With every company of every size laser-focused on digital transformation, HR is playing a larger role in that process that ever before. There’s an HR pivot happening, and it’s an exciting one. HR teams can no longer simply be the order takers or administrators within an organization, managing the new hire processes and stewarding staff vacation days. Instead, it’s time for a shift to strategic HR—a data-driven approach that not only spearheads digital transformation, but also focuses on inspiring the best performance and utmost productivity—all the while keeping employees motivated and engaged. If that sounds like a tall order, that’s because it is. [Want more on this? Read: How Strategic HR Drives Digital Transformation]
Bottom line: HR’s role within the organization today is completely different than it used to be. Let’s examine the key roles HR pros need to be able to fill today in order to drive business performance—and the available tech that can help.
Just as silos have to go in order to achieve successful digital transformation in other parts of the organization, so must they go in HR. [For more on that topic read, Removing the Silos in the C-Suite, by my partner, Daniel Newman] To accomplish that, HR professionals need to look beyond paperwork, policies, and procedures and don a new set of hats and embrace a completely new skillset. Let’s take a look at what those are:
Here are the cliff notes from that case study: The dining chain had high turnover and felt the customer experience was suffering, so they turned to people analytics to help solve the problem. By using the analytics tools, the company was able to do a deep dive into who was hired, how they were managed, and what they did on a day-to-day basis in the restaurants in terms of interfacing with both coworkers and customers. That information was combined with more than 10,000 data points from its stores in four US markets. It was a huge undertaking, but the goal was simple: Find out which variables were tied to the success of the restaurant. After running the numbers and testing multiple hypotheses, the organization could identify which employee features led to the best business outcomes, where management could improve, and how to best keep star team members engaged. Some of the results were surprising, even to leaders who had been in the industry for some time (see Figure 1).
McKinsey reports that, after four months of implementing new processes based on its people analytics inquiry, the experiment has been a success. Speed of service increased by 30 seconds, customer satisfaction increased by over 100 percent, sales increased by 5 percent, and attrition went down.
Figure 1. Source: McKinsey&Company; Using People Analytics to Drive Business Performance: A Case Study
Today’s HR pros aren’t your grandma’s HR department—they are an integral part of any organization’s operations and present, in large measure, a key driver of overall business success. They aren’t admins, they are the people-people. And people, and culture, is what make, or break, an organization. If you’re in HR, you likely already know this. If you’re in senior management, you need to understand this and take it to heart. HR pros must be strategic partners, employee advocates, managers, teachers, champions, brand stewards, and creators of amazing culture. Today’s HR pros are key drivers of organizational change, they are master marketers, and they are (or will learn to be) data scientists. It’s a lot, isn’t it? Just as everything about marketing has changed in the last ten years or so, everything about human resources has changed as well. It’s exciting, to be sure and it can also be a little overwhelming. If you’re in HR, you know that. What about you and your company? How has your HR department changed as part of the natural evolution of business in the digital age and as your company has embraced digital transformation? What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced, and what do see as the biggest challenges that await? I cover these and more topics on my videocast/podcast series, Future of Work Talk. If you’ve not yet tuned in, I invite you to do so, as we’ll be featuring some interesting guests covering this topic in the coming episodes
Additional Resources on This Topic:
How Onboarding Technology Can Improve Talent Retention
HR Technology—There’s an App For That
The CEO’s Guide to Competing Through HR
Photo Credit: Northstar IOP Flickr via Compfight cc
This article was first published on FOW Media.
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