Nicole Devine is the Consulting Chief People Officer for PBO Advisory Group. She helps companies plan and manage their HC and HR functions.
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Business, by necessity, moves at a fast pace. Telling professionals to pause can be counter to everything they know and even met with resistance. However, as a human capital and human resources consultant, I know just how important it is to pause and assess how things are moving. This is especially vital if you're beginning to have a vague feeling of disconnect with business strategy or experiencing all the wheels falling off the business bus at the same time.
By taking the time to evaluate the alignment of your HR capability, you can gain a thorough understanding of the current status of your department. Assessments are meant to be a high-level overview of the entire HR system and how it interconnects with other business systems. The data collected will begin to tell a story, allowing you to build the foundation for an action plan to realign HR functions with overall business goals.
How Does HR Get Disconnected?
In an ideal organization, all departments contribute their expertise in a synchronized, highly efficient manner that streamlines functionality and supports a shared vision of success. However, when a company is rapidly growing, a common problem emerges where goals, strategies and processes become isolated. This isn’t anyone’s fault. When moving at a rapid pace, it's typical to focus on fixing immediate, insular problems. We tend to the symptoms and, as a result, miss the real cause. On top of that, departmental quick fixes often create more issues, and the cycle continues.
What An Effective Assessment Can Do About It
Solving the right problem, especially when it comes to HR effectiveness, is a critical step to staying connected. This is why we need to pause and assess proactively, rather than waiting until after something catastrophic hits (like a global pandemic). A properly executed assessment, which may take weeks or months to complete, can provide the following benefits:
• Identify gaps in compliance, policies, SOPs, internal controls, reporting and the employee experience
• Isolate inefficiencies in various HR workflows and how they impact other internal functions
• Identify strengths, gaps and skill-development opportunities for the current human resources and capital teams
• Assess current technology systems and future needs
• Pinpoint cost-saving opportunities
• Align the current HR structure with the business’ growth strategy
• Address specific issues unique to the organization, including growth strategies
With this information, you can then develop an action plan with specific priorities, recommendations and concrete steps for realignment.
Regular evaluations like this are a sign of a healthy organization where departments ensure they're aligned within the organization to achieve greater efficiencies and profitability.
Pausing: The First Phase Of Your Assessment Process
There are several steps to an assessment. They include determining the assessment's objective and your approach, collecting and analyzing data to create benchmarks, identifying gap analysis, developing your action plan and then measuring its effectiveness.
But before all that, the first step of the assessment process is taking a pause. I don't mean a literal shutdown of your department—HR teams are a vital part of an organization, so your work can’t be put on hold. However, an assessment does take time and should be approached in a methodical way. This will ensure your efforts produce an impactful deliverable.
Because assessments can take on many forms, pausing first allows you to determine the best approach for your team. For instance, you may want to examine areas like compliance, people and systems to provide a solid baseline review. Consider interviewing leadership to learn about strategies, goals, problems, etc., as well as talking to the people on your team who actually handle the HR functions. You can also use reports, analysis technology and other forms of information gathering to gain a more thorough understanding of a company’s functionality and where your team falls within it.
Providing your team with the right support to conduct an effective assessment will be different for every organization. While some will look to internal teams to gain insight, others may benefit from an external party providing unbiased insights into how well HR functions are being optimized. No matter the route you choose, the important thing is taking the chance to pause and envision the assessment you plan to conduct.
In coming articles, I'll delve into assessment implementation, as well as the types of HR problems that these evaluations consistently identify.
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