HR's Golden Opportunity

The events of 2020 may prove to be the fork-in-the-road for the Human Resources function and their ability to capitalize on an opportunity that may never present itself again: demonstrating how important HR is as a strategic, proactive partner to the organization, and earning a permanent seat at the decision-making table.

Enterprises are always patting themselves on the back, repeating often-hollow slogans about the importance of their people, their human capital, their teams and how friendly their workplace cultures are to ensuring the success of their employees, both on and off site.

In survey after survey, working from home and flexible working arrangements come up within the top 3 requirements to make a happier, more engaged workforce. Yet employers continue to chose having their workers where they can see them, in open-layout offices that spread disease, increase anxiety, promote social discussions which end up distracting employees, leading them to work later from home or during weekends to catch up on work.

Now, thanks to COVID-19, the HR function has been presented with an extraordinary chance to turn temporary Work From Home policies into a permanent reality for most companies.

Performance Management systems exist in almost every organization. They are typically reactive in nature, measuring how the employee performed over the previous few months, and rewarding them according to that based on KPIs and metrics that are *usually* discussed and agreed to with the employee at the beginning of the year.

What if these systems became proactive? There certainly is a forward-looking aspect to them, when annual targets are being set 12 months in advance, but could they include more details? Could they, for example, set the tone for the coming year, and then be detailed on the upcoming one or two quarters? Could they map out what's expected of them, with deep dives to correct the path on a monthly basis?

If managers were empowered by their leaders to work out plans with their staff on what needs to be done, how often, by when and for how much, there could generally be a deliverables plan for every employee within an organization. And with such a plan, employees could take the initiative in working out how to deliver on their mandates, how often to meet with their peers and superiors, how to best work out the differences with their teams. If an issue arises, they may go back to their managers for a resolution, but until then.. employees would be allowed to be the professional adults that organizations hired, and they would be immensely engaged with their peers and the company as a whole, since it is now their objective to deliver on time, as agreed.

And that also means they get to chose whether they work from home, the beach, the office, or while on a holiday. They get to decide how often to meet their peers physically, and they get to say whether a meeting could have really just been an email instead.

Employees would then be truly engaged with the organizations, not just through the typical rewards and retention systems, but also in their interactions with their colleagues, line managers and senior leadership.

By empowering employees, managers are now able to .. manage. Allocating resources, resolving problems, removing roadblocks and making life easier for their teams to deliver on the agreed plans. Of course, as with anything in life, not everything can be forseen, but managers - now free from doing daily inspections - are now able to actually forecast on a more proactive manner, seeing potential delays and assessing the deliverables of staff and their engagement.

Leaders, armed with a proactive, engaged workforce, can now aim higher, plan for longer, prepare for market expansions and newer products. Leaders will now know what to expect, because they can trust their managers to do whats right with their teams.

Performance Management is owned by the HR function, and it is up to HR leaders to go to their CEO and say "COVID-19 has forced us to work from home, something we didn't expect we could do. Since we're doing it, lets transform other ways we work".

This is a golden opportunity, and I can't imagine world economies closing their airspaces and forcing people indoors again for many years to come. Will it to rise to the challenge?