The role of HR has been put under an evolving pressure since the beginning of March as businesses has to adapt to the global challenges. The movement to a more remote & hybrid environment has highlighted the value that HR can create, even when in times of crisis and uncertainty.
The BTN was delighted to partner with UKG for a VIP roundtable with senior people leaders, which was chaired by the renowned blogger and global speaker, Perry Timms (Founder & Chief Energy Officer at People & Transformational HR).
Perry led the interactive conversation, looking at the opportunity that HR has in creating more efficient services within their organisations, which will allow them to be productive and deliver better employee experiences as a function, with a key focus on agility.
The below points showcase the key takeaways from the event:
A solid foundation with frictionless HR
Create efficient HR technology systems & processes to ‘just work’ in the background so we as people leaders can show the added value through collaboration, commercial, economic and social business benefits.
HR Transformation can often be construed to be all about the ‘tools’, whereas the focus should be about what that tool allows the business to do/have; whether that be more time or more money.
This is HR’s time to showcase the value that we are creating on a day-to-day basis, such as spending efforts on enhancing employee experience.
What does leadership look like in a hybrid world? What does team management look like? What does performance look like? What does performance management look like? All these questions can be answered if HR starts focusing back on the human side of their role and delivering the added value.
Transformation as agile evolution
There will be a real agenda for constant change going forward. We need to see change as a continuum, Covid has forced all organisations into some sort of transformation. Everyone should be doing or planning, no-one should be done.
Design. Test. Iterate. Do we truly know how we need to transform our methods of working, our offices or our employee experiences yet? We need to ensure we know to react to how things are different and transformation may only be changing a single process out a 10 step process but all organisations must now be looking at all steps and seeing how transformation can be small improvements on a consistent basis.
From a talent perspective, remote working creates huge opportunities for the workforce as organisations can hire from a truly global talent pool. This will only showcase the impact that trust plays in a dispersed, remote or hybrid organisation, which could cause levels of delegation to be centralised again, ultimately returning to lose the agility. How can we consciously keep that agility now we’ve seen the benefit of that agility? HR has shown its value in reactive & crisis environments, how can we retain that level of critical thinking?
Yearly performance objectives have always sat at the heart of business but should we focus more on shorter objectives? WFH is short and fast and the business world is faster, so should our objectives be faster?
HR as the agents of a ‘change readiness’ mindset
Can HR be the architects of how change is done? This period has changed the perception of HR within organisations so can our value-add piece going forward be changing mindsets within our ever-evolving cultures?
Business continuity planning proved to be out of the window, so how can HR be the architects of how change is done?
If we can instil a mindset for change readiness, that is HR showing value.
There has been a complete shift of mindset but there will be a point when there will be a desire to restore methods from before. We need to be firmer about the fact we aren’t going back and start to develop our paradox managers who are human and digital.
Culture is not mechanical and needs to be understood. That way, our employees can develop the ability to learn, unlearn and relearn.
PeopleDoc by Ultimate Software is a cloud-based HR service delivery & HR document management platform. With offices in New York City, Toronto, Paris, and Stuttgart, PeopleDoc by Ultimate Software provides SaaS solutions that service over 2.5 million users worldwide.
