HR has reached the point of diminishing returns in its focus on administrative efficiency. Traditional HR transactional services and back office functions are transitioning to cloud technology, employee self-service is a reality, operational services groups handle employee services, and easy-to-access online and mobile applications provide answers once provided by HR generalists. These shifts will continue, but the biggest gains have already been harvested by most companies.
By contrast, the need for HR as a business-critical partner to strategically guide employee engagement has never been more urgent. Talent is a critical concern for most organizations, performance management and development programs need radical change, and new workforce data and analytics capabilities need expertise to create insights. These are where the investments need to be made to drive top-line HR benefits.
It’s time to design HR to focus on consulting and service delivery – to become the business partner with the skills, organization, processes, and partnerships to deliver innovative employee experience solutions.
The Opportunity: Design HR for Solutions
To deliver business-critical solutions, I believe that the HR organization must be based around the following points:
- Define inclusive and decision-focused governance to ensure that HR capabilities are aligned with and fully utilized by the business. HR governance must systematically include business leaders, major program leadership, technology and external partners, as well as HR leadership. In parallel fashion, operations governance must include HR participation in strategic decisions at all levels.
- Define the competency centers via which HR will be the chief strategist and co-driver (with business leadership) of the employee experience. This includes mastery of traditional areas such as recruiting and performance management, as well as of emerging areas such as workforce analytics, change management, and organization design. The ultimate capability portfolio is determined by what it takes to be the strategic partner for the employee experience.
- Organize HR capabilities as an ecosystem of internal staff and external partners, selected to deliver the best, most flexible, and least costly performance in support of these competencies. Partnerships with firms with specialty or innovative capabilities (e.g., analytics, employee engagement, employee portal design) are especially critical.
- Manage customer engagement strategically via a service delivery model. A service model defines how HR customers (e.g., job candidates, employees, managers, executives) get HR services. HR staffing and skills must evolve with this model based on innovation in the use of call centers, employee and applicant portals, social media, and HR Business Partners.
- Develop the roles and skills to deliver data insights. This is a broad capability rather than a specialized group. HR must drive both enterprise and external data insights and this must be both across HR and as part of HR’s engagement within the business.
- Define and leverage HR as an integrated, top-to-bottom enterprise capacity. HR structure and operations drive enterprise-wide change and employee experience at all levels, leveraging a skilled HR Business Partner function and by networking specialists in the business.
Now What?
The need for HR as a business-critical partner to strategically guide the employee experience has never been greater. Now is the time to provide HR with the skills, organization, processes, and partnerships to provide employee relationship issues that the business needs.