A people centric HR operating model

Out of this mindset emerges a trinity of HR business partners, centres of excellence and shared services. This predominant approach streamlined and outsourced HR services, but it didn’t achieve the intended cost benefit expectations and it also fractured the employee experience. It wasn’t effective then, and it’s now more antiquated than ever.

In today’s work environment — and to be agile and ready to adapt to the future of work — organisations need to refocus their HR transformation on interactions — guided by a TIM before designing the HR operating model. This approach puts employees front and centre for the HR function.

It’s time for HR to shape the future of work by providing relevant advice and services that directly align with and support your organisation’s business and people strategies. The right HR transformation drives the organisational strategy and people priorities, and it contributes to true business value. Our TIM approach grants the HR function greater responsibility than ever before, elevating the function to become a strategic adviser to business leaders.

With a TIM, HR can transform itself around employee experiences and evolve to a true people-centred function. TIM places a premium on delivering relevant services and exceptional interactions that yield measurable employee satisfaction, engagement and commitment.

While Mercer’s TIM is based on a fundamental philosophy and common design archetypes, it is customised for every organisation based on its needs, culture, and people dependency.

A key component for any TIM-driven HR transformation is digitalisation, a sometimes unappreciated but critical way to support the business and enhance the employee experience. People expect simple, user-friendly digital experiences at work, just as they do in their personal lives. Our TIM takes this into account and balances the digital and human experience to invest resources where they will count the most.

By emphasising the employee experience, building on end user’s needs (including the C-suite’s), HR’s future-ready design can benefit the entire organisation, introduce a better way of working and boost talent attraction, retention, and engagement – ultimately generating greater trust in the organisation and higher productivity.

The first column refers to the customers of HR including candidates, the external workforce, employees, people leaders, and top management. The second column describe the opportunities to introduce digital tools effectively and in an engaging way (e.g. people operations platforms as a self-service). In the third column, personal support comes into the equation. These include people operations, advisory and administration, leadership partners, and people strategy advisers. In the final column, we typically see two main categories: HR customer-facing communities for talent acquisition and talent development, and enterprise-serving communities including project portfolio management, compensation and benefits, Diversity, equity and inclusion, and HR analytics.

Further, HR can organise itself with an agile HR pool to cover constant innovation by bringing in the right expertise.

This full TIM is supported by a solid digital foundation, typically an HRIS platform.

The TIM reimagines the HR function. It evaluates HR roles, processes and technology against the workforce’s needs and wants. It increases agility by reducing silos and pooling resources from across the function that can be tapped for a variety of projects. It establishes a clear, streamlined, effective roadmap to delivering services in a way that is proven to delight employees, achieve business results and ensure that HR interacts with people in ways that matter.

After reorganising around a TIM, HR can free up about 30% of its administrative load, giving professionals more time to serve the organisation in an elevated role. Today’s HR leaders are taking a seat at the table with the C-suite, helping create a modern people strategy that supports both the workforce and the business — with HR in more digitally advanced organisations four times more likely to be seen as a significant contributor to strategic business planning. HR business partners evolve – unburdened by unnecessary administrative duties, they are free to take on more meaningful work, making a difference in impactful roles such as strategic adviser, data-driven problem solver, influential storyteller, trusted coach and independent voice.