In the past two years, in particular, HR鈥檚 strategic role and its organizational importance has come to fore. From talent management to its role in ensuring business as usual by liaising with IT teams to provide collaborative tools and increase technology adoption is well-documented. What this has also led to is the increased use of data to derive insights resulting in better talent management (both hiring and retention). But leveraging data and analytics hasn鈥檛 been adopted as much as it should. Manual intervention is still time consuming, costly and at times ineffective. Consequently, human resource teams are beginning to realize the importance of people analytics and more data driven management in all aspects of HR functions.

HR takes a central role in business strategy

There has always been a distinctive difference in the conversations that happen in HR vis a vis other functions (sales, marketing, finance, etc.) . Typically, the former tends to be more anecdotal in nature, while other functions are mostly always data-driven. This strengthens pre-existing notions of Human Resources as an intuitive function. Of course, the role of HR in talent management strategies need to find basis in individuals. But by nature of diverse work cultures and office dynamics, HR strategies aren鈥檛 always accurate and subjected to bias. And while data is an intrinsic part of HR operations, it usually finds its place in descriptive reports (number of people organization-wide, geographic spread, etc.鈥�) 聽rather than as a tool that can be leveraged while planning business strategies.

According to Deloitte, the focus on big data will challenge HR leaders to build a people analytics team, bring together multi-disciplinary skills, and develop a long-range plan to 鈥渄atafy鈥� HR.

People choosing People Analytics

While data analytics is just that, crunching data to get a better understand of what the numbers imply, people analytics is a whole different game. People analytics refers to all talent data and its application which helps human resources base their talent management strategies on data. It also allows HR to spot trends and predict talent strategy.

In fact, people analytics becomes the bridge which connects HR metrics to business outcomes. amalgamating pre-existing HR data with real time activities. This approach would help create a database through which HR can model and predict outcomes helping businesses attain maximum returns on investments on human capital.

According to Deloitte research, 70% of respondents surveyed had invested in people analytic tools while over 50% planned to invest in such tools. Digitization in the workforce, owing to the pandemic, has also prompted high performing organizations to be two times more likely to implement people analytics software over low performing organizations. In part, this due to the cost-effective software and because of its ability to offer unique insights to shape the employee experience, which has proved to be of paramount importance in recent times.

Employees are your first customers

While most businesses agree that it is crucial to have a customer-centric model for more success, they often fail to realize that employees are the first customers, who in turn can ensure customer satisfaction. The company goals 鈥� whether they are revenue related or cost and market share related, eventually comes down to employee satisfaction.

Employee engagement and satisfaction are the pillars on which a company can build its overall business goals. And this has become of even more importance during the pandemic where feel burnt out from working remotely. Factors influencing this include-

• the added three hours of work due to the remote operations
• the mental fatigue of the pandemic.

Thus, with the increasing uncertainty, ranked employee experience as their first priority with people analytics playing a major role in improving it. Implementing people analytics will help HR to be strategic in how employees are utilized. When combined with design thinking and the employee鈥檚 persona, people analytics can give insights about how to avoid high attrition improve internal communications as well.

Benefits of People Analytics in HR

People analytics can be utilized by the HR department from the beginning of employee recruitment to the stage of onboarding. It lends itself in easing of the business operations in the following ways 鈥�

1. Removes Bias – The data from people analytics helps in making insightful decisions about talent management by removing inherent bias that exists in an individual. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) process removes the aspect of subjectivity and guesswork which is usually associated with the talent recruitment process. With candidate interviews also becoming digital, the AI software can analyze it through its metrics of personality 鈥� thereby providing an objective view of the qualities possessed by the talent vis-脿-vis the criterion of the company.
   Juniper Networks, for example, not only analyses where their top performing employees come from using apps like LinkedIn, but also the company they join post exit. Having such insights will allow organizations to better manage their talent.

2. Personalization of Data 鈥� On onboarding talent, people analytics software also makes provision for the personalization of each employee鈥檚 data. This allows the employer to have a more individualistic understanding of each talent which also helps them give more personalized and effective feedback and recommendations. This goes a long way in talent retention.
   For example 鈥� Wal-Mart uses people analytics to hone talent capabilities and help them get a better understanding of their career paths and roles. With around continuing to work at Wal-Mart for over ten years, their dedication to the company is a testament to the effectiveness of People Analytics.

3. Facilitating smooth Management – Through the personalization and data visualization, the people analytics software can also keep records of time management, performance, feedback and work life balance which can help HR department implement plans for their employees鈥� well-being better.
4. Maximizing ROI – With employee satisfaction being taken care of, these key talent metrics can be aligned with the financial and managerial decisions of the company to account for maximum return on investment in terms of talent.
   The company Royal Dutch Shell, for example, would ask the employees to play video games, analyzing the data from that to ascertain which employees have the best ideas and incorporating that in employee suggestions.
5. Integrating Organizational Capabilities – Through the streamlining of HR processes the people analytics software can also integrate different organizational capabilities along with talent management like digital collaboration tools, IT architecture and business strategies. This is further helpful in developing leadership pipelines, reducing employee turnover, increasing productivity and create effective learning and business plans.

People analytics in a post-pandemic future

With technology transforming every day, people analytics throws up endless possibilities. Real time analytics and data can help companies understand the mental and physical wellbeing of their employees. People analytics should be viewed as an enabler that can allow HR teams to be strategic about their functional role. For example, analytics help managers get an estimate about the drop in productivity and delays, thereby allowing them to plan alternative strategies beforehand. Such insights become critical during times of disruption.

And in the new normal when hybrid working and remote working is the norm, it is vital that HR help organization to look at new metrics that matter. For instance, gauging employee satisfaction and engagement levels becomes as important as figuring out if customers are satisfied. This can be achieved through:

• Employee journey mapping and design thinking.
• Feedback from virtual focus groups also helps organizations understand the type of virtual workspace wanted by the employees.

For example 鈥� Google uses People Analytics to check and improve the pulse of the employees. This is done through surveys and feedback of its talent with a rate from the employees

People analytics has upgraded the HR analytics from an analogue and intuitive to a digital and predictive world. Through its uses in talent management, the people analytics tools have become the meeting point of HR and business operations. And, as organizations and people move past the pandemic, where things becoming increasingly technologically oriented, people analytics and new tools will become integral to HR strategies.

The post Closing the gap between HR and Business Operations appeared first on 51风流India News Center.

Consider this: Global information services company Experian faced unusually high levels of turnover, about 4-5 percent higher than average. Rather than a typical reactive approach, the company鈥檚 HR team responded in a unique way.听, including team size and structure, manager performance, length of commute, and other factors contributing to the flight risk.

This model was rolled out across multiple geographies, and the results were stunning! Some interesting insights gleaned from analytics – when a team member moved away from the office, it increased the chances of quitting. When such insights were combined with best practices, the attrition rate was lowered by 2-3 percent over an 18-month period. This not only improved employee efficiency and morale but also saved the company nearly $10,000,000.

Moving from reactive to proactive

Clearly, an HR management system that centers around uniformity and bureaucracy will be rendered obsolete in the post-pandemic era. Taking its place should be a strategic human resource planning model that is flexible, responsive, and built around the future of work: Increased connectivity, rapid automation, lower transaction costs, and workforce demographic shifts. But to embrace this new human resource management model, senior HR managers and CHROs must reimagine the core tenets of their practice and have a strategic approach to staffing. Here鈥檚 how:

1. Gain a deeper understanding of company objectives, purpose, and culture

CHROs need to build a culture where all employees understand the 鈥榳hy鈥� of the business and how it connects to the big picture. But for this, people leaders themselves need an in-depth understanding of the organization鈥檚 culture and overarching values. They need to ask questions such as:

• What is the sole reason for our company鈥檚 existence?
• Where can we have a positive, unique impact on the community and the world at large?
• How can the employees鈥� contribution tie into organizational purpose and values?

These questions also serve as a compass during recruitment. Employees today want to work with companies whose values and purpose align with their own.听聽shows that employees who can find deeper meaning in their work are more likely to stay on at their organization.

2. Leveraging data to take the guesswork out of HR

With the vast amount of data available throughout the various touchpoints in the employee lifecycle, HR can make faster and better decisions with actionable insights and reporting. By leveraging historical data, analytics, and workforce planning tools, CHROs can forecast trends, manage recruitment, and handle attrition more efficiently.

For instance, one of the most crucial but time-consuming responsibilities for HR is recruiting the right person for the right role at the right time. Using data, HR can better understand the company鈥檚 hiring needs and the exact responsibilities for each position. This can streamline the recruitment process and eliminate expensive over hiring while ensuring sufficient employees to serve the customer base.

Leveraging data for people and talent management can offer the following key benefits for human resource planning.

• Sharper Insights 鈥撀�Data can be used to get valuable insights into employee behavior. It can also help answer some pressing questions that today鈥檚 HR leaders ask: What motivates employees? What are the leading causes of attrition? How to increase performance and improve employee engagement?

Tools such as employee satisfaction surveys, assessments, and exit interviews can help organizations identify why people leave and how to increase job satisfaction. The big ones have been doing it for some time now. For instance,聽聽reduced the attrition rate in its call centers by almost 20% by using big data to find out why employees leave in the first place.听聽are among the many leading companies routinely using predictive people analytics to identify employees most likely to quit- and then make them counteroffers before they do so.

• Training and development-聽Accurate performance analysis can indicate where training is needed and specific skills and topics to be covered. Analysis of such data helps HR managers improve the training programs too. Using cloud-based analytics, managers can get real-time updates on employee participation and engagement. They can also use those insights to adapt the methods as the training progresses. This is especially useful for the remote model of work.
• Hiring accurately-聽The recruitment process, until recently, was primarily based on intuition and guesswork. , the cost of a bad hire is at least 30 percent of the employee鈥檚 first-year earnings. When non-productive hires don鈥檛 pull their weight, good employees must make up for them, getting burned out in the process. This is where modern hiring and vetting tools, that use the candidate鈥檚 historical data to predict future outcomes, come into the picture. For example, Wells Fargo聽, that uses verifiable biometric data to hire candidates who are likely to perform better and stay longer.
• Performance management –聽Measuring performance is a highly complex process. It isn鈥檛 easy to understand why some employees consistently outperform others or how to evaluate the non-quantifiable work done by an employee. Today鈥檚 performance management systems include multiple interconnected processes and documents. The right analytics tool can use these datasets to provide a holistic view of the employee鈥檚 performance, enabling easier identification of areas of improvement, faster learning, and better business outcomes.
• Workforce analytics –聽It uses algorithms and employee data to provide ROI evidence for resource management decisions such as future forecasting. Talent analytics helps by evaluating the existing trends and offering an inventory of skills within the organization, studying labor shifts, and predicting future gaps. It can also determine the factors that indicate employee engagement and job satisfaction to sustain a high-performing workforce or flag upcoming talent for succession planning.

3. Automate HR operations and planning

To empower HR and HR leaders, there must be a shift from operational roles to strategic positions. HR departments still spend a significant amount of time and resources on transactional, routine activities. By leveraging next-generation automation tools and solutions such as HRIS (Human Resources Information System) system software and HRMS (Human Resources Management System) software, HR can provide enhanced service and improved employee experience. Here鈥檚 how:

• Process automation- Providing direct access to information or transactions online and simplifying processes enables process automation, leading to informed decision making.
• Offloading lower-value administrative jobs- HR administrative services such as payroll and benefits need to run reliably and consistently, yet at a low cost. This can be done by either adopting new digital tools that consolidate your legacy systems or outsourcing the work to external vendors/partners.
• Leading-edge edge automation- Next-generation automation is replacing several HR processes by building on core HRMS and HRIS software. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Natural Language Processing reduce cross-functional workflows and streamline the old-school onboarding process. Bots are helpful allies here since they can access multiple systems, manage an intelligent workflow, and handle the complete onboarding process. Onboarding time can be reduced from weeks to days, with the spin-off benefits of lower risk of manual errors and a more streamlined journey for each recruit.

4. Focus on employee experience

Employee experience and satisfaction are essential to measuring HR鈥檚 operational effectiveness. In the new normal, this means ensuring a smooth experience that is consistent and similar for听补濒濒聽employees (both on-site and remote). HR leaders should understand their needs, pay attention to factors that make work enjoyable or tedious, and enable them to complete transactional tasks online quickly. In fact, as employers get increased visibility into the personal lives of their employees, there is a need for a shift to supporting the employee life experience, says聽.

5. Review and Evaluate HR plan

As organizations continue to evolve and become digitally agile, HR also needs to review and re-evaluate its planning and role constantly. The human resource planning process is now strategic to expand the focus and extend its influence beyond the operational and the transactional to the enterprise ecosystem. Instead of focusing merely on technology or tools, the human resource planning process can start with employee experience and engineer a strategy that keeps this at the center. The result will be more fruitful overall.

We are no longer inching towards a New Normal, we are already in one. And HR leaders have to be strategic thinkers, constantly looking forward, assessing organizational needs, and coaching employees to gear up for this change. With the help of聽, HR leaders can stay tech-savvy and strategic in their human resource planning and can successfully deal with an increasingly 鈥榬estless鈥� workforce, used to the work-from-anywhere freedom!

The post Strategic HR planning: The crucial step in organizational growth appeared first on 51风流India News Center.

Business dynamics are under a tremendous shift as organizations re-look at the workforce and adapt to a changing work environment. Even though no one can predict what tomorrow will look like, the surest way to stay on the growth path is through talent transformation. Dr. Raju Mistry, President, and Global Chief People Officer, Cipla, explored this in her closing keynote, as she examined the nuances of building a workplace that is enabled to be smart and future-ready.

Cipla: A Rich Legacy of 鈥淐aring for Life鈥�

As a pharma company, CIPLA has a proud legacy of over 86 years of caring for and supporting patients from all over the world. With a workforce of over 25,000 employees who serve more than 80 markets – this is a company that truly believes in 鈥渃aring for life鈥�. Its vast portfolio of 1500+ products caters to every known ailment and manifests its mission through patient centricity.

The Cipla Palliative Care (CPC) is another such example. Founded to support patients and their families in their most difficult of times, beyond medicines and treatment, its Pune center provides free-of-cost care to terminally ill patients, allowing them to spend their last days with their families. The Cipla Foundation takes the company’s socially conscious legacy forward through various outreach programs in Health, Skilling, Education, and Environmental Sustainability & Disaster Response.

While caring for life has always been and continues to remain its guiding purpose, Cipla allocates equal importance to “daring for life”. With initiatives like those focusing on HIV Aids and an 11-year long fight to change patent laws, Cipla has brought inclusiveness, accessibility, and affordability to the center of healthcare in India and overseas.

Challenges Amid Uncertain Times

COVID has taught us to question many things, one such long-standing belief has been “People are resistant to change.” The many changes in the last two years and the ways people have adapted and adopted them have turned this belief on its head.

Transformation and change are not new to Cipla. It is the reason why a company with such a rich legacy has survived and thrived in these changing times. But the question remains, “How do we manage amidst all this chaos?”.听 The answer is by doing more 鈥� by multitasking, and juggling between multiple priorities, and focusing on doing more than expected.

Two of the most crucial aspects of this pyramid are ‘Enhanced IT and tech solutions’ and ‘Empathy and Nurturing’. Over the past two years, IT and technology have become an integrated part of our lives, at work and home. IT teams all over the world have got together to ensure seamless connectivity and transition to a digital way of working. And people have shown an amazing amount of resilience and adaptability to this new way of life.

At a time when face-to-face interactions are at a minimum, empathy and nurturing have also proven to be crucial focal points. For leaders and managers, this is the only way to truly understand the ground reality of their people and effectively connect with them.

Driving Change with Digital

The landscape of transformation is diverse and all-encompassing. A lot is happening in the transformational space including things like touchless factories, virtual site audits, environmental protection, phygital interactions across fields, and much more. These transformations touch every aspect of life, but it is up to the people to deliver on them.

It is at this switch from physical to digital workspaces that the challenges for HR come in. HR leaders need to find new ways to enable their people for the newer ways of working.

At Cipla, we use 51风流SuccessFactors as our HRMIS to simplify most of the HR processes. Not only does this make our processes more accurate, eliminate the drudgery that comes with all the transactional work but also brings in the ‘wow’ element to both HR and the employees. With more than 20 processes running digitally, 1100 digitized SOPs, and a chatbot that manages seamless support to the employees, our HR is free to catalyze transformation and motivate shifts that will reinvent our organization.

Ever-changing Landscape of Talent Imperatives

In the era of transformation, three key components are critical to hiring talent聽 鈥� Digital Savviness, Empathy, and Leading Virtually.

Previously viewed as a means to manage data and provide analytics, technology today has evolved into much more. Today it has become crucial for people to visualize and solve problems with a digital footprint and perspective. This shift will require everyone, from individual contributors to enterprise leaders, to think digitally and articulate problems in a way that they have digital solutions.

Two other aspects to building, identifying, and developing leaders in the new normal are:

• A requisite level of empathy and emotional connection to help leaders better impress on their teams in a non-physical space
• Leading and connecting virtually is becoming more critical as we move from physical to hybrid workspaces

Company Culture 鈥� The Foundation of Sustainable Transformation

Sustaining company culture is one of the major concerns for many organizations. Culture is the bedrock on which all processes are done and decided. While a physical space made it easier to maintain common company culture, the current shift to a virtual and hybrid workspace brings new challenges on how to maintain this culture and percolate it down the line.

Critical to sustainability, culture weaves the company together and forms a strong backbone for every employee and process.

At Cipla, we base all we do on our five pillars of culture, each combining parts of physical and technology components.

1. Openness and Transparency –

• Transparent communications
• Multiple listening forums & annual engagement survey

2. Accountability & Ownership

• Reassess org structures and roles
• Promote collaboration, teamwork & tiki-taka

3. Result & Impact Orientation

• Objective performance goals 鈥� feedback mechanism and appreciations for changing reality

4. Managing with Respect

• Inclusion & Diversity 鈥� how are you practicing it?

5. Engage with Empathy

• Giving back and making a difference

And while our offices are now open, we have positioned them as engagement centers, where people are not mandated to but have the option to come in when they want to connect with other employees or for team meetings. Offices are no longer centers for conducting business reviews, but a place where people come together to understand each other, have a cup of coffee, and build critical connections and relationships.

In conclusion, as HR processes mature and become more important, having a technology bedrock will become a strong enabler and facilitator for organizations to move ahead.

Check out more posts from 51风流HR Connect 2021:

HR Connect 2021: Evolving Employee Experience from HCM to HXM in Hybrid 2.0 – 51风流India News Center

HR Connect 2021: CEO’s Perspectives on the Changing People Paradigm聽聽 – 51风流India News Center

HR Connect 2021: Meeting Business Priorities in a Hybrid World – 51风流India News Center

HR Connect 2021: Thriving in the Vaccine Economy Through Human Experience – 51风流India News Center

HR Connect 2021: Code to Cracking the Talent, Technology & Cost Trifecta – 51风流India News Center

The post Enabling Talent Transformation in a Changing World appeared first on 51风流India News Center.

As we reimagine our world in a hybrid way, organizations need to put extreme ownership at the center of their EX strategy. Emphasizing the same, Harshvendra Soin, Global Chief People Officer, and Head Marketing, Tech Mahindra, presented an in-depth case study of how his organization rewired itself, placing human employee experience at the core to rebound with resilience.

Extreme ownership and how we develop talent to display it have become a key facet of facing the many upcoming challenges of the pandemic and post-pandemic era. Organizations and professionals recognize the many opportunities that lie amid this chaos and are trying to tap into them.

Let鈥檚 start by looking into the many paradoxes that companies all over the world are grappling with today in the new normal:

• Saving cost or investing in growth
• Changing employee expectations, whether it is from remote working or at office
• Customers expecting companies to deliver digital yet personalized
• Changing market dynamics in terms of competition, resource availability in a heated market, and changing legislations

With this context, we move on to explore the many challenges and opportunities that this new normal has to offer.

Challenges:

• The need to cater to the physical and emotional wellbeing of the employees
• Connecting, communicating, and engaging everyone to a common culture in a virtual environment
• Building a resilient and future-ready leadership

Opportunities:

• The rise of gig working along with diversity, inclusivity,
• A chance to reset for surviving, reviving, and thriving in a post-pandemic era

To refocus on resilient and future-ready leadership, we need to start by understanding why extreme ownership is important.

Leadership teams “make or break” organizations:

• 95% of investors state that the most important non-financial performance indicator is the credibility and experience of the leadership team
• 9x likelihood of reaching above-median financial performance when the leadership team has a shared and clear vision
• 33% of transformations failed because the leadership team’s behavior did not support the change (silos, competing agendas, turf wars, indecision)

Looking at these numbers, it is not rocket science to understand that most companies that do well are where extreme ownership is made the basis of moving forward, and the top teams are all aligned to the critical goal.

Extreme ownership is not simply a new business jargon. It is a set of 7 everyday behaviors that can change the very course of an organization’s growth.

1. Inspirational coaching 鈥� that teaches an organization to be bold
2. To be visionaries 鈥� reminding people about the larger picture beyond the business
3. Create ownership mind-sets 鈥� exploring competition as opportunities, taking each challenge head-on
4. Culture broke by on black hole. Build connections through the spine of culture.
5. Cleanse our sponge frequently. Create both capacity and speed for change.
6. Think different and innovate to out-hustle and out-muscle your competition.
7. Erase energy sappers from your everyday life! Bring in the energy stars!

As part of our journey to create a culture that adapts to extreme ownership, Tech Mahindra formed 5 transformation offices with clear outcomes 鈥� Growth, Delivery, Innovation, Process and customer success, and probably the most important – the People Transformation Office.

The objectives of the people transformation office were always very clear:

• To build a high-performance culture
• To have talent refresh that ensures the agility of the workforce
• To have young leadership and capabilities around young leadership
• To be an employer of choice
• To be able to achieve cost-optimization

For now, let’s narrow down on three of these critical objectives 鈥� building a high-performance culture, young leadership, and capability building and becoming an employer of choice.

Extreme ownership always flows from the top, it flows from leaders being aligned to a common goal. To achieve this alignment of thought and actions, at Tech Mahindra we created dashboards for our top 300 leaders. These dashboards were automated straight from financial data and provided monthly reviews of not only the harder aspects of the business but also gave insights into the softer aspects of performance.

These dashboards also allowed us to set customized goals. Not just cut and paste job where everyone is measured against the same yardstick or expected to deliver the same outcomes. With our customized goals we ensured that there was reasonable upskilling, reskilling, repurposing, and refreshment of talent across the organization. This meant that new talent could be brought in, and existing ones could be upskilled to face the new challenges of the post-pandemic era.

As part of this initiative, all top 300 leaders were reviewed monthly. And 30 of them were reviewed by the CEO himself. This brought in a lot of rigor and alignment in the way things got done within the organization.

Secondly, to encourage young talent within the organization we took on something that we call “reversing the pyramid”. This move helped us ensure that the power is refocused on the ground level 鈥� turning account managers into CEOs. To infuse some young leadership talent, we also introduced several interesting programs like LEAP, Global Leader CAD program, Management Training program, AIMER program. All these programs were specifically targeted at youngsters from outside the industry 鈥� positive thinkers and doers who would take on extreme ownership. Next, we encouraged women within our organization through our Women Leadership Program. This program yielded a significant uplift in revenue for the organization, as we not only upskilled our female employees but also placed them in higher job roles immediately.

Giving higher-visibility roles to early leadership and continuous performance tracking, mentoring, and upskilling was the hallmark of all our initiatives. There were some common attributes that we looked for in all our young leaders like 鈥� pursuit of passion, curiosity, persistence, digital prowess, an entrepreneurial mindset, and of course attention to detail.

Thirdly, as part of our initiatives to organize the extreme ownership culture we were continuously inspired to do more to become an employer of choice. The many awards we have won are simply an outcome of the efforts we have put in. As an organization, we took on initiatives that encourage diversity, young leadership, and career-building, very early on.

And we got recognized for our diversity, usage of HR technology, upskilling, our response to the pandemic, for being the best place for careers, best workplace for women, and being named as one of Asia’s Best Workplaces in 2021. All of the external recognition’s that came in reiterated for us the fact that we were on the right path to organize ourselves as a company with extreme ownership. This is a continuous journey for us and external recognition’s like these only inspire us to do more.

In conclusion, it would be right to say that managing ‘change’ through basics turned out to be the key for us as an organization, whether it was a process, policy or people change. In the post-pandemic era, we are empowering our leaders to go and WIN! We are hype personalizing, we are adding collaboration and skin-in-the-game and we have rewards, recognition’s, and schemes including new incentive policies in place to spur our people on.

We have simplified all our designs and amplified all our communications. And that is how we have energized 1,26,000 employees and associates in this new normal. Extreme ownership is the only response to this global pandemic. How we work and lead has completely shifted with more priority and focus on clarity, compassion, and connection.

Check out more posts from 51风流HR Connect 2021:

HR Connect 2021: Evolving Employee Experience from HCM to HXM in Hybrid 2.0 – 51风流India News Center

HR Connect 2021: CEO’s Perspectives on the Changing People Paradigm聽聽 – 51风流India News Center

HR Connect 2021: Meeting Business Priorities in a Hybrid World – 51风流India News Center

HR Connect 2021: Thriving in the Vaccine Economy Through Human Experience – 51风流India News Center

HR Connect 2021: Code to Cracking the Talent, Technology & Cost Trifecta – 51风流India News Center

HR Connect 2021: Driving Talent Transformation Strategy with Resilience – 51风流India News Center

The post HR Connect 2021: Extreme Ownership at the Center of Talent Transformation Strategy appeared first on 51风流India News Center.

The pandemic revealed the best and the worst in organizations. While the worst is not yet over but with the best elements in place, employers can rebuild resilient brands, cultures, and experiences for a diverse, human, hybrid world. Yashwant Mahadik, President – Global Human Resources & Co-Lead Business Transformation Office, Lupin Global, shared some incredible insights as part of his case study on how resilience has transformed their organization from within.

Over the last two years, the best employer brands have rewired themselves, placing human employee experience at the core and rebounded with resilience. As we reimagine our world in a hybrid way, organizations need to put resilience at the center of their EX strategy. To do this most efficiently, we need to review the situation we are in and identify “what have we learned” and “what we can do differently”.

One of the first things that this pandemic has taught us is that there are more types and kinds of disaster scenarios than we are prepared for. While most organizations had some sort of disaster planning in place to ensure business continuity, not many even imagined the kind of scenario we are currently in. When companies prepare for disasters, they mostly consider 鈥� electrical grid situations, floods, nuclear plant leaks, hurricanes, etc. as disasters that can disrupt businesses. Not many had painted a disaster scenario of a pandemic where the whole world would shut down.

When the pandemic started it affected every industry differently. Certain industries like airlines, hotels, tourism were affected more than others as they shut down overnight. From week one, these industries had to worry about cash conservation. On the other hand, some industries were under a different kind of stress. Industries like healthcare, pharma, and other essential commodities had to keep operations running continuously, without even a single day off.

HR leaders have been confronted with challenges of business continuity from day one. The biggest issue for most has been the jobs that cannot be performed from home, such as manufacturing, hospitality, etc.

The learnings we have gathered are probably as diverse as the problems we have faced during these challenging times. We as organizations have learned numerous new ways of engaging with our talent through technology. While processes like assessing talent and recruiting were easier to adopt virtually 鈥� but the step of onboarding proved to be one of the first challenges in HR. Over time many similar processes had to go through some massive transformations for HR to seamlessly transition onto a more virtual world.

We also learned that simply being sensitive to our people’s needs is not enough. We need to genuinely care and show assurance towards our talent and others within the community. Most companies did exceedingly well on this front. However, this also resulted in the suffering of business results for some. As costs for many companies shot up considerably. For example, at Lupin Global, we doubled our insurance for our people. The cost of doing this outweighed any savings we had made over time. These small steps to assure your commitment to your talent’s well-being are critical. It makes them feel assured about working for the right company and leaders -who have their hearts in the right place.

On the other hand, there have been companies who have had the intent but lacked the resources to provide any extra support to their people. At the other end of this spectrum are organizations that had to lay off employees barely 6 months into the pandemic and file for bankruptcy. Imagine the kind of stress and impact this dynamic created on the talent market.

Adapting to these scenarios meant that the talent had to recalibrate itself. And we as an organization needed to find new ways to connect with our talent. To better understand the ground reality of our employees, yearly engagement surveys were not enough anymore. We needed to conduct pulse and dipstick surveys on a quarterly and sometimes even a monthly basis.

Priorities of the talent have also changed with the changing times. Ongoing trends suggest that most employees want to move out from the big cities and go back to the smaller cities. To live with their parents and care for them while working from home. There are so many similar situations that one had to learn and become sensitive to while taking care of the talent.

On the other hand, we also realized that our productivity per person did not suffer. People ended up working more and were able to turn out more when at home. Mostly because they saved a lot of time due to the elimination of travel time, and also people genuinely cared enough to give their best 鈥� which was amazing to see.

Check out more posts from 51风流HR Connect 2021:

HR Connect 2021: Evolving Employee Experience from HCM to HXM in Hybrid 2.0 – 51风流India News Center

HR Connect 2021: CEO’s Perspectives on the Changing People Paradigm聽聽 – 51风流India News Center

HR Connect 2021: Meeting Business Priorities in a Hybrid World – 51风流India News Center

HR Connect 2021: Thriving in the Vaccine Economy Through Human Experience – 51风流India News Center

HR Connect 2021: Code to Cracking the Talent, Technology & Cost Trifecta – 51风流India News Center

The post HR Connect 2021: Driving Talent Transformation Strategy with Resilience appeared first on 51风流India News Center.

A fireside chat brought together a panel of talent leaders, moderated by Pallavi Kapoor, Head HR- APAC, Coforge; and including Madhu Srivastava, Group CHRO, Vedanta Resources Plc, and Prashant Deo Singh, Head HR, InterGlobe Technology Quotient.

Acknowledging the pandemic’s impact on digital transformation, the panel shed light on how companies have been forced to rethink their operating models and accelerate investments in cloud technologies, AI, and automation. And reflected upon how CHROs can become the ultimate partners to accelerate digital transformation for a better EX and continuous organizational growth.

Moving Forward: HR Technology in 2021

Kicking off the discussion, Pallavi Kapoor discussed the pandemic’s massive impact on the adoption and role of HR automation across industries. And how with almost 99% of employees working from home, there has been an increased focus on the potential of HR technologies to better engage and support a virtual workforce.

鈥淎 recent ISG survey worldwide found 46% companies are now using an -x`as-a-Service (SaaS) platform. A 20% rise from what it was just two years ago. Looking to the future, the survey also found 57% of organizations expect to be using a subscription-based SaaS by 2023.鈥�, she said.

She added, 鈥淒igital transformation is the clear mandate for organizations. It has accelerated the kind of growth that was envisaged as a 5-year journey and compressed it into a 3-month time frame.”

Making HR Agile: The Digital Transformation Journey

Detailing the digital transformation journey Vedanta Resources – one of the world’s leading diversified natural resource companies, took on during the past 2 years, Madhu Srivastava explained, 鈥淒igital transformation has been a top priority for us even before the pandemic began. But given the circumstances, we have definitely stepped on the pedal to increase the speed at which we are bringing in this transformation.鈥�

She emphasized the rising need for digital transformation by asserting, 鈥淲e strongly believe digital is the true differentiator between any two companies, in any sector. Only an organization that is going digital can enhance its productivity, increase volumes and reduce costs. It is the only way to thrive in the current scenario.鈥�

Listing a few of the initiatives her organization took to keep up with the times, she revealed, 鈥淲e started by hiring 鈥楥hief Digital Officers鈥�, not only at a group but at business levels. We also formed a 鈥楧igital Management Committee鈥� for each of our businesses. These committees were assigned to continuously review the kind of transformations that can be brought into the business. Not just in terms of digital technology, but data, analytics, AI, and the whole gamut.鈥�

“Next, we set up a “Digital Advisory Board” where we had the best of global technology experts come in and interact with our teams 鈥� to train, share knowledge and work on outcome-oriented projects with them.” She added, “We want to be known as a technology-driven company and encourage everyone, including employees, contractors, and business partners, to have tech-enabled processes.”

Speaking on how technology is being driven as the top priority on the HR front, she said, “We have already deployed technology in bits and pieces. Now, we are planning to move our end-to-end HR services online soon. Ensuring data is available for us to make decisions based on analytics.鈥�

Touching on InterGlobe Technology鈥檚 transformation journey, Prashant Singh added, 鈥淥ne and a half years ago, we as a company took up digital transformation as a strategy across. Not just HR, but every function within the organization moved towards it. When the pandemic struck, this transformation was fast-forwarded.”

鈥淥ur focus has been to integrate our HR system. Previously we have had disparate vendors and modules for various systems. But we felt that integrating systems onto one single unified platform is critical for the sake of employee experience.鈥� Elaborating on the importance of finding the right partner, he said, “Rather than jumping onto a partner and implementing ad hoc modules, it is better to spend more time researching and identifying a partner who can take care of all your business needs.”

Decoding a few key elements that can help navigate this journey successfully, Prashant summarized, 鈥淗aving filters while choosing the right solution for your organization can be quite useful. During the process of getting our tech in place, we looked at viability, functionality, features, support services, and finally the cost of the solution.”

鈥淵ou should also be ready as an organization before deploying the software.鈥� He explained, 鈥淎t our organization, we refreshed all our HR policies and SOPs to get the best-in-class outcomes from the solution before deploying it. It is critical in this journey to involve people from across functions and teams, and for everyone to learn and be part of the experience.”

Listing some of the challenges faced during this journey, he added, “We had a lot of legal entities which faced separate challenges. Data handling became a major concern for us there. There were also many issues relating to access rights that needed to be addressed across the organization. Finally, the pandemic itself effectively delayed our project by putting people from our team and our vendors out of action. Despite all this, our resilience and resolve helped us push forward to our ultimate goal of getting a great .鈥�

Success Partners: Changing CHRO & CEO Dynamics

Throwing light on the increasing importance of the CHRO as a partner to the CEO, Madhu explained, “As I see it, the CFO and CHRO work as two hands to the CEO. And all three roles are critical in driving the business towards the right direction.鈥�

“As CHRO, our role is to think of ourselves as partners to the CEO. Not just for executing but also as part of the strategic decision making and enabling the CEO to make those decisions. Starting from the business plan to organizational design, the CHRO has to partner with the CEO to translate the vision for the company into a roadmap that can be executed to deliver expected outcomes.鈥�

On the rising role technology plays in this evolution, she said, “The CEO looks up to the CHRO for advice while making critical decisions. CHROs now have the added responsibility to ensure they are enabled and equipped – in terms of data, analytics, knowledge of trends, etc.鈥�

Adding a key perspective to the discussion, Pallavi mentioned, 鈥淗uman experience is a complete experience that a person has with a brand, both digitally and physically.鈥� She emphasized, 鈥淢ost organizations and customers are undergoing digital transformation, and it is important that the entire element is viewed together, integrated across, and then taken forward to create people experiences that take them to the next level. HR must be agile and make faster decisions. And technology is taking the front seat in bringing all of it together to ensure a seamless employee experience.鈥�

Commenting on how technology has taken center stage even in job descriptions, Prashant added, “Even when hiring for HR, we look for people who have experience in implementing HRMO solutions. Work-from-home has been institutionalized. People are moving out of office spaces, and technology is taking up a major role in integrating employees and consumers. HR is having dialogues with CEOs & CXOs on roles can be permanently moved out of the office and technologies that can enable employees and customers.”

Elaborating further on the critical role data and analytics plays in business success, he observed, “Today everyone in the c-suite is looking for visual analytics in real-time. We can’t have HR spending precious hours creating excel sheets and presentations for reviews. We would rather take them directly to a system visual analytics, where they can view realistic data directly. That’s the kind of absolute visibility into predictive analytics that c-level executives expect, and that’s what the digital platform delivers.”

Amplifying Employee Experience: What does the future hold

Talking about the future course of their transformation journey, panel members agreed that to unlock true value in this digital journey, it is important to ensure that it is adopted across functions within the organizations.

Sharing plans, Madhu mentioned, 鈥淚n terms of HR, Vedanta is ready to launch its 1^st phase in October this year, and by next year, we will be 100% online. What is important to us and we will continue with, is bringing in external partners- to not just help us get the system in place, but to guide us as we adopt technology for a better employee experience. We also keep the internal communication that helps us communicate the value and benefits technology brings into the lives of our people.”

“We definitely want to live in a digital world where everything is available online, so we can stop making excel sheets and PowerPoint slides. Instead, we can just walk into a meeting and log into a system where all data is available and reviews can be conducted directly on the system.鈥�

Recounting the takeaways from the past 2 years, Prashant added, 鈥淲ith technology taking center-stage, boundaries have all but disappeared. One should keep in mind that while the beauty of an integrated tech platform is extremely important, instead of having a bolt-on system we should integrate APIs wherever possible.鈥� Ending with some critical advice, he said 鈥淚n this entire technology race, we should not lose the human touch.鈥�

Pallavi summed it up perfectly when she said, ” The human touch can’t be taken away, whether it’s the people, HR leaders or the HR platform, the guiding principle is that we remain agile and flexible, and that will be the future forward for all of us.鈥�

Check out more posts:

Evolving Employee Experience from HCM to HXM in Hybrid 2.0 – 51风流India News Center

CEO’s Perspectives on the Changing People Paradigm聽聽 – 51风流India News Center

Meeting Business Priorities in a Hybrid World – 51风流India News Center

Thriving in the Vaccine Economy Through Human Experience – 51风流India News Center

The post Code to Cracking the Talent, Technology & Cost Trifecta appeared first on 51风流India News Center.

According to research from聽, sponsored by SAP, 35% of midsize businesses across India plan to stagger the number of employees in their workplace at once for the foreseeable future. However, the study suggests growing concern over the need for investment and more aggressive adoption of specific technologies to remain competitive with their peers and larger competitors.

For companies with limited resources, capital, and time, this gap in the employee experience can feel overwhelming. Short-term needs for dramatic change often take precedence over long-term talent strategies. Meanwhile, little mindshare and money are left to invest in advanced applications 鈥� such as guided decision-making and process automation 鈥� that provide the fast, informed, and human-centric flow of their everyday work that their workforce wants.

So how can growing businesses provide employees with the tools they鈥檙e ready to adopt in a financially viable manner? By incrementally modernizing the work experience with cloud solutions as needs arise.

Incremental modernization drives employee success

One prime example of midsize businesses adopting this line of thinking in my local region is聽, based in Gurgaon. Having grown more than 30% within a year after a major acquisition, the company had a rapidly expanding workforce and needed to integrate many inherited systems and a different organizational culture.

To standardize processes, increase transparency, and enhance the employee experience, PI Industries integrated its HR processes on a common, cloud-based HR platform. This decision replaced disparate on-premise systems and manual processes and provided a central repository for all employee data, a single source of truth, and enhanced reporting capabilities.

Going from little to no control over recruiting, onboarding, and other HR activities to a fast, paperless, unified, and highly transparent experience, PI Industries is better equipped to address gaps in its HR processes. The company can identify skills gaps, roll out targeted training to strengthen competency in critical areas, and develop talent in meaningful ways. Additionally, reviews are completed on schedule, and approximately 50 new hires are onboarded each month 鈥� even during India鈥檚 government-mandated COVID-19 lockdown restrictions.

This cloud-based approach empowers growing companies like PI Industries to commit to an ongoing transformation strategy that places the needs of their people front and center 鈥� which is a considerable asset and competitive differentiator. And no, this doesn鈥檛 mean that they need to implement 200 new functionalities and tools and 15 different ways to customize their user experience like a large enterprise does.

While new ways of working demand new skills and digital capabilities, employees still desire more streamlined, flexible, and productive approaches to getting work done 鈥� no matter their location, job type, and personal situation. A complete solution is needed, but it needs to scale as business needs change, growth expands, and requirements shift to handle fluctuating bandwidth, evolving constraints, and increasing limitations.

Then, with the guidance of a partner, organizations can determine the capabilities and solutions needed and the optimal timing of their adoption to seize opportunities and mitigate risk in meaningful ways. For example, partners can craft a digital transformation road map and help ensure stable and scalable solutions to meet the business鈥檚 strategic objectives. Furthermore, they can support process standardization and simplification across the organization鈥檚 operations while harmonizing and digitalizing end-to-end processes across all functional areas.

Gradual digital maturity fuels continuous growth

Most companies may be complacent with their current technology and ability to navigate a changing work environment. Still, the daunting task of recovering from a pandemic in the months and years ahead requires much more. And for most midsize businesses, this challenge means overcoming a digital divide created by deploying applications used by competitors and addressing one-off, short-term needs.

Looking at their digital transformation with a long-term view and the inclusion of cloud technology, companies can build a foundation that adapts as needs change, stabilizes operations, and limits disruption. Then, over time, the work experience that employees want and need is delivered at their pace 鈥� everywhere and anywhere they need it.

and written by James Thomas, Vice President of 51风流SuccessFactors – India

The post Watershed Changes Redefine The Future Of Work For Medium-Size Businesses appeared first on 51风流India News Center.

The differences between the post-secondary education outcomes and the skills that business require are widening. But as much as employment analysts want to say this is a skill gap, it鈥檚 really an opportunity gap that has shut out diverse talent from innovation, economic growth, and personal well-being.

For many midsize companies, this rise in social consciousness is igniting a desire to acknowledge their employees鈥� and applicants鈥� true talent and potential. 聽But more importantly, some organizations are going even deeper, taking a pulse on their workforce to understand where everyone stood and root out dysfunction that was previously unseen or unrecognized.

Embracing the inner voices that speak volumes

In response to an overwhelming rise in social awareness, many businesses have taken action by conducting educational sessions to dispel myths and break bad habits, revamping policies to redirect energy toward fairer behaviors, or enacting procurement policies to support minority-owned suppliers. And in some cases, they took further steps in their support by sponsoring and donating to organizations serving underserved communities.

These well-intended actions are indeed admirable and widely appreciated. However, businesses benefit most by turning those moments of inspired support into a long-term commitment to putting their people first, regardless of race, gender, orientation, faith, education, and economic status.

But unfortunately, some decisions that influence the employee experience do not take unspoken concerns and perspectives into consideration. For example, 聽take the technology decisions that businesses make every day. Most HR organizations told聽聽that they consider employee success as a deciding factor. However, 40% of employees are skeptical of that claim, believing that HR technology is chosen based on the lowest costs and not what is best for the workforce.

This misalignment is particularly troubling when you consider that many employees do not believe their organizations have their best interests at heart. Whether the topic is technologies or the processes, policies, or user experiences supported by digital investments, this silent, yet significant gap threatens efforts to help their talent contribute to revenue growth, the customer experience, and brand reputation.

Fueling engagement with technology focused interconnectedness聽

HR technologies are more than just tools that people use to get work done. They should engage every employee with equal opportunities to learn, be mentored and sponsored, to help the employee build their careers and succeed without barriers.

Forrester鈥檚 Employee Experience Index聽reveals technology as a valuable component of bridging the gap between HR and employees. The index concluded that technology-related factors are strong predictors of employee engagement. And a critical driver of that engagement is ensuring operational systems and technology are accessible and easy to use.

For example, employees desire HR technology that helps interconnect aspects of what they define as a good employee experience, including:

1. HR administration:聽Enable accurate payroll and time tracking, on-demand access to benefits, and reliable HR service delivery.
2. Learning software:聽Reskill, upskill, and new skill employees so they can adapt to evolving business needs.
3. Employee collaboration tools:聽Allow employees to connect and engage with each other to retrain, exchange information, and accelerate processes to drive valuable outcomes.
4. Employee communication tools:聽Foster engagement, discussion, and sharing between leaders and employees within an organization and throughout the business.
5. Accounts payable automation tools:聽Free employees to focus on more strategic activities, while ensuring invoices are processed with fewer errors, limiting fraud, and increasing cash-flow visibility.

In the context of their daily operations, functional leaders should also consider the use of a business network that further diversifies their partners and supplier ecosystem. They can meet various providers for materials, goods, and services that represent wide-ranging demographics.

By giving the entire value chain an equitable stake in their company鈥檚 success, leaders can quickly identify untapped value that may have never been accessible before. Meanwhile, employees using the business network to procure resources can quickly discover their role in driving meaningful change that can impact people鈥檚 lives for the better.

Going beyond listening and acting with empathy and purpose

Understanding the workforce is one thing. But as soon as leaders view every employee as individuals, they can quickly appreciate the diversity of talent, outlooks, and experiences that the business has acquired. Technologies are a critical foundation for that capability. When leaders can interconnect operational data and qualitative feedback into a single view, they can make decisions based on insights that connect the dots between facts and perceptions.

Workplace awareness and empathy serve as the platform for what employees really want from their employers: to be heard, taken seriously, and drive meaningful change for themselves, their colleagues and worldwide communities.

Discover the value of modern HR technology for midsize companies. Read the Forrester Consulting study,聽.鈥�

Angelique Slagle is head of 51风流SuccessFactors Solutions.
This article was originally featured on聽.

The post Bridging The Employee Experience Gap Requires Open, Honest Dialogue appeared first on 51风流India News Center.

But the question is not when to bring everyone back, but how to use this opportunity to create a workplace that allows everyone to collaborate, focus, learn, socialize, and grow.

My colleague Steve Hunt, chief expert of Technology and Work at SAP, calls this line of thinking a “.” And I couldn’t agree more. Now that more than聽聽of millennials and Gen-Zs prefer the option to work remotely more often, it’s clear that pre-pandemic employee experiences will never come back again.

But this sentiment doesn’t mean that the traditional office experience is dead 鈥� it simply means that employee needs are evolving. Whether your employees are working remotely, on site, or within a combination of both, delivering experiences that keep your people engaged is critically important. After all, the hybrid workplace is likely to become more common across many industries for the foreseeable future.

Sustaining a culture of employee engagement and productivity

Some businesses are already heading in the direction of a hybrid work model, allowing some people to work two or three days in the office and the rest of the week remotely, for example. But that part of the hybrid work model is the easy part.

The real magic happens when companies are able to:

• Tap more diverse talent pools
• Assess available skills and capabilities
• Realign resources to address changing needs
• Develop future leaders
• Compensate and promote people fairly
• Recognize and reward top performers in ways that increase motivation and performance

These aspects of the overall employee experience strategy must happen no matter where employees sit.

A hybrid workplace model challenges HR teams to not only keep people connected, engaged, and empowered, but also analyze data-driven insights to understand and improve the workforce culture and deliver business outcomes. But this exercise is not just for HR leaders 鈥� executive-level leaders, department heads, and organizational managers must accept responsibility to do the same.

https://youtu.be/vHOxQhSKcYA

Sales leaders are already familiar with this model to a degree. They engage primarily remote salespeople through active listening and consistently study the sales pipeline and win-loss analyses to determine which are most productive, hitting targets, and exceeding expectations. To stay competitive, sales leaders must know their organization’s cost in terms of total headcount and its implications on the company’s bottom line.

How to achieve the right balance

Transforming a workplace into a hybrid model is not as simple as writing new rules of employee conduct and setting new expectations. There is still much work to do to close any gaps in how tools and technology at work enable a great employee experience. Although employees are satisfied with some tools, they may still be skeptical about whether they have everything they need to be productive and continuously develop and grow.

However, building the connections needed to make this happen is not always easy without the right support. According to聽, 29% of midsize businesses cite a lack of coordination between different departments as a top internal challenge and 44% cite effective collaboration across functions as a major barrier to transformation initiatives.

Technology plays an essential role in overcoming these issues to create an engaged and agile workforce that enhances business continuity and increases resilience. In fact, employees who are highly satisfied with their company’s tech are six times more likely to be highly satisfied with their overall employee experience.

So how can a business maintain that 鈥渨orkplace hum鈥� of interconnectedness when some people are in the office and others are remote on any given day? The answer goes beyond traditional HR approaches to a more human-centric one, called human experience management (HXM).

HXM聽is聽about聽putting people and their experiences at the center聽of everything,聽making work聽not only easier, but more聽individualized to each employee.

With the hybrid work model here to stay, it is increasingly important that employees feel connected, informed and with access to the tools they need to be productive from any device or location. And all of these capabilities are affordably accessible to midsize companies.

Digital workplace tools, such as this new HXM solution, allow employees to tap into everything they need 鈥� applications, processes, content, and information 鈭� from a single touch point and plus, they can personalize the experience based on what matters to each individual, and which insights and actions are relevant based on their behaviors.

Discovering peer groups, mentors, and intelligent recommendations with greater ease helps employees access the resources they need, stay connected, and save time to get work done. In addition, HR teams can leverage the technology to onboard and offboard employees and upskill and reskill through continuous learning,聽skills development,聽and on-the-job training opportunities.

With this modern and intuitive technology, multiple applications are integrated into a single user interface, extending the experience across all work-related touch points. And since the platform is extensible, companies can generate more value for their customers, partners, and stakeholders without the burden of ever-increasing IT costs.

Putting people first matters

There鈥檚 no doubt that the pandemic has empowered us to reimagine the workplace and created opportunities to optimize it.听But no matter where or how employees work, employee experience matters, especially when it comes to employee engagement and retention.

A hybrid work environment that is interconnected with the right foundation can become an experience that gives employees what they need to feel connected, empowered, appreciated, and fairly rewarded. And when employees and their experiences come first, and their true value is well-understood, midsize businesses create a true meritocracy that empowers their workforce to take charge of their future and the company鈥檚 success.

Connect the dots聽between聽customers, employees, insights, and processes across your midsize business. Read the Oxford Economics brief, 鈥�,鈥� for research-based insights on the聽value of being聽interconnected聽and the e-book, 鈥�,鈥� for tips on how to act on them effectively.

Lara Albert is global vice president of Solution Marketing for 51风流SuccessFactors
This article was originally published on Forbes, .

The post The Hybrid Workplace: Engaging The Post-Pandemic Workforce In Midsize Companies appeared first on 51风流India News Center.

Companies have a tremendous opportunity to change and it begins with HR leaders themselves. Laurie Ruettimann, author, entrepreneur, and host of the Punk Rock HR podcast, predicted the Number One competency for 2021 will be self-leadership, meaning individual accountability.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 think we鈥檙e surviving a global pandemic to do things in the same way,鈥� said Ruettimann. 鈥淏efore, we liked people to come into a room and collaboratively hash out ideas. Now working remotely鈥e want people to solve a problem, to reach out鈥s needed鈥ut to use their critical thinking skills and best judgment to do their jobs. Performance management plans will have to reflect that in order to be productive鈥e鈥檒l have to rely on individual accountability to get things done.鈥�

Ruettimann鈥檚 comments were part of the recent virtual broadcast of聽. The session, which focused on future of work 2021 trends, was moderated by Kerry Brown, vice president of workforce adoption at SAP, and also featured Terry Brown, CHRO at L.A. Care.

Connecting employees for resilience

Diversity, equity, and inclusion topped the list of 2021 workforce trends for Terry Brown, whose health plan organization served 2.2 million people in vulnerable and low-income communities across Los Angeles County. Already a diverse organization, Terry Brown envisioned L.A. Care evolving in the wake of the pandemic over the next five years, doubling down on equity and inclusion while navigating a fundamentally changed workspace.

鈥淲e are a mission-driven organization, a health plan operating exclusively in Los Angeles county that provides health coverage for underserved and underrepresented [people]. That鈥檚 one in five Angelenos,鈥� said Terry Brown. 鈥淲e want to make sure we maintain that culture. In a remote [working] environment, we鈥檙e having to be very creative in how we do that.鈥�

Interestingly, employee attendance at L.A. Care town halls rose after the organization began holding them remotely. The experience may be different, but the results have amplified the value of employee conversations.

鈥淢ore people are attending our virtual town halls than ever attended the in-person town halls we held at the office, and we鈥檙e getting more challenging questions,鈥� said Terry Brown. 鈥淭hose questions help us, letting us know what messaging is resonating or being missed by employees, and what areas we need to focus on that we didn鈥檛 even think of.鈥�

When L.A. Care employees at a recent town hall shared their challenges associated with remote schooling, leaders invited recommendations. This not only sparked more flexible scheduling arrangements for parents and others with childcare responsibilities, but also regular managerial check-ins with employees who lived alone. Terry Brown said that these actions reinforced the organization鈥檚 overall mission and culture, treating employees the same way they treated healthcare plan members.

Memo to HR: don鈥檛 be a hero

Although workforce issues are taking center stage during the pandemic, dialogues tend to focus on traditional full-time employees, leaving behind the swelling members of the gig economy.

鈥淧eople are participating in more ways that aren鈥檛 captured in [standard] HR reports. I鈥檓 a little worried that when we talk about great initiatives, programs about diversity and inclusion and well-being, we鈥檙e only talking about such a small segment of workers,鈥� said Ruettimann.

The second thing keeping Ruettimann up at night was how HR leaders can forget they are employees too. Stressed and overburdened, they鈥檝e become experts in everything from logistics to public health, often burning the candle at both ends.

鈥淚f HR is having that kind of an experience, imagine what the rest of the workforce is feeling,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 tell people who I coach, if you really want to improve the employee experience, start with yourself鈥ecause you fix work by fixing yourself first. Hero behavior leads to burnout.鈥�

Opportunity for change

The pressure on working women has become particularly intense said Ruettimann, evident in the record number of females opting out of the workforce. In her mind, talent wars will become more complicated unless we address societal issues like childcare and share of household work.

鈥淚f you鈥檙e a working woman with a family, whether you鈥檙e in a traditional or non-traditional relationship鈥� you鈥檙e probably thinking of ways to scale back on work to shore up your home,鈥� she said. 鈥淭his could be a privileged problem, but it鈥檚 a problem that many parts of our economy have felt for years. Now that the pressure is being felt at the top of the economy, maybe we鈥檒l find some solutions that will benefit everybody throughout the enterprise.鈥�

On an optimistic note, Ruettimann saw opportunities in the gig economy for people to 鈥渄o their own thing,鈥� as well as established companies to shift gears.

鈥淥rganizations have a real opportunity to stop the hemorrhaging by looking differently at compensation and performance management, and communicating differently to their people who are so stressed,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 believe in the unending potential of human beings, and if they want it, there is the opportunity to be the change they want in their lives.鈥�

The post HR Trends 2021: The Number One Workplace Competencies To Survive The Pandemic appeared first on 51风流India News Center.