Why HR is essential for an agile people-first organisation to work.

Sadly, HR is still overlooked. Many organisations state they have difficulty finding good talent but leave HR on the back burner.

Often, HR belongs to the "extended management", but many organisations don't make it a priority in agile transformations. So, to a certain level, it is also HRs own fault. In many organisations, HR still has an old-school reputation that needs dusting off - where it is perceived to be "bureaucratic" and "ineffective".

If your organisation has difficulty finding good talent, an agile people-first strategy may be a good way forward. And for this to work, HR, or to give it a modern name, people development, needs to get the attention it deserves.

However, one must consider that this is also a double-edged sword - with great power comes great responsibility.

To become an agile people-first organisation, HR will need to evolve and do its part. It will need to make some concessions regarding its domain - as you might imagine, more collaboration, cocreation and transparency are essential for success.

This article discusses positive patterns that a modern HR strategy may include along the "lifecycle" of a person within an organisation.

If your recruitment doesn't work, you'll never get the right talent to develop your organisation.

In many organisations, recruitment is still relatively disassociated from daily business - something you can't afford to keep doing. So how do you define the criteria for a new role, and how do you structure your recruitment process?

There are two types of hires - tactical hires and strategical hires.

If you are looking for new talent to add to an existing stable setting - a tactical hire - then defining the role should be delegated to the team. The peers/teams should be in control of defining the profile they are looking for - HR and the leadership team should only challenge these roles from diversity and financial angles. Aside from it, the team/daily business should be in control.

The recruitment process needs to be fast and transparent; it makes sense to use a shared recruitment tool, and the peers/teams should be in the loop. Through this method, the recruitment process becomes intelligent and flexible - the peers/teams understand what is going on and can help screen candidates early on. In addition, opening up the process encourages "hire for attitude and train for skill approach".

As a result, peers can avoid high-potential junior applicants being removed from the process because they do not fulfil some criteria. They can also bring in the gravitas needed for senior applicants, asking specific and detailed questions early on.

In the end, the team should decide who is hired - this may sound obvious - but in many cases still isn't.

Strategical hires are a different topic - if, for example, a new team with new skills is to be introduced, the leadership team may need to drive this process.

Onboarding – a critical topic that is underestimated and vital for successful talent development.

I have often thought of onboarding as a somewhat less important administrative chore. However, how your organisation performs the task of onboarding talent sets the tone for everything that is to come.

It doesn't need to be perfect, and it should be performed in line with the spirit of the organisation, but it is nevertheless vital.

Here are a few questions you should think about - not rocket science - is your organisation handling these questions adequately?

• When the new person starts, do they already understand how things at our organisation work, e.g. social norms?

• Before an individual starts their new position, do they have a contact where they can ask questions and get to know the people who will be in their future team?

• During the first week, does the person have a "coach" that proactively supports them in removing the most common impediments?

• During the first month of their employment, has the person had multiple check-ins with their leadership team to clarify questions and expectations?

• Did the person define the first set of realistic and shared goals within the first month?

• Did the person define and agree upon a personal development plan within the first three months of their employment?

Suppose you happen to be in a big organisation with highly standardised processes. In that case, you should watch out for waste in the process and check how "honest" the process is - e.g. if something gets flagged, do you diligently follow up on improvements?

Suppose you happen to be in a small organisation with variable processes. In that case, you should monitor the process's effectiveness and ensure that every new talent has a good experience - e.g. if something is left out or shifted, make sure that it still happens.

Roles, mobility, and teams – how are you coping with a fast-changing world?

Cycles are generally becoming shorter - this has also an impact on roles, mobility, and teams. How are you coping with these changes?

One of the central underlying questions is how your organisation's structure looks. For example, some modern organisations are organised around product value streams, and others are built around stable teams. These preconditions will indicate how much flexibility you have in defining your roles, mobility and team frameworks.

E.g. in an IT/services company, you might be relatively flexible in letting people move around. However, in a highly regulated medical/financial company, you might have some additional constraints to consider.

It is generally advisable to have roles established - they support you in shaping responsibilities, career paths, and compensation. Nowadays, roles are changing faster, and a modern employer also needs to provide mobility - aspects like more or less responsibility or a lower or higher amount of work.

Again, HR needs to take over a leading and serving role at the same time - HR needs to signal that it encourages change, needs to channel initiatives, listen to the requirements, and track the impact. Oscillating between these two states is challenging - providing the organisation and teams with enough room to self-organise while still being able to run and channel the central aspect of the HR role.

Combine intrinsic and extrinsic aspects to make people want to give their best and stick around.

I recently had an interesting discussion about how Gen Z interacts with the job market and vice-versa. Behaviours and expectations have changed. This goes for how the employee behaves towards the organisation and how the organisation behaves towards employees.

So, it is time for new reward systems? But how to design and evolve reward systems?

We can use a few established baseline patterns as starting blocks:

• You want to build a reward system that encourages collaboration - incentives should be at the core, promoting holistic actions.

• You want to develop a reward system that focuses on unleashing intrinsic motivation - while still considering extrinsic factors.

Here are a few key checks I run on salary and reward systems:

• Is it fair and transparent? It needs to be fair and transparent to keep the actors honest and avoid backroom deals.

• Does it have clear, measurable and agreed-upon benchmark criteria? Only like this people can understand what they need to perform. Consider: The agreed-upon benchmarks should also align with the organisational values.

• Is there a fixed and a variable component to the incentive strategy? Is the variable part collaboration-friendly? It is a missed opportunity if there is no variable part - not having a dynamic system where the person has a direct impact and gets feedback from the system is a missed opportunity. However, the variable part needs to be collaboration-friendly - it should not lead to suboptimisation.

• Does the organisation have an instrument to promote intrinsically driven actions? Of course, it should always stay the goal of reducing extrinsic factors to a pure "hygiene factor". However, this is the most challenging part in practice - truly unleashing intrinsically driven aspects needs a difficult-to-achieve equilibrium between mindset, people, and mission.

As always - design, test, execute and review change. Rinse and repeat. In today's fast-moving world, reward systems should also adapt frequently.

Offboarding – is just as important as onboarding.

Nowadays, it seems to be nearly established good practice to have a side gig going. As a result, tenures at organisations have generally become shorter. The reasons for this are manifold.

In general, it is safe to say that the commitment in the employee-employer relationship has decreased. Employers seem to be less committed to a social contract/social responsibility, and employees are less invested in the long-term sustainability of the employer. It goes both ways and is probably, to a certain extent, an overarching social pattern - at least in the "western world".

Offboarding is an afterthought in many organisations - the last step in the employee-employer lifecycle. Something that still "needs to be done" to end the relationship. Seeing it that way is, in my opinion, plain wrong.

Offboarding is a new beginning. Who tells you in today's quickly evolving world that you won't meet again? E.g., at some point, the person might like to return to the organisation. Or the organisation might need the person again. Who tells you that you can't create future win-win situations? E.g., at some point, the organisation could use the person's skill in a subcontractor setting. Or the person could point other contacts as customers or future employees in the direction of the organisation.

There is vast potential - and the organisation should make it a priority to benefit the person. If it is an honest and well-meant initiative, the organisation will also reap benefits. Do you need some ideas & patterns?

• Do you have somebody from your organisation regularly checking up on people who have left the organisation? Primarily to ask them how things are working out and if you can continue to create win-win situations. This assignee should not be a random person but a close colleague who has a personal connection to the person who left.

• Do you have an actively managed alumni network? To help alumni co-create after their tenure at your organisation - and maybe even come back someday. If you do it, it should be clear that you do it "actively" and honestly - continue pushing information (like job offers) but, e.g., paying for an annual snacks and drinks party.

These are just some ideas. There might be specific things depending on your context. And always remember - put people first, as it is an "infinite game".