Laci is the Global Senior HR Analyst at XpertHR, a division of LexisNexis Risk Solutions.
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The measurability of the value that human resources brings to a business seems to always be under scrutiny. But part of the department's effectiveness equation is how well people leaders execute the employee journey, corporate culture and talent processes to generate feeling in the workforce.
HR leaders should empower managers with high-touch human behaviors aided by a digital ecosystem to get today’s employees connected and happy. With these three contemporary design principles, it's possible to accomplish that and advance business outcomes.
1. Work Relationships Must Be Human-Centric
CEOs look to HR to help other business leaders think differently about how employees get work done. Traditional job roles, where work is done and who's doing it are vastly different today than those processes were just three or four years ago. So they require a new type of working ecosystem led by human-centric leaders who use a trifecta of social bases.
Act equitably.
High-impact HR strategies are more than a focus on diversity and representation; inclusion and talent democratization are requisite. Unfortunately, according to Pew Research Center, pay gaps and inequalities in development and opportunity are expected to worsen before improving.
Employees elect to affiliate with employers that hold leaders accountable for fair outcomes. So organizations cannot afford to ignore the value of fair workforce practices. Thus, HR must support the development of human-centric leaders who hold the key to moving workforces, communities and society toward racial and gender equity and social justice.
Co-create work.
To drive human-centrism, HR leaders must be willing to shape new priorities, rules and relationships together with employees. Co-creation is facilitated by empowering the workforce to share their voice and work collaboratively to yield the greatest of ideas and pioneer new solutions. Today’s work replaces traditional management with a system that gives agency to employees. High-impact leaders invite the employee voice to define new guidelines, forge connections and measure performance against a backdrop of work value, not merely the number of things produced.
Embrace an 'experiment-fail-learn' environment.
Finding ways to advance co-creation inherently presumes transformation. With change often comes failure before success. HR leaders have a significant role in reaching success, and it starts with learning through experimentation. At the center of experimentation are people, and people must be able to make mistakes, fail and reset. In a human-centric, blameless learning environment, work is designed to mitigate bias against employees who error. Instead, data are studied to identify the failure point and conditions, and then capabilities and technology are reshaped to improve the probability of future success.
2. Generative AI Can Support Human-Centric Workforce Journeys
Technology, specifically generative AI, is a top business priority today. It helps leaders understand what happened, predict what will happen and prescribe recommendations to repeat past successes and continuously improve a human-centric workforce experience. According to recent KPMG research, most executive leaders anticipate a return on AI investment within just three to five years. They expect the technology to bring increased profitability, new products, market growth opportunities and enhanced employee capability.
Despite AI's promise of measurable benefit, leaders are wary of how best to navigate ethics concerns and concerned about a lack of compliance guidance. To allay fears, CHROs and other heads of HR should engage CIOs and other business leaders to take a prudent, informed approach before integrating AI into their existing technology stack. This process starts with HR leaders taking responsibility for a revised people technology strategy. It should enable the organization to remain agile by automating routine and rule-driven tasks, allowing its people to focus on the high-value work that only humans can do.
Failing to act on the integration of automation technology will likely prevent organizations from surviving in today’s environment of continuous transformation. This can result in a loss of top talent, as well as a disengaged and low-productivity workforce. Such a workforce costs the business real money, not only in turnover and lost productivity but also in talent replacement costs and capability ramp-up spend as well.
3. Cultures Of Capability Can Improve The Employee Journey
Though technology and automation are integral to tomorrow’s work, they're not enough. HR leaders need to ensure their workforce has the proper capabilities to execute on ever-changing work priorities. To improve the employee experience, development expertise and perpetual worth, people must build their abilities to be interpretative, consultative, advisory and insightful. After all, these are capabilities that AI has not yet mastered and likely won’t any time soon.
According to McKinsey's 2023 State of Organizations research, just 5% of respondents said their organizations have the capabilities they need. The "why" behind the gap is threefold. For one, leaders are missing the data to inform which capabilities are missing. They also lack the resources (such as time, budget and people) that are essential for closing capability gaps. Finally, senior leadership advocacy for capability strategies is weak.
To make the shift from yesterday’s skills-focused L&D programs to tomorrow’s capability cultures, leadership needs to subscribe to the value of ongoing and adaptive transformation of workforce learning and growth. In this environment, employees are connected to networks of innovators, interact with a diversity of thinking and take informed risks. It also involves being able to course-correct after failure, which requires building certain capability muscles. HR leaders, specifically Heads of Learning, are accountable for this. They should prioritize changing leadership behaviors, shifting mindsets from fixed to growth and reinventing talent processes to advance the collective workforce's capabilities (not just individuals' skills).
The Payoff From Well-Designed HR Principles
Designing a high-value HR department isn't easy, but it's incredibly worthwhile. Year-over-year growth, perpetual product innovation and increased revenues are the hallmarks of human-centric organizations. By staying focused on these suggested design norms, HR can create the conditions for high-performing teams that are prepared to weather any disruption.
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