I have never come across an HR Professional who isn’t always busy. They get pulled into all kinds of situations in the organisation, including where other managers have made a mistake, and the HR Professional has to stand up and rescue a bad situation. From my experience, HR Professionals are so busy salvaging circumstances at individual, manager and/or organisational level, that they just don’t make the time for their own improvement, their own career. This is why I believe that “Going Agile” may just seem one challenge too many for some.
Here are some of the challenges that HR Professionals face on a daily basis:
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- Compliance – There are a plethora of laws and regulations when it comes to People Management in organisations today. Failure to comply can, and often does, lead the organisation into unwanted legal challenges.
- Management Changes – As organisations face the uncertain future of today, structures and internal processes change, leading to unwanted people issues such as uncertainty in the workplace, reduced motivation, and increased key staff turnover.
- Leadership Development – “Traditional” leadership development programs are not producing the skills or type of leadership needed for the new world of work. 38% or organisations participating in the 2019 Mercer Global Talent Trends survey are concerned that they have very thin leadership pipelines.
- Workforce Training and Development – investing in the training and development employees is another common HR problem. With changes happening so fast, inside and outside the organisation, it is difficult to know what training will create value.
- Adapting to Innovation – Technology is changing at an ever-increasing rate. The challenge for HR is getting employees to embrace innovation and learn new technologies, and getting leaders to accept this.
- Compensation – Many companies are struggling with how best to structure employee compensation. With “jobs” changing so fast, and a new plethora of job titles appearing in the workplace, it is becoming almost impossible to get good, reliable market-related remuneration information.
- Attract and Retain Top Talent – Attracting talent is a huge investment of time and money. And, with large shortages of key skills in the market, it’s for organisations to “hire the right people at the right time and at the right cost.” In addition, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to know whether a candidate will actually be a good fit until they’ve worked in the organisation for a period of time.
- Workplace Diversity – The workplace has never been more diverse than it is right now – multiple generations, ethnic and cultural differences, a better balance between male/female, addressing historical injustices. These, as well as the Skills Development and Employment Equity Acts are just a few of the many factors that make workplace diversity a continual challenge for HR.
What’s Different with Agile?
The thing is, these challenges don’t go away with Agile, but they are addressed differently, better, faster. With Agile, these are no longer just “HR” problems. They are organisational problems – that is, they belong to leaders, managers, individuals and HR.
Dealing with these challenges in Agile Organisations needs different questions and different thought processes. For instance:
- Compliance – how can Artificial Intelligence (AI) and software robotics be used to increase awareness in the organisation and reduce the time pressure on HR?
- Management Changes – how can people – leaders and employees – be better equipped to cope with, and even thrive in, an ever-changing environment?
- Leadership Development – how do we develop organisations where “everyone’s a leader”, and what kind of leadership development does this need?
- Workforce Training and Development – how do we create “learning organisations”, and how do we move from a failure mentality to a learning mentality?
- Adapting to Innovation – how do we establish psychologically safe workplaces where innovation that helps drive business success can thrive?
- Compensation – how can we compensate our people fairly, and transparently, and reward them for performance that improves organisational performance?
- Attract and Retain Top Talent – how do we grow tomorrow’s critical workforce today so that people are encouraged to stay and grow? What other creative ways are there for sourcing skills needed, when they are needed?
- Workplace Diversity – How do we create a culture that values and respects diversity and that uncovers styles of work that are best for our organisation?
If we set about answering these questions by setting up cross-functional teams to address them, addressing them as value streams, planning on delivering completed parts of the answer every two weeks, incorporating the views of all involved in the value stream in the solution, and treating the whole process as a learning experience – then we are truly “Being Agile”.
And, it’s really not that difficult.
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TalentAlign works with HR to fast-track their knowledge, skills and processes to not only support Agile Transformation, but to actually help facilitate it. We offer:
- Agile HR Professionals Mastermind – Learn and implement Agile HR in a group for quicker and better outcomes—for Solo HR Professionals or HR Departments
- Agile People Coach – Agile HR transformation in the same way that IT was so successful. Copy success—don’t reinvent the wheel!
- Agile Organisation and Role Design – Define structures and roles for flexibility while maintaining integrity in an Agile environment
- Agile Career and Competency Management – Retain your top skills. Career Mosaics based on Competencies so people can decide on their own career—but still within the organisation
- Agile Performance Management – Performance Management that actually leads to improved organisational performance with long– and short-term goals
Contact us to find out how we can work with you to implement Agile HR in your organisation.