Reframing HR - From Vertical to Horizontal. From Control to Co-ownership.

As EY boldly claimed, Traditional HR is dead. The workforce is ready for transformational HR.

Game is up. After the big shake of the pandemic, the understanding of work has been hugely shifted. One is the form, and another is the mindset.

In terms of the form, we trust more technology to create new (virtual) spaces to share, work and collaborate. And in terms of mindset, we have this understanding that our work do matters. This isn't talking about life-work balance only. This mindset runs deeper than that. But rather, we have learned that our choice of when, how and what we do IS inevitably part of life, part of the society, the system, the world, and the planet.

We do not live in our feel-good bubble.

We are all in together - for the better and for the worst.

Don't kid yourself. Great talents and leaders always have a choice.

At this era of exponential change, people of the corporate world have found a new freedom by recognising the impacts they have as human being to the world.

Just several years ago (before the pandemic), employees, managers and senior executives perhaps rarely question their roles, career trajectory, or even what their employers offer to their clients, society and planet.

It was as if being a professional of a certain industry, or having our names attached to a function within the corporate ladder is enough to have each day passed by. It was as if there isn't any big decision to make. It was as if our working days is just here to win some holiday times.

But of course, now we know it is not true. Indeed, it never was.

Freedom leads to the crave of responsibilities.

The Great Resignation in 2022 offered freedom of the mind by revealing the fundamental needs of human experiences. It revealed to everyone that it is nice to be at the driver seat of how we work as human-being. We are indeed designers of our own processes. We can take charge of our own communication. We can work autonomously. We do not need to leave it to the management in telling us what the future is.

However, function such as HR of an organisation that is in charged of assessment, governance and polices are often seen as mere administration following out-dated rules, processes and policies that isn't made for the people. It is unfortunately not setup to give away power to the people and their experiences.

Indeed, the modern Ulrich approach designed to streamline clear roles and responsibilities for large corporations. While great in intention, it also constitutes to the silos between business and HR in transformation. Of course, it is no fault of the industry. Our change simply accelerated remarkably this decade.

With such velocity that HR cannot catch, each of the four famous scopes proposed by Ulrich become a mere block of mundane tasks to managers and employees only. They lose their relevancy!

Driving innovation and results via Employee Experiences

As Danny Ferron and Andy Lomas from EY insisted at their article in 2020: Will HR transformation be the thread that ties value to experiences?,

The Ulrich approach must be left behind for a new model built on three components: digital people teams, virtual global business services and agile people consultants (EY)

Like it or not, there is no turning back of this new mindset that focuses on people, human dynamics, collaboration over processes. Even the economy is hard with all these debts, wars, layering off (some businesses even called it the employer's market). But the truth of the matter is that the market is volatile. Who knows when the game would switch again. Talent market would always be a reality.

If HR doesn't reform now today, the company would have already made the inevitable choice to hire only mediocre employees . Thriving human that are innovation-ready are always looking for better choice. With such speedy change of the world and the rise of AI, I doubt any company can afford that.

Digital people (not only process) across functions

Being innovation-ready to enable constant transformation is the outcome on how an organisation attracts great aspirational creative talents to join, and convince them to work together toward the future long-term.

In my opinion, reframing HR function through reinventing Employee Value Proposition is the one key way to help businesses to keep up their attractiveness.

Solution: Co-own employee experiences with the business

HR will need to "co-own employee experiences, promote employees in a way that goes arm-in-arm with broader business goals and establish how benefits should differ between the different motivations and business priorities. The future of HR is on the ground. It’s listening".

Instead of separating process from people, digital transformation implementing new technology for example cannot be designed outside of an operation.

To scale relevant and impactful transformation, HR must abandon the comforts of a vertical silo and operate horizontally across the enterprise. They have to give up their everyday 86% admin work and becomes a service to the people for the people (experiences) entirely.

Life of an organisation depends on it.

At the era of exponential change, digital people have to locate across functions to design global processes together with the HR. Nothing should happen at silos.

To succeed into tomorrow, HR has to slow down, get off their high ground of a top-down approach. They need to become excellent design facilitator by listening and gathering all expertises, stakeholders' needs, and employees' experiences.

In other words, HR function has to stop getting in people's way via guiding blindly the organisation through administrative and control. Instead become a real partner, a real servant leader to let people lead their own way to grow, to learn, to design, to decide, to spearhead both their own work and impacts toward the future.

(photo credit: ricardo-gomez-angel)

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I talk about the COMBINED power of #businessarchitecture and #learningculture at the era of exponential Change.

Let us stay curious and unfold our own complexity bit by bit.

Shall we?! ;)