Why HR needs an agile mindset

At a time when being fast, nimble and connected, can ‘make or break’ a business, can HR as a function afford a rigid mindset? The answer to that is undoubtedly, ‘No’!

It is pertinent to recognise that agility is not about how we do  things, but rather a mindset.
The more agile leaders are; the better is their ability to build a team which is able to navigate
the challenges of a dynamic environment.
The same holds good for those practising HR too.

Here are a few of the practices that I believe should be reinvented to make HR more agile:

Employee satisfaction: Let’s begin with employee satisfaction surveys. It is an annual feature for most organisations. I believe it’s a sheer waste of time, energy and effort. Conversations with people, or what we call the pulse checks, should be continuous—a daily affair! Bottom-up communication has become mandatory for organisations to function smoothly. Multiple platforms are generally built to hear from the ground and move fast to resolve areas of derailment, and sustain strengths. But one should not underestimate the importance of constant listening. It can help to act quickly, which can make all the difference.

Advanced sourcing tools: The agile world is hitting HR harder than we can imagine. This percolates down to our recruitment teams as well, who are now expected to act as talent advisors. For example, sourcing today is done in nanoseconds using advanced tools. 20 seconds is all it takes to scout through the entire World Wide Web (www) to find almost all eligible candidates along with their comprehensive backgrounds. This, of course, frees up time that can be utilised elsewhere. Be agile enough to use tools for sourcing and enable your team to move up the value chain.

Talented recruiters: Recruitment teams now need to possess talent, think beyond the obvious, have the aptitude to identify candidates who fit the culture and also be capable of taking the organisation forward to meet its goals. In a digitally connected world, it is evident that we need people across levels who are both strong in the left and right brains. The business head should be clear about what he wants: someone strong in analytics and powerful storytelling. To identify a talent like this, imagine how much the talent finder should evolve. It’s no more about number crunching. The business models are changing and our customers are predominantly going to reward us on the outcomes and not bases of the number of people we place.

Culture of engaging with employees:
The hard work starts the moment you spot a talent.
You ought to have agile processes where you engage with them on a daily basis, without really boring them — feed in information relevant to their context and likes. Technology has evolved to the extent that it lets you customise content. Use technology to understand who you are communicating with but retain the personal touch of connecting. Chances are the real talent of today will ignore organisations that are not evolved in their approach towards customers, people, society and all other key stakeholders. Every event of interaction with the candidate should reflect this quality of the organisation(s). One should have the courage to show who you really are and that can be done only if you have a culture which is worth showing. Be swift in changing your culture if it is not aligned to today’s talent.

Rewards and retention: Another area that has traditionally been seen as the topmost priority of organisations is retention and rewards. However, in today’s world, old ways of rewarding surely do not work. It’s all about need-based and agile rewards systems now. Build benefits based on the life cycle of people. Don’t give them anything which does not make sense in their context. As part of designing a medical benefits programme recently, one of the things that we ensured was that the benefits directly matched with the life cycle of the employees and the needs of their families.

Flexible approach: Bring in flexibility everywhere. If we still think flexibility is tough and not scalable, then we are working against the theme of building practices for our people at the speed and at the time they need. Break the organisation into smaller groups, understand their needs and localise the rewards. Give people what they want. Do not stick to the theme of scale and uniformity because uniformity is really dying. It’s individuality or uniqueness which wins, and brings the ‘wow’ quotient.

Constant dialogue: Last but not the least is connecting with people on what they are doing, how they are doing and what they could do next. What millennials look for in their leaders is constant dialogue on their performance, which will help them build a strong future. The expectation is of informal and frequent communication — almost every day. The challenge here is how quickly we understand this need and adapt to it.

There are many practices and processes that touch the different points of our professional journey, where agility is mandatory. If we build the mindset, it will become the ‘mantra’ for the future
.

Determinants of Organizational Structure

With the help of Prof. (Mrs.) Merlyn Michael D'souza all the IESMCRC (HR students) got an exposure over different organizational structures and its various determinants.

The objective here is to understand why organizations have the structure that they do. By "structure" it means, things like degree and type of horizontal differentiation, vertical differentiation, mechanisms of coordination and control, formalization, and centralization of power.

Following are the points which were being discussed in the classroom.

DETERMINANTS OF ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE:

There are six major determinants of Organization Structure. The six determinants are −

• Strategy
• Size
• Environment
• Technology
• Power-control 
• Culture

An organization consists of people with different traits, personality, skills, qualities, interests, background, beliefs, values and intelligence. In order to maintain a healthy environment, all the employees should be treated equally and be judged according to their work and other aspects that affects the firm.

Structure is the layout design of an organization. It is the construction and arrangement of relationships, strategies according to the organizational goal.

Technology can be defined as the implementation of scientific knowledge for practical usage. It also provides the resources required by the people that affect their work and task performance in the right direction.

This lecture was based on 'Environment' as a determinant of structure. All companies function within a given internal and external environment. Internal environment can be defined as the conditions, factors, and elements within an enterprise that influences the activities, choices made by the firm, and especially the behavior of the employees. While external environment can be defined as outside factors that affect the company's ability to operate. Some of them can be manipulated by the company’s marketing, while others require the company to make adjustments.

Some examples of internal environment include employee morale, culture changes, financial changes or issues, and some examples of external environment include political factors, changes to the economy and the company itself.

Further, other than this, few other things related to environmental factors were studied, which are stated below:

1. Environmental Uncertainty
2. Burns & Stalker studies on organization structures which states The theorists argued that organizations need different kinds of structure to control their activities that will allow the company to adapt and react to changes and uncertainties in the environment. 
3. The Emery-Trist levels of organizational environments include four main organizational types: The placid, randomized environment; the placid, clustered environment; the disturbed, reactive environment; and the turbulent field environment.
4. Lawrence and Lorsch develop an open systems theory of how organizations and organizational sub-units adapt to best meet the demands of their immediate environment. 

Strategies to lessen environmental uncertainty

INTERNAL

• Domain choice
• Recruitment
• Environmental scanning
• Buffering
• Smoothing
• Rationing
• Geographic dispersion

EXTERNAL

• Advertising
• Contracting
• Coopting
• Coalescing
• Lobbying

At the end of the session, there was an activity which was done by all the students related to the determinants in which we were divided into 2 groups.

We had to select any organization of choice, where we need to define whether the organization is of general environment or specific environment.

Further, we had to discuss whether the structure is mechanistic or not and which one is better for that organization.

Great learning and activity!!