Role of HR in Agile and Automated World

Gone are the days the term Agile was a natural Habitat to software’s but todays hyper-digitalized (Automated) world it has not only blended HR’s with responsiveness, adaptability, quickness but also brought  with leveraging technology ,reskilling ,up-skilling,digitalized learning with pace along with changing  environment . Since pandemic has left the inedible mark on the way we live & work, it has forced our strategic HR leaders to take tough staffing decisions and agile with empathy &compassion.

With advent of technology,AI and machine learning there has been a massive Paradigm shift towards digital transformation and learning with people but what I say , fundamentally the one of the biggest shift is the mindset shift which has led HR’s to agile by building proper HR frameworks, developing cognitive resilience, Skill centric strategies & well-conceptualized teams. Now it’s role for HR leaders to gain insights, form strategy and inculcate metrics that is broadly as to say agile by holistic approach by increasing employee Productivity, maintain employee wellbeing, and mental health.In this automated world HRs have to ensure continuous learning, create Standard training modules, bite-size courses coupled with online learning portfolios and deliver the outcome for a future ready organization. Its HRs role to strengthen the organizational capability engage workforce by training and developing new talent and place them at driver’s seat.

  Acceleration of digitalization and automation has exposed the skill gaps forcing business to rethink their capability building so HRs role plays significant to fill this skill gap conundrum by creating agile workforces to liquidate workforce that is by placing right talent at right place filling the demand supply factor. Now with changing demographics of workforce , ever evolving challenges , agile technological parameters and challenging labour markets the spotlight is on HR leaders to benchmark with hiring new talent , reskilling , up -skilling  , leverage technology with Agile tools meet the global market demands by engaging workforces . Challenge for developing Organization is resilience and sustainability which is now a leadership agenda, now its HR professionals who has to bring shape to these workplaces in this agile and automated world.

Since early 2000’s Dave Ulrich championed and influenced the world HR functions while it was universally accepted it was quite debatable whether it could produce a desirable outcome & Sustain in future with digitized world, now HR professionals need to look this at bigger picture not only by cost cutting & headcount reduction but also by restructuring and keeping employees & customers at top. Now, with context to critical questions HR need to face in this agile and automated world are…

How to reskill, up -skill, upgrade and develop the future ready organization? How to reenergize the employees with this new way of learning? What can be agile approach of HRs?

A cursory explanation to this all questions satisfies the role what HRs plays in terms of new organizational building capability and resilience.

•         Creating virtual organization – simplifying structures and processes for a new organization together with home and distance working.
•         Holacracy – where organization power is distributed throughout the organization via distinct, autonomous yet symbiotic teams, rather than vertically
•       Create personal development: e.g., mindsets and skills for developing wellbeing, building resilience and navigating the new challenge of home and distance working
•         Nurture Talent development: e.g., for bunker-busting existing business and organizational paradigms and developing mindsets to constantly disrupt and reinvent
•         Agile in HR Digital and Analytics – moving to more immediate and personalized  means of communications and developing real insights into people’s needs and aspirations preparation for a surprising future: developing agility, flexibility and adaptability of policies, processes, contracts and digital systems
•         Creating Learning organization: e.g., highly relevant micro-learning and self-directed learning that address the need to re-equip entire workforces with new skills and capabilities team performance and appraisals, including self-appraisal in a virtual world – utilizing digital tools to track feedback and performance
•              Agile in Culture development e.g., fostering purposeful and energized people engagement.
•            Compensation: aligning with the new dynamics – gig economy, flexible work practices – career breaks, study breaks

•         Regulatory compliance – responsiveness to changing social policies and employee and customer agendas

Conclusion

Agile HR will need to move from a ‘one size fits all’ approach to a new personalized level of staff engagement where the individual, as opposed to the group need, is satisfied. HR leaders will have a critical role in leading from the front and influencing their wider leadership colleagues on the benefits of a new type of work-employee agenda. The winning organizations of the automated world will not just be those companies that seize the opportunities to deconstruct and radically reshape their business models while at the same time exercising prudent and well-judged financial disciplines. The winning organizations of the future will need to radically transform their employee relationships and re-engage emotionally with their people as never before that’s what HR s will play role.

Equipped with a highly appropriate and resourceful toolbox of people and organizational solutions for Agile & automated world, HR professionals have an amazing opportunity to pursue an agenda and journey of creative reinvention. the ultimate goal being a successful, resilient and sustainable organization underpinned with a real sense of purpose and fully engaged people.

‘In an authentic sense, we have two minds: one that thinks, another that feels.’

                                                                                              – Daniel Goleman

Understanding the Context:

In his seminal work, ‘Emotional Intelligence,‘ Daniel Goleman stated that ‘one of the fundamental things that hit us when we step onto something new is that we may be technically strong, but we won’t be able to proceed forward without managing people associated with it. And EQ ensures that we do know how to manage people. This should elicit an innate curiosity towards understanding EQ or is usually referred to as emotional quotient/intelligence. So, to formally define EQ, we need to visit back to the earliest decade of this 21^st century, whereby a lot of research in this field was occurring. After much deliberation and simultaneous research within the psychological society, the Israeli psychological society came with a definition that still rings true to this date. EQ is the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict[ii]. It helps us connect to our feelings, turn our intentions into actions, and ensure informed decisions regarding crucial aspects of our lives.

To better understand EQ, we need to delve deeper into its core aspects. Facets like self-management, self-awareness, social awareness & relationship management form the core aspect of EQ.

Self-management:

In the context of EQ, self-management refers to managing our own emotions. This practice develops a sense of cognitive thinking when we feel distressed. To put this its perspective, we can take the instance of the ventilation fallacy[iii]. This fallacy states that our usual coping mechanism of venting out sad emotions helps us navigate the situation. But it essentially is not true entirely. Instead, this prolongs the problem and makes the situation much worse because when we vent out of anger/frustration, it usually is our own emotions, not cognitive thinking.

Self-awareness:

Getting to know about our own emotions, feelings, attitudes, etc., helps us create awareness about ourselves which eventually demonstrates itself as a helping step to manage all those personal emotions.

Social awareness:

Social awareness develops a keen interest in knowing others and their emotions well enough to gauge their resulting actions. Emotions are contagious; so, by gauging the emotions of others, we can create new relations.

Self-motivation:

Finding or being aware of our passion/burning desire can motivate us internally. This mitigates the influence of extrinsic motivation explicitly. There are four sources for self-motivation, namely money, mating, momentum, and mastery.

Now, ever wondered why we started understanding better what EQ means in the current context. Because this allowed us to delve into the peripherals much better, by extrapolating this to its business context, we could quickly get around the topic, ‘EQ in HR,’ and justify the delivery of ideas that it needs.

What role does Emotional Quotient play in a Business?

An emotional quotient involves being perceptive of other people’s moods and having the competence to facilitate ameliorated performance based on that perceptive knowledge intuitively. This aspect of improved performance attracts its usage in the modern business world. The modern workplace is characterized by accessible communication, collaborative teamwork, and mutual respect.

This bears a significant impact on the self-development of the employees and their performance indicators. Practicing activities that support an EQ-based behavior illuminates positive effects that can be observed and measured by higher productivity. Its impact is visible in building positive relations and gaining employees’ emotional commitment. This strengthens organizational culture at a higher level, sharpens its resilience, and stretches its flexibility, eventually leading to a more significant competitive advantage in the market. Empathic communication channels between the top management board executives and lower-rung employees develop a cultural environment of ownership that bringsforth a sense of coordination and collaboration among the team members. This synergy stimulates employees’ creativity, which is essential in forming innovative responses to learning society’s increasingly complicated structure.

Does EQ play a role in the HR world?

EQ touches upon every aspect of human life, enabling humans to function with confidence, resilience, motivation, and empathy. HR leaders truly rely on EQ in particular, to inspire engagement, retention, and productivity. EQ is the backbone of a healthy work environment. This creates an environment of goals achievement, collaboration, and healthy team settings. Essentially, EQ connotations play a crucial role in ensuring a competitive workplace which is the need of the hour in today’s corporate world.

The next problem is how to engage the whole workspace under the EQ system through HR leadership capabilities. HR, a whole people-dependent sub-function in a business enterprise, essentially dominates the workspace etiquette to ensure a competitive and collaborative environment. Additionally, the HR managers could develop their adequacy regarding mental health capabilities to make each & every employee professionally competent physically and mentally. EQ also builds a solid interpersonal relationship network among the frontline employees, supervisors, and even executive members. This influences the performance metrics positively and develops a strong progressive corporate culture.

Moreover, having adequate hands-on experience in managing employees with EQ serves to differentiate between a high EQ manager and a high IQ manager. This leads us to be interested in the differences between EQ & IQ and determine which is more appropriate to the 21^st-century business context.

Conclusion:

‘When people go to work, they shouldn’t be leaving their minds and hearts at home.[vii]’

There aren’t many alternatives to having a strong EQ in today’s world. The business world appreciates such instances wherein EQ saves the day from an imminent crisis, and HR is well conscious enough to support the workplace with such EQ adequacy. The workplace sometimes comes off as a violent place to be concerned about, but that is where the human resource capabilities come into the picture. Building enough human competency through initiatives full of emotional connotations and not just depending upon physical ones will solve most of the difficulties an organization faces in this VUCA world. Delaying gratification, a huge factor in developing intense EQ can also be a better predictor of success than IQ. It’s like the marshmallow test[viii], wherein there are two options: choosing a marshmallow and consuming it or waiting for the right moment, delaying the attraction, and eating two marshmallows at the end of the day. Research shows that those respondents choosing the latter option were more likely to succeed in their careers.

HR Strategy in the VUCA World

Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity are the four terms that best represent the organizational scenario we are currently in. Today, the covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on everyone’s daily routine. This is especially true for organizations that were forced to go online without any prior notice. The concept of working from home, with choices for complete remote work and a hybrid style of working in which an employee works from home for a few days a week and then works in an office for the remaining days, has broadened the working boundaries. Traditional HR tactics will no longer be applicable in the face of fast-changing circumstances, higher customer expectations, diversified employee needs, and a highly competitive market.

With the rapid advancement of technology, ever-changing business models, and a lack of time to adapt to the changes, HRM can no longer be considered a support function. It is past time for them to recognize their strategic role in creating opportunities and thus giving the company a competitive advantage in this VUCA world. The weapons or methods that can be employed to acquire this sustainable competitive edge are talent acquisition, diversity, performance management, and digitization.

To eliminate perception bias, the talent acquisition process must be modified. Instead of using the traditional method of a resume shortlist followed by an interview to make a decision one should introduce a structured scoring system to evaluate the candidate on various parameters. The job descriptions should now reflect how the employees are expected to adapt to the continuously changing environment. Hiring based on degrees and previous experience should be put on the back burner in favour of focusing on passion and abilities obtained to validate that passion. Soft skills like empathy, comprehension, emotional intelligence, and the capacity to adjust rapidly should also be examined.

When it comes to gaining a competitive advantage, diversity can be seen as extremely beneficial. Better decision-making enhanced problem-solving, and increased creativity and innovation are all aided by a diverse workforce. Increased innovation is owing to the fact that innovation necessitates individuals to think outside of their regular operating paradigms and to employ a variety of perspectives in order to arrive at fresh and innovative ideas. As a result, the best method to enhance innovation is to have a varied group. A company with a varied workforce will be better able to grasp different local markets and demographics, giving it a competitive advantage. Diversity also contributes to better adaptation, preparing them for competition and rapid innovations to which they must adjust. As a result, in today’s world, HRM must focus on increasing workforce diversity, encouraging more varied teams, and facilitating smooth functioning by putting policies in place that makes everyone feel included and accepted.

Changing Role of HR

Performance management in an organization must begin inside out, especially for those who lead. While HR must establish training programs that keep employees abreast in the competitive world, it should also focus on fostering soft skills like leadership, ownership, emotional intelligence, and empathy in their workforce. Another important step is to normalize reaching out for help and expressing feelings in a way that does not affect others adversely. Personal goals should be included in the performance management system, in addition to professional goals. The goal should be to gain employee loyalty through a well-thought-out rewards scheme. A system for objective performance evaluation free of political and prejudices should be established.

In a performance management evaluation, every metric must be accompanied by a rationale for the score or rating. This helps to eliminate managerial biases, such as the preference for personnel who work in an office over those who work from home. Mandatory 360-degree feedback with both positive and constructive sections should be implemented on a regular basis. Hire contract workers for short-term projects and create more open spaces to allow staff to work at a more casual pace. Introduce early training to prepare individuals who exhibit leadership, as well as introduce attractive rewards to stimulate creativity. When an individual demonstrates grit and exhibits his desire to grow, enables speeding up their career growth outside of conventional boundaries. Special retention programs should be in place for retaining high-performance employees.

HRM digitalization is more crucial today than it has ever been. HR managers can no longer be indifferent about technology. Instead, they should concentrate on becoming proficient in the use of technology. On a daily basis, HR professionals are stated to process a significant quantity of paperwork, which can be automated and digitalized using the many HR Information Systems available. The HR function must embrace the potential of data and analytics and use People Analytics on a regular basis to make better personnel decisions. To avoid making poor decisions, numbers and data can be used to back up intuitive decisions. With digitalization, time spent on repetitive processes and paperwork is reduced, costs are reduced. This means HRM can now support the organization’s strategic goals and create more value-added activities.

Conclusion

Finally, in today’s fast-changing business environment, HR must keep up with, if not outpace, the rest of the organization in order to maintain a competitive advantage. HR must now concentrate on developing tools and tactics that will assist in steering the controllable part of the company culture in the proper direction. They should prioritize employee health, both physical and mental, as well as other company objectives. They should take care of themselves first, then harness the VUCA, which is a type of fire, and put it to use. They should now move away from being HR Professionals who know a thing or two about business-to-business people with expertise in HR and adopt a VUCA friendly management culture that emphasizes consistency and communication. All these strategies are crucial today because “Human Resource is no longer a thing we do, it’s the thing that runs our business” – Steve Wynne

Introduction

The business environments nowadays are changing extremely fast due to either change in day to-day framework or due to the impact of Covid or political or economic changes in both domestic and global environment. Today organizations and their people are grappling to manage such situations which are beyond their control as they are characterized by VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity). VUCA is associated with rapid change in environments, the diverse employees, needs, and almost unpredictable customer expectations. And as an HR leader, how do you manage this new and volatile environment is a question. Also, what is the impact on Human Resource Function in a VUCA world & how do you propose a framework for HR leaders to navigate especially in this Pandemic era?

VUCA world poses a threat to modern companies to remain competitive in the rise of advanced technologies, shifted business models, lack of time to adapt to changes and necessity to update performance management systems. For e.g. No broker, 99 Acre impacted the real estate broker industry by innovating processes by making it online. Managing in the new volatility environment competitive advantage is more suitable for the VUCA world because it means that an organization succeeds in recruiting and maintaining human talents, has an effective environmental policy, and witnesses economic growth. HR managers needs to ensure employees are highly interested in promoting a company’s new heights through high-quality performance, proactivity, innovation, and flexibility.

Impact of VUCA Environment on HR Functions

VUCA environment induced by COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the following facets of HR Function on a broader landscape:

Compliance of Government instructions and mandates: Governments throughout the world-imposed lockdowns to contain the spread of the COVID-19 cases. HR Managers played a Vital role in adhering with Government Authorities to fulfil all compulsory requirements stipulated by the officials.

Adapting to remote work arrangements: Remote working came at its own price for HR Managers as they utilised the limited resources to make employees effectively work remotely.

Safety of employee and their families: Necessary measures must be taken to ensure the health of employees and their families. Medical insurance schemes to disseminating necessary information, HR Managers compromised their personal life and were ready with solution as soon as the problem arises. 

Performance Management Activities: Remote working or operating with reduced workforce resulted a challenge of managing employee productivity in the VUCA environment. Many industries saw a sharp fall in employee productivity which further declined organization revenues.

Employee Engagement Activities: Lockdowns and remote work arrangements has had adverse effect on employee morale. According to McKinsey Employee Engagement Report, June 2020, 78% employees of surveyed employees showed that their organization has responded well to the crisis appropriately.

Now let us talk about the framework to solve these problems:

The HR managers would have to closely with the management to conceptualize and adapt to the culture that is necessary. The talent and tools will need to be consistent with the inconsistencies of the VUCA world. HR practices will have to be restructured to reflect the business mandates of flexibility and adaptability across borders.

Training and Development: there should be learning platforms, and not just traditional methods of learning for employees to cope up with the changing environment like coaching, peers coaching in the organization.

Flexible Policies: The policies set by HR should be flexible with the nature of the changing environment to achieve success.

Strategic Thinking: HR Managers should think strategically and take decisions accordingly.

Ambition: The manager should have the willingness to motivate and achieve higher responsibly and to grow in the organization, that would be helpful for the survival in the VUCA environment.

 Attitude: The attitude of the manager really plays a particularly significant role in the survival during the VUCA environment, and the duties being assigned to the manager should be fulfilled by him very judiciously, to achieve the tasks to be done.

Conclusion

In the end, Oprah Winfrey rightly said, Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new centre of gravity. Do not fight them. Just find a new way to stand. Similarly, it highlights the importance of HR in a VUCA world and based on the gaps identified in literature there was no consensus in the role of HR in the VUCA world, especially in a pandemic situation. The Human Resource function is operating in a VUCA landscape influenced by a pandemic outbreak and it is going to stay longer than we anticipated. However, the authors would like to bring to their notice that the VUCA environment demands that HR Managers avoid traditional and outdated styles of leadership in such a disruptive environment. A more inclusive style of leadership is required to counter the challenges of VUCA times. Developing the ability to grasp according to both short-term and long-term goals of a business will be the key to navigating the current environment. Strategies that are anchored in the long-term vision but also dynamically managing the short-term goals are necessary to maintain the relevancy of the Human Resource function. Seen from this greater perspective current VUCA world can be an opportunity for further advancement and greater collaboration, rather than a threat to be alleviat