For entrepreneurs, business owners and corporate leaders, 2023 promises to be a year of transformation. The necessity for transformations of different types will be greater than ever.
Mercer Research suggests 98% of companies are currently pursuing transformation and 52% of those transformations are digital in nature. Research by the PC maker Dell indicates the largest barrier (61%) to successful digital transformation is workforce readiness, not technology.
Leaders need to remember that all our transformation challenges are essentially people challenges, and all our problems are people problems. In my opinion, everything at this point is about people. Organisations are not struggling with digital or tech disruptions. Organisations are struggling with disrupting people to do things digitally (well) and quickly enough.
At the same time, the trends creating turbulence for all businesses such as digitisation, the information age, the need for personalisation, and new ways of working (as outlined by Porsche Consulting Research) are challenging Human Resources leaders as much as businesses themselves. I believe leaders must challenge their HR people and also support them to increase the chance of transformation succeeding in their organisations.
The 2022 PwC Digital HR Transformation Survey found that 96% of HR leaders see the HR function moving away from being just a service provider to being a change agent and talent developer. From my conversations with business leaders, this is exactly what they need from their HR teams.
Unfortunately, HR leaders believe the current setup in many companies does not support successful transformation and building companies for the future (only 9% according to the survey). They believe there are misalignments and that HR services, and solutions are not supporting the Future of Work, attracting talent, or increasing productivity and engagement.
Is there a solution? I believe organisation leaders must consider HR’s ability to play a considerable role in reshaping how employees think, feel and interact with each other and with technology. I believe this is true no matter the level of sophistication and the HR team’s legacy role. Whether they realise it or not, they are at the front of employee interactions and can contribute to shaping employees’ mindset to embrace transformation. HR must take the lead in:
- Preparing your workforce for transformation. Through upskilling and embedding a digital mindset or an agile workplace.
- Laying the foundations for a different future, for example, developing leaders with new mindsets, behaviours and ways of working.
The HR Challenge? HR must transform to support a very different future of work, but this will take time. Research by the Academy to Innovate HR indicates that 35% of the capabilities required to be successful in HR have been transformed over the last five years.
But business transformation cannot wait for HR, and HR transformation is the job of HR leaders. It is essential, and inevitably HR must learn on the go, like the rest of the business. More importantly, they need to find new solutions for developing organisational capability while getting things done.
But is this possible? HR can adapt and find ways to solve new, complex problems. It can start with rethinking capability development approaches for those leading your transformation. Leaders need to ensure that their HR teams do the following:
Provide experiences that shift mindsets. The key to this is how people experience development and training. Forget traditional workshop-type approaches or development waiting until people are in a classroom. The way people learn has changed. They do not want to be in a classroom. Covid changed the way people learn. The HR mindset must be of someone who empowers lives through learning and helps colleagues make a difference after walking out of a learning experience.
Make colleagues’ outcomes the centre of every development experience. A business leader must ask their HR team what difference it will make about every proposed development initiative. If this is not entirely clear at the individual level, put your wallet away, it is probably wiser to spend the money elsewhere to support your transformation goals. If it does not support your transformation goals, then do not even have the conversation. For every investment, help HR start with need, outcome, and context, then the content.
Turn learning into earning (not just capability development investments for a poorly defined future). From my own experience, I can testify that in transformations we simply do not have time for learning for its own noble sake. I love and value learning, but we do not have time for traditional or leisurely learning or slowly accumulating expertise before putting it to work.
One way that works well is including a laboratory approach inserted into low-content, high-context learning. This means that all learning is an actual application in the business (generally doing new and transformative things as a benefit).
HR can strategically plan this to meet transformation goals by getting everyone clear on their goals and arranging for individual or group coaching from your existing experts to build skills at scale and speed. It also keeps costs down and focuses learning on organisational needs.
Unless your organisation has only the most basic HR teams (and in this day and age, why?), then HR can be a lever in successful transformation in 2023. Find new and better ways to use them, and ensure they find new and better ways to create development initiatives that support your transformation objectives and the teams leading them.
Arinya Talerngsri is Chief Capability Officer, Managing Director, and Founder at SEAC — Southeast Asia’s Lifelong Learning Centre. She is fascinated by the challenge of transforming education for all to create better prospects for Thais and people everywhere. Reach her email at arinya_t@seasiacenter.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/arinya-talerngsri-53b81aa