As I said at the beginning of the book, there are some overarching factors when it comes to creating AGILE HR practices that should be considered, which we will look at in this chapter.
These factors are highlighted to provide an awareness of things that you should consider when looking to implement AGILE HR, and some of these factors are also things that can hinder and slow the progress that you want to make in your organization when it comes to doing things differently.
The factors that we will cover here are:
- Leadership
- Customers
- Your People
- Culture
- Diversity and Inclusion
- Financial
- Insight and Data
- Legislation
- Change
There may also be others that you can think of that may relate to your particular organization or sector.
5.1 Leadership
I mentioned leadership earlier in the book, and I want to cover it in more detail here and also break it down into two categories:
The leaders in your organization and
Your role as the HR leader in your organization.
The Leaders in Your Organization
How do they feel about HR initiatives?
Is HR a valued function in the business?
Do they understand the importance of the people in the organization?
Do they get on board with new initiatives quickly?
Unfortunately, many of the senior HR professionals that I work with still experience the senior leaders in their organization as the biggest blocker when it comes to trying to implement innovative people initiatives. For some, the most innovative thing is a new dress code policy that the CEO has asked for—how exciting, NOT!
As HR leaders, if we want to create a sustainable future for the HR profession, we have to get better at influencing and demonstrating to senior leaders that we know what we are talking about, and coaching them to our way of thinking.
Many senior leaders come from a place of old-school command and control type leadership and have not yet been able to cross the line into seeing the importance of letting people work with autonomy and treating them as adults. They are still of the mind that people are paid to follow instructions and do their job. This works for some, but we are seeing less and less of this type of leadership.
The difficulty for those that want to change is that they know they need to be doing things differently, but they do not know where to start. And this is where we need to step in.
We need to be pushing back when we are asked to design another long-winded policy to make up for yet another management shortfall. We need to be demonstrating that our people want something different, and that while we may not have all of the answers (when you try something new, you do not always get it right), by taking small (or enormous if you like) steps forward, things will start to get better.
I wrote a blog not too long ago about not disrupting HR as seems to be common phrase at the moment, but about disrupting leadership.
HR can produce the newest, most innovative, most amazing initiatives in the world, but if the leaders do not get on board with them, they will never work. Leaders need to lead and managers need to manage; without this, it will not matter how far you try and take things forward; you will always end up doing the same thing you have been doing for years and wondering why your employees are still not engaging with you.
Most leaders want to look at the financial side of what we are proposing, and we need to get better at this (more on this later), but we also need to be able to demonstrate value added, outside of the money side of things.
Removing annual performance reviews has been a topic that has been being discussed for a few years now, and LinkedIn is full of people sharing that they have stopped doing these. This is great in some ways as it shows that bell curves no longer seem to be the only way for us to manage performance; it also shows that leaders are starting to be open-minded to HR changes. But, it also brings into question whether annual reviews are only being stopped because nobody likes them doing them in the first place and it will free up more management time, one less way of speaking with and engaging our people that we do not need to worry about.
I mentioned earlier that stripping out annual reviews is great if you have a learning culture, or accountability for development and objectives already sits with your individual employees, but if not, you could be setting yourself up to fail on a magnificent scale, and you may find yourself out of a job or re-introducing annual reviews to help manage performance and set objectives.
The leaders need to acknowledge their role in supporting HR in driving and implementing changes; without this, do we have a sustainable future?
Your Role As the HR Leader in the Organization
Whether or not you are one of the HR professionals that struggles to get the senior leaders on board with what you are trying to do, your role in driving change across the business and with your team is critical when it comes to doing HR differently.
As HR professionals, we have been indoctrinated into our profession. We have been taught and trained on how to create policy after policy and how to ensure that these are followed without question.
We are the ones that have created the nine-box grids, the performance reviews, the dress code policies, the recruitment processes, the induction processes, probably all, if not most, of the HR processes and procedures that your business currently utilizes. And now, now you have realized that there is another way of delivering HR; you are in a position where you need to get the business on board, and your team members.
Your team members may be reluctant to make changes, given that this will be something they have not done before. Some may not know where to start; some may not want to step out of their comfort zone; some may be fearful; and your role will be to bring your team on the journey with you, while at the same time, managing the expectations of the wider business and the senior leaders.
The good news is that when your senior leaders and your HR team do get on board with this new way of doing things, you will be able to implement successful and sustainable change quickly in a way that will be more simple for you and your people.
That’s exciting stuff.
5.2 Customers
Just as we looked at two different areas of leadership, we will look at two areas of customers—your internal and your external customers.
Internal Customers
You will have a number of internal customers and perhaps a number of stakeholders—the board, leaders, other departments, managers, existing employees, and new employees. Perhaps you also outsource some of your recruitment, payroll and so on, and you have these relationships to manage as well.
How could an AGILE approach to HR help?
Employees will have greater responsibility for their own career journey, meaning they are responsible for their learning, their objectives, their performance, and their career progression. This gives managers more time to coach and develop their people or even people from other business areas.
On the whole, you will have less performance issues to deal with and more time to focus on the strategic, innovative, exciting parts of HR.
Business performance will improve, customer satisfaction will improve, your employees will be engaged, you will be adding value and saving money and you will be creating a sustainable future for HR.
External Customers
For many of your customers, AGILE HR practices may work in their favor considerably. Imagine trusting that your employees come to work each day to do a good job and that you trust them and allow them to work with autonomy, how could that be of benefit to your customers?
How many complaints could you resolve quickly if your people were trusted enough to say sorry, or send a bunch of flowers? How many complaints and issues would not escalate if your people could make a decision instead of following a process that means they cannot go any further with this at this point, but will escalate and get someone to look into it for them?
How much management time would you save if your people did not have to refer everything to their manager when a £50 gift card or just a card with an apology would do the trick?
LEGO is a great example of how to keep your customers happy—you will find some more details on this in the Resources section.
5.3 Your People
Your people will likely be the biggest thing to consider when it comes to doing things differently and considering an AGILE approach to HR. I cannot stress enough how vital engaging with your people will be to your success.
As we have touched on throughout the book, many of the current ways of working involve the HR team shutting themselves away in a room and designing “People Solutions” in isolation.
What the neuroscience tells us, though, is that this is not working, and we see it in practice.
If you continue to exclude your people in finding the best way to do things, it will continue not to work. You will never get to a position where you can please all of the people all of the time, and this is not what you should try and focus on, but before you go and remove your performance management system, ask your people what they want. Some people will welcome an annual appraisal because it is the only time they have interaction and feedback with their manager, so do not just take it away because that is what everyone is doing at this current time.
Spend time engaging with your people, in ways other than another survey, and have conversations about why they joined, why they have stayed, what they love, what they would like to see changed, what would make their roles easier, how they want to develop, how they want to be thanked, and so on.
Your people will allow you to gain the insight you need, in order for you to design and develop solutions that are right for your people and your business.
Whenever we work with clients, we always look at where we can interact with employees and gain their views to help create the right solution. We could, of course, design in isolation whatever the client wants us to design, but how will we know if it is going to be the right solution, unless we ask the questions of the people who will be implementing it and using it in their role?
5.4 Culture
Culture plays a big part in when and how you implement AGILE HR, if at all. I love the Tribal Leadership framework on culture change and how there are five stages of culture. You know where you are, based on the language, relationships, and the behavior. If your organization is totally command and control and your people are referred to as assets, and if people are never on the agenda or are skipped over at every board meeting, then you may have a tougher job than those who are willing to change and accept risk. Risk aversion does not help AGILE HR. But if you can get people on board and involve your employees with the design of whatever you want to change, making sure you do not end up creating another process, then you will be onto a winner. You may also be able to find some quick wins, although as we have discussed already, real change takes time. I do not suggest just scrapping something altogether and hoping it works.
When dealing with people, as well as them being individuals, there are also the considerations of gender, race, religion, disability, sexuality, age and so on. Adult-to-adult conversations require trust and if that is lacking because the x group always get treated more/less favorably, then tread carefully. How you communicate the message will be critical, and trusting managers to choose their own pay grades, or to award individuals for great work could be seen as unfair to some, regardless of protected characteristics. But coming back to the risk factor, you may well get some complaints from your people when you scrap a certain long and complicated process, because even though it is not right, it may be deemed fair.
5.6 Financial
Understand your figures if you want to make a change so that you have a better chance of gaining buy-in from those who focus on the money. All too often, an initiative that will improve customer satisfaction or a new product that will win new customers and lots of profits will be agreed to without the need for it to be tried and tested; sadly when it comes to our people, unless you can back it up with evidence or you know it is been tried and tested elsewhere, it is unlikely you will get past the post.
5.7 Insight and Data (Include data blog)
This is a biggie for a lot of HR professionals. I do not know about you, but rarely have I felt confident with the data I am presenting, I usually have a caveat of some sorts because x manager has not met with us yet, or finance are still validating, or the system is so ineffective that we are having to manually manipulate the data and we need to allow for human error. If we want to be seen as HR professionals that can hold our own, whether moving to an AGILE approach or not, we have to get better, much better with insight and data.
5.8 Legislation
We are surrounded by legislation, from Health and Safety to Employment Legislation, Financial, Data Protection; it is an ongoing and never ending list and it is not, I believe, going to get any easier. And in some cases, it should not, but just as we have seen throughout the book, when it comes to policy and legislation, this is largely brought in because of one serious issue that has arisen, and everyone then needs to tighten their belts and adhere to the new rules.
It is important that you understand the legislation that surrounds your sector/company and ensure that you remain compliant with anything you are trying to change.
It may not be just statute that you have to follow either. A sector that I have been working with recently has to manage the performance of their employees on an annual basis in order to justify spend, meet the requirements of trustees and meet government expectations, so removing the annual performance reviews is not an option (currently) for this client, but that does not mean we cannot improve the process and make it more beneficial for the employees and their managers.
So, understand what your constraints are, and work within, or around these before you promise the earth to people.
5.9 Change
Change is the one constant in business today, and should be considered before you embark on a new HR initiative.
Just last week, a large retailer in the UK announced to the press that over the next two years, they would increase store employee salaries by 10.5 percent; this was on the same day that they announced internally that there would be a 25 percent cut in head office employees—not a great move!
So, consider when you make changes, but do not allow change to stop you in your tracks. I have seen so many times organizations hold back on restructuring announcements while they wait for the “right time.” There is no right time to announce this, although I would suggest not making the announcement on the same day as you go the press about salary increases. You also probably do not want to announce your new talent management program on the same day that you start consultation on reducing the number of managers in the business.
Engage people in the changes, whatever you are changing. Change is more successful when you can get your people to see what is in it for them, when they can really see that it will benefit them, make things easier for them. Just telling them this is not really going to help. You need to change the hearts and minds if you want any change—no matter how big or small—to be successful.