How to reset HR and change work forever
07 September 2022
Last year’s solutions will not solve today’s problems. It’s time to reset HR.
The great HR reset
The reality of the current moment is that talent is tired, talent is scarce and talent is demanding change. Talent’s new empowerment is evident everywhere: from restaurants cutting back business hours due to staff shortages to retailers adding new benefits such as fully reimbursed college tuition. Combine this “democratization” of work with the unprecedented speed and scale of digitalization and you find an HR function breathless from the pace of transformation. As an organization’s talent strategists, HR now finds itself thrust into a new spotlight — with employees insisting on a reckoning and business leaders and boards insisting on solutions. Last year’s solutions, however, will not solve today’s problem. Fail to recognize this and your organization is in jeopardy of reliving today’s talent issues on a groundhog-day loop.
To avoid this trap, HR can start by asking itself two pivotal questions:
- How will we redesign work to enable talent to flow to where it is needed as seamlessly as possible, while enabling its perpetual reinvention?
- How will we re-envision the talent experience to meet the needs of all talent, both where they are and on their own terms?
The answers to these two questions will guide HR through the people and cultural transformations necessary for your company to stay relevant and profitable.
How to change work design
Fixed
Flex
Flow
Increasing agility in your organization is important
Agile teaming (fluid teams that join and disband as needs)
An agile workforce that can be deployed to meet different priorities
Agile workers (workers that have broad skills)
Agile organizational design
Agile work practices
Employee personas ensure fix, flex and flow success
It takes leadership to push the reset button
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Orchestrating a new ecosystem of work where every enterprise is a distributed one and leadership comes from the edges.
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Curating the optimal set of experiences (benefits, development, engagement, etc.) for all types of talent.
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Recognizing the necessity for ambidexterity in today’s complex and fast-paced work environment.
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Enabling the culture to become the new structure for governing the enterprise.