Tackling the three biggest challenges facing HR today

9-minute watch

From the Great Resignation and mental health to finding the most effective policies to enable hybrid working, HR leaders have a lot on their plate at the moment. In this video Stephanie Kelly, chief people officer at payroll to accountancy software group IRIS Software Group, shares how she is responding to these challenges, what three things HR leaders should be thinking about to prepare for the unexpected, and explains what IRIS’s Come to the Office for a B.I.T policy is all about.

About Stephanie Kelly 

Stephanie Kelly is chief people officer at IRIS Software Group and is responsible for the full employee experience, including talent acquisition and strategy, learning and development, compensation and benefits, diversity and inclusion, and office environment. Ninety of the top 100 UK accountancy firms use IRIS software and some 20% of the UK's workforce is paid by IRIS payroll offerings. Globally six million employees receive their payslip via IRIS software every month.

As an international human resources executive, Kelly brings a wealth of experience in implementing best HR practices, as well as acquisition due diligence and integration. She is also a trained executive coach, with a passion for identifying, developing and supporting high potentials and great leaders.

Transcript

The three biggest challenges facing HR today

I think the three biggest challenges that the HR profession are facing at the moment are scarcity of talent, wellbeing and also hybrid working and how are we going to make that work going forward. So if I take those in turn. 

How talent scarcity is reshaping the employee value proposition

Scarcity first of all. We've all read about one million vacancies here in the UK and about this being a global phenomenon with 11 million vacancies in the US at the moment. So, as an HR profession, how do we get the talent into the organisation that we need to produce the best products, services and solutions for our customers? So that's about having a really winning employee value proposition, to my mind, and a really winning culture. So an organisation where people are getting what they need out of the job that they're doing.

So all sorts of things that we're doing here at Iris: one of the learnings for me has been to listen really closely to our employees. So in the last year or so we have implemented a survey where we survey our employees once a month. A very regular survey, 16 questions, and all the answers to those questions go to us here in HR but they also go through to managers as well so managers can have a look and see how their employees are feeling and make changes in that month to improve the employee experience overall. 

Why wellbeing is now a strategic priority

In terms of wellbeing, this has been on the HR agenda for a pretty long time but has come to the forefront in COVID and is also a really big issue currently for HR professionals now and into the future as well. In terms of wellbeing, employees really want to work for an employer that cares about them as an individual and is really concerned about them having happy and healthy lives. As I said, in relation to scarcity, there are a million other employers out there that they could go and work for. And this is one of the really big things that they're interested in. 

Of course mental health is perhaps top of the wellbeing issues that I'm seeing at work at the moment. And at Iris we're doing all sorts of things to support that. One of the most successful things is our wellbeing group that we hold at lunchtime every Thursday. It's a virtual group, it's run by a wellbeing coordinator but also by anyone who attends and everyone can say something on that call. So sometimes employees join that call and they talk about any challenges or concerns that they've had that week or sometimes they contribute with potential solutions to other challenges that employees have been talking about on that call, or they just listen. And we have done that every single week since the beginning of the pandemic. And we will do that going forward as well. 

In relation to mental health, we also have 40 mental health first aiders here in the UK and, again, that's something that's been really well appreciated by our employees. And not to forget physical wellbeing. I'm really excited to be working on lots of initiatives now for New Year, New You, making sure that our employees are fit and well. So making sure that we have maximum sign up to our private healthcare. Making sure that when you are part of the private healthcare, you actually go that extra mile and you take those health checks. So you go and see someone and they check all your vitals and make sure that you're looking good for the future. 

And also other challenges like couch to 5k, which I think has transformed the UK. So all those people like my good self, who were unable to run, now have all the tools at our fingertips to make sure that we can be as fit and healthy as possible and all sorts of other things that we're doing about monitoring steps and things like that. Everyone can join in at Iris. 

Making hybrid working work in practice

In terms of hybrid working, regardless of what the boardroom may want to do or CEOs may want to do or executive committees may want to do about hybrid working, I think as a profession we know that hybrid working is here to stay because it gives a large chunk of employees the work life balance that they want.

So if you've got some kids or you've got some hobbies or family obligations or other obligations outside of work, it's actually really nice to cut out an hour or two commuting a day and also fit your life in around all those other obligations that you've got at work and home. So really good for work-life balance. So it's how we make that work going forward or how we're making that work now. 

And at Iris, we have just rolled out a new policy, which is called Come to the Office for a BIT. So B.I.T. So B stands for belonging, I stands for innovation and T stands for teamwork. So, what we're doing is we're saying to managers it's really important that you do get your staff back into the office for all of those reasons. People want to have connection. They want to feel that they know Iris, that they're connected to the people around them, which is the belonging in the BIT. 

The I in the BIT is innovation. So again we're saying to managers get all your staff, all your teams, back into the office and work on creativity. So some of those great big issues that are really difficult to solve when you're in, I don't know, a hundred different places across the UK or across the world, get your staff into the office and have some creativity sessions. 

And then of course teamwork. So getting your staff in, in those smaller teams that can work together just like they used to when they were in the office, and start to build those friendships as well.

How HR leaders can prepare for future uncertainty

So what three things should HR leaders be thinking about so that they're always prepared for the unexpected? To my mind, I think there is merit in going back to make sure that you have brilliant basics at work because certain things don't change, right? People want to work for good companies that care about them. People want to have interesting jobs and enjoy going to work every day. People wants to have a good relationship with their manager. People want to feel that they've been fairly treated, that the reward that they get reflects their contribution to the organisation. And it's fair in context with what other people earn in the organisation. So getting those basics in place, I think, is really important because it gives you a workforce where you know that you've got a stability. So you've got those people there that have all the skills and experience you need to do a good job for you. So brilliant basics I would say number one 

Number two, I would say, is that you always need to keep your offerings to employees as fresh as possible. So just because you think you've got the perfect benefit package or the perfect manager training or, I don't know, the perfect office setup, that's not going to be good enough. That's okay for now but you need to be looking all the time at how can you make these things even better and anticipate the changes going forward.

I think it's really important to listen very, very carefully to employees in lots and lots of different ways to give lots of opportunities to hear exactly what your employees are saying to you. We have a monthly survey at Iris which, and the answers to that survey of course you can see them in HR but they go directly to the managers as well. And at Iris we say, you know, there's some big macro change - so we're looking at some of the kind of macro trends that we're seeing in this data so we can do some of the analysis across the organisation. But we're also saying to managers, it's about incremental changes that you're making every day to your team, what it is they're doing, how you're communicating with them, how you're resolving those issues that they have every day. So I think that listening is very important as well. Because what we're trying to do with all of this is create a culture and an environment that people really want to work for, they want to stay and they want to go the extra mile every day. And if you have that kind of sentiment in the organisation, when a great big metaphorical earthquake hits you, then you've got a really solid foundation for coping with that going forward. 

What I would also say is whilst we're looking at our employee value proposition and preparing for the unexpected going forward and knowing that we have to update it much more quickly, much faster than we ever did before, I think one of the trends that I'm seeing now, and I think is going to go on into the future and will also help us cope with the unexpected, is how we individualise our offerings to employees going forward as well. So that what they get at Iris suits their needs so individually it's going to take a great big leap of faith for them to go and work for someone else.

And, again, that means that we retain all that experience, all that talent in the organisation, all those great ideas, and we can attract really brilliant people to Iris, all the new ideas and innovation and different thoughts about how we do things. And I think that kind of agile, skilled, competitive but happy culture, I think that's going to stand us in good stead, or HR leaders in good stead when they're thinking about creating an organisation or sustaining an organisation that can cope with these unexpected shocks going forward.