Sowing seeds of success with HR transformation

In every profession, the debate is whether man or machines will win the race. Like all other professions, HR jobs are at a threat. In this age of digitalization and social disruption, traditional HR is irrelevant for today’s era of business. If HR professionals do not step up to evolve with the changing workplace, this profession will risk being shut out from organisations completely.

It is therefore imperative for HR professionals re-brand this “dying” profession to ensure that HR continues to thrive within the organisation. Here are some ways in which HR can take actionable steps to ensure HR transformation within the organisation.

1. Get Involved

Encourage community efforts within the organisation. Organisation regular community outreach programmes to encourage employees to participate. At the same time, this will help HR evolve beyond merely employee-centric but people-centric as well.

2. Outreach Efforts

Whether it is within the organisation, to university students or to clients, spread the word on your mission to re-band HR. This will help to ensure that everyone, including HR is working towards to same goal in growing HR into the industry that the workplace envisions in future.

3. Practice what you preach

Make it happen. If you want to transform HR into the profession that you envision, you will need to do your part to encourage change. It can be simple amendments such as changing the HR processes within the workplace or equipping HR professionals with IT skills to tackle digitalisation within the workplace.

4. Seek Feedback

Actively seek feedback – whether it is from employees, senior leaders or even exte
al HR professional organisations. These people are likely to provide you with advice from an exte
al point of view. At the same time, they are the best people who will help you advocate your HR outreach efforts within the organisations.

With digitalization and the rapidly changing business model, HR professionals today need to transform and embrace the new-age workplace. This is the future of work – HR transformation.

5. Rid the administrative mindset

Gone are the days whereby the HR department has to deal with mountains of paperwork – be it applicants’ resumes, payroll reports, employees’ leave attendance or employees’ claims reimbursement. Today, almost all of these administrative HR processes are well taken care of by cloud-based HR software such as HR Information Systems (HRIS). Likewise, these administrative tasks can easily be outsourced to a third-party HR provider. Essentially, HR should minimise the amount of administrative work and focus on spearheading strategic initiatives for employees within the organisation.

6. Direct payroll issues to accounting

Accountants are the best people to handle large databases of numbers. As such, it is best to direct majority of compensation-related or even tax matters to accounting. This will then leave the HR department with more time to focus on other duties as opposed to the monotony of processing payroll.

7. Aligning HR with the right people

To avoid HR status quo, it is important to align the HR department with the right people. Instead of merely continuing with the administrative processes within the HR department, why not challenge that notion and work with other departments on strategic decisions regarding human capital? It could be decisions pertaining to where or how the organisation’s funds are spent on human capital, taking charge for employment decisions and presenting detailed HR analysis such as annual turnover rates to top management. The key here is to alig
HR with the right people in order to make the largest impact within the organisation.

Today’s modern workplace presents a challenge and opportunity for HR to reinvent itself and be involved in strategic decision-making. Additionally, HR today is not just a department that merely takes care of employee relations, grievances or payroll. Instead, the HR today has to act as a business partner and collaborate with the various departments to meet the human capital needs for each department and ensure alignment with the overall organisation’s goals.