the People Team. By putting the right engagement strategies in place, People Teams can change this perception and demonstrate the value it delivers to the employee experience.

Engaging people is about recognising them as individuals, providing clarity of what the business is driving towards and how they are contributing and rewarding them appropriately. Enabling this level of engagement should be the focus of People Teams. To ensure engagement strategies are successful, People Team leaders need to empower managers to self-serve more employee relations matters. As a topic it’s been discussed many times, but managers need access to the tools and guidance that enable them to support their teams to deliver in their jobs and nurture the emotional commitment they feel towards the business. This gives everyone more sense of ownership and pride in their work. The benefits? Better relationships between managers and employees, so that they can proactively deal with issues before they become problems, while People Teams have more time to focus on developing the people strategies that will underpin business success.

Data and analytics are central to revolutionising the role of HR. Focusing on facts rather than guesswork supports better discussions and pinpoints issues. For example, if absenteeism data is effectively recorded and absence management delivered consistently, People Teams and managers can begin to see trends and anomalies that may need to be addressed. If a certain department bucks a trend otherwise seen consistently across the business, what can be learned? Is there a manager who needs more support? Is there an issue with bullying or disengagement? Is training or disciplinary action required? Or is there a great role model who can help others see how to make a positive difference? Where data can be used to solve problems early and informally and to shine a spotlight on great practice, behaviour and outcomes, the perception of the value being delivered to managers and employees will shift positively. This helps demonstrate how People Teams add value and reduce risk in people matters, while driving positive change. People Teams can no longer be tied to unwieldy Excel spreadsheets and held back by siloed working. Analytics that provide visibility and insights as to the success of change are at the heart of any transformation and they’re essential to benchmark the health of the organisation and enable data-driven decision making at speed. Measures such as employee engagement scores, churn by department, the cost of absenteeism and measuring managers’ confidence in dealing with employee relations matters are all useful to inform decisions.

Every business will be at a different point in their transformation journey, so the key to success is understanding where the company is now and where it wants to move to on the HR maturity curve. At the top end of the curve are business-driven People Teams, which are developing employee experience strategies that meet the needs of the employee and the business. This means creating opportunities for transparency – as well as more emotional connections – considering every interaction an employee has, from onboarding, training and benefits to day-to-day support. This requires robust and consistent communication channels that keep managers and employees well informed about policies and procedures, so managers feel empowered to self-manage people matters without involving the people function in every instance. Managers will be well versed in how to engage on a human level, above and beyond the day job. Business-driven People Teams create healthy organisations by harnessing people data to make decisions, developing inclusive policies that are communicated and applied consistently and implementing the right technology to support managers in handling employee relations matters without risk. At the other end of the curve are functional HR departments, which are more likely to rely on basic information captured on spreadsheets and siloed processes that limit the view of the ‘bigger picture’ and are a barrier to empowering managers. At the heart of any successful business transformation is people, which means it’s vital to revolutionise the role of the team responsible for them.

REFERENCES *Gartner Press Release, Gartner HR Research Reveals 82% of Employees Report Working Environment Lacks Fairness, November 8, 2021

FOR FURTHER INFO WWW.ADVISERPLUS.COM