One of the major themes to emerge from one of the biggest human resources (HR) events globally, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) Annual Conference in the UK this past month, was that HR has got to be more engaged in shaping organisations, shaping jobs and making sure that it is creating a human future of work.
According to Peter Cheese, the CIPD’s chief executive, in the conference keynote, future forces include fast-changing technology and employee demographics, new operating models and ongoing debates about corporate culture and building leadership effectively - this he says requires HR to take on a more strategic role. “HR has to step up and we’ve got to invest in building these strategic capabilities and competencies to operate in this space.”
Talent management is no longer what Cheese called the classic talent management cycle of HR, one that focuses solely on hiring, developing and exiting people. Now it is about shaping the right jobs and understanding organisational design and business operating models.
This is supported by global research, such as Deloitte’s 2016 Global Human Capital Trends research where more than 90percent rated redesigning the organisation as very important or important, making it the leading trend in this year’s report. More than 7000 HR and business leaders from 130 countries responded to this year’s survey.
One of the primary ways the researchers see this organisational restructuring playing out is in the rise of teams - companies moving away from traditional hierarchical organisation structures and empowering networks of teams centred on customers, products, markets, or missions.
And South Africa is no different; if anything we face a more challenging emerging market environment with a shortage of scarce skills and a low-growth economy adding to the pressures on HR.
Strategic HR
As we move through that usual “classic talent management cycle of HR”, as Cheese puts it, where the traditional slog of annual performance appraisals are concluded, perhaps it is also an opportunity to reflect on how to break HR out of managing more administrative and non-strategic tasks. Strategic HR itself is not a new concept and the value to business is of course well documented; but the real challenge it would appear is more around “how” the shift can be made.
There is no doubt that South African companies need to respond innovatively to the challenges of competitiveness but this cannot happen without an injection of creativity and innovation into HR departments. This is the critical problem: doing the same things over and over again each year can simply not deliver the innovation required for competitiveness in our challenging local economy and globally.
Creativity is characterised by the ability to perceive the world in new ways, to find hidden patterns, to make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, and to generate solutions. Any business, regardless of the product or service it offers to the market, needs creative energy to problem solve and generate new systems, services and products. This can give HR professionals a lens and focus areas to build on driving certain sub-strategies forward that support the overall organisational goals and vision.
Through creative thinking one is able to step away from the expected (which often is subjective) and look objectively at what needs to be done to drive HR forward. In this way HR will be invited to the table - and acknowledged for the added value they bring. Ultimately this will lead to better employee sourcing, recruiting and development, clear employee development plans, better reward structures, thought through succession planning, etc.
The value of creativity in business was the motivation for launching Cape Craft and Design Institute (CCDI) Creative, unique to South Africa in offering creative kick-starters to businesses.
One of the focal areas is creativity as a way to facilitate a shift into Strategic HR. It gives HR leaders a set of tools that will give them direction to move into a strategic space and way of thinking. It is about understanding that the tactical work that HR does is not irrelevant, but that it forms the foundation of “how it” is done. The strategic is “what” the purpose is - often something we lose focus on.
And if companies get this right, they can fire up competitiveness.
Excellence in HR
Research conducted this year by the Top Employers Institute, an independent global organisation that certifies excellence in HR practices and the environment employers have in place for employees to advance their development, and the HR Certification Institute, the leading professional credentialling organisation for HR professionals worldwide, found:
Stock prices during 2011 to 2015 of companies certified by Top Employers outperformed the stock indices in their respective countries by an average of 51 percent over the same five-year period.
Compounded revenue growth rates of companies certified by Top Employers outperformed relevant industry average compounded growth rates by 14percent when comparing 2010 with 2014 revenues.
Unilever, which received the accolade of top employer in Africa for the third time in a row last month, is an example of this level of innovation. Mechell Chetty, Unilever’s vice-president of human resources, commenting on the company’s award, said its secret to success was the fact that the company consistently aimed to empower its employees to be able to make a direct impact on the business.
“We put our people at the heart of our business and their development and contribution will be second to none on the continent of Africa,” she said. “Our employees are given significant scope for creativity and we aim to create a culture where they have the freedom to act with speed and deliver on their objectives.
"We also encourage innovation across the workforce, with different attitudes towards authority by developing strong line managers who are equipped to deal with the challenges of a multi-generational and multi-cultural workforce.”
Lawrence Kandaswami, the managing director of SAP South Africa, which ranked third in the Top Employers SA ranking this year, said: “Creating a diverse and inclusive culture makes us a better company, fuelling our innovation, enhancing our experience of work and enabling us to succeed in a rapidly changing world. As companies undergo digital transformations, functions and processes, including HR, are being radically reinvented. And with that reinvention, HR will assume a new kind of leadership role, helping to shape the workforce of tomorrow.”
Reinvention, though, can only happen with an injection of a bit of creativity.
Dammon Rice is the head of CCDI Creative, a consultancy offering creative workshops to unlock competitiveness. e-mail [email protected].