Four actions to shape the new HR organisation

As companies start increasing creating value ‘outside’ of the internal structure through a network of agile and flexible partnerships, HR organisations will have to be redesigned. The goal of the HR organisation will now be to enable the creation of a value-creating ecosystem — a major change from ‘servicing’ the employee life cycle. Here are four ways to reimagine HR.

1. Create a platforms and partnerships function

What is at the core of creating value in your company? Are you a company that creates technology or one that applies technology? Where are the pools of talent that your company needs to access? Are these pools available in start-ups, universities, other companies or as individuals who do not want to be employees?

How do you create partnerships that enable your company to access talent and create a competitive advantage?

Are you aware of platforms that are designed to identify and manage talent? Are you aware of platforms that link you to start-ups, universities and other potential partners?

To answer such questions, the new HR organisation needs a function it has never had before: a platform and partnerships function

2. Create a research and development function

While the platforms and partnerships function is engaged with the development of a value-creating ecosystem, we know that tomorrow will be different from today. Technologies such as machine learning, voice recognition, image analytics and of course artificial intelligence are all in the at the cusp of explosive development.

The focus of the HR R&D function is on tomorrow. It does so, partly with an intent to support the partnerships function, but mainly to develop current leaders of the company. It alerts leadership to forces of change and ensures that it is well prepared, both offensively and defensively. This is the reincarnation of the capability development function.

We are already finding that traditional institutions of development and even top tier consultancies are not fast enough in identifying what is relevant and how to prepare for it.

HR functions need to create top class R&D functions

3. Initiate employee segmentation

In the construct of a value creating ecosystem, it will not be possible to stack employees of the core company in a neat pyramid built on the assumption of a linear differentiation of capabilities and rewards.

Some employees will create value that will equal hundreds of thousands of dollars profit per person. Others will deliver value of few thousand dollars per person. The demand and reward environments for both these segments of employees will have to be vastly different.

HR organisation design will have to cater to such an employee segmentation. In addition, some temporary internal networks, project teams or virtual organisations may create much more value than the rest of the organisation. Such teams will need high quality HR input and strategy

4. Establish an HR operations hub

HR organisations have been developing the shared services model for some time now. It is time to ramp the concept up to its highest potential. All aspects of the traditional HR organisation will eventually fold up in an HR operations function that will be to the rest of HR what a sales function is to a marketing function. HR operations will be a strong value-delivery organisation that is technology enabled and relentlessly focused on high quality employee service.

It is possible to create a strong HR operations function with the explosion in HR tech. Disintermediation of recruitment processes, digital employee communication, real time engagement and sentiment analysis, chat based query management, expert employee relations and more can add up to an HR operations hub that does what entire HR functions used to before: Manage the employee life cycle — however short or long it is.

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