Businesses need every competitive advantage they can get in today’s fast-evolving and increasingly technological economy. That’s why many C-Suite executives today have been re-examining every aspect of their businesses; determining what is essential, what can go, and what drives value back to their companies. We don’t have to look any further than Google’s recent Simplicity Sprint initiative for an example of this reimagining in action.
One department that often finds itself overlooked in the reimagination process is Human Resources. Despite being responsible for employee management across metrics like job satisfaction, engagement, and training, HR departments often don’t benefit from overhauling initiatives that target more conventionally important areas such as production, logistics, sales, or management. Businesses today need to understand that there are significant and tangible benefits to re-inventing their HR development processes.
The Many Benefits of Re-Inventing HR
An agile HR unit improves both company performance and employee satisfaction. HR will be instrumental in helping a company shift from a classical hierarchy to an arena that supplies talent to all teams across a company, helping them to achieve their missions while acting as a way-finder. Strategic innovation within HR calls for a future-oriented process of developing and implementing systems that directly contribute to major long-term overall company business objectives while solving day-to-day business problems.
Once largely focused on the daily grind of the administrative functions of the unit, like employee recruitment, selection, and benefits, the massive disruptions caused by Covid-19 have been an absolute game changer for HR. The stronger the alignment between HR and a company’s larger business strategy, the better a company’s ability to anticipate potential challenges and respond accordingly. This then leads to HR having a much more significant impact on a company’s future projection than if it were continually treated as a singular, siloed unit.
Top benefits of increasing HR’s impact on business strategy include:
1) Promoting employee well-being for continued growth and success, both for the employee and the company
2) Providing leaders with resources to help implement their strategic initiatives
3) Avoiding disruptions that waste valuable time and resources (and ultimately delay companies from reaching their goals)
4) Keeping employees engaged so a company’s long-term goals can be met
5) Providing a sense of direction and purpose to positively affect how work gets done
How to Increase Your HR’s Strategic Impact
While the positive benefits of HR impacting business strategy sound great in theory, putting them into practice may give those in the C-Suite pause for concern. Many employees, across all levels of a company, can become very resistant to change. But just because it might be difficult, especially in a traditionally defined unit like HR, doesn’t mean that it can’t, or shouldn’t, be done.