'All this amazing information that HR leaders have at their fingertips can be tied into helping with those overarching decisions of where an organisation's going'
HR professionals in Australia and New Zealand are playing a bigger role than ever in their organisations, according to a new report from Workday.
The report, which polled 450 respondents in ANZ, saw 72% of HR professionals saying that they have more participation in board meetings since the start of the pandemic.
Allyson Skene, Vice President, Global Vision and Experience, Workday, attributed the elevation of the HR function to organisations being more strategic as they navigate through major fundamental changes at work.
"And when you think about COVID, that brought about a big change because HR really became that central focus of the response," Skene told HRD. "Organisations needed to be aware of the well-being of their workers. And I think that that really helped escalate HR up there."
There is also a growing acknowledgement and focus on employees, particularly employee experience.
"I think that change has also helped elevate HR - thinking about the staff satisfaction and the well-being, some of those critical factors when you look at employee productivity and also the loyalty to an organisation as well," Skene said.
The range of employee data that HR leaders have with them also helped raise their function in organisations.
"When you think about all this amazing information that HR leaders have at their fingertips, that can really be tied into helping with those overarching decisions of where an organisation's going — such as 'Who have we got within the organisation?' Or 'What are the skill sets that we have, and how are they aligning with our future direction?' — I think all of those areas really have tied into that,” she said.
The bigger platform for HR leaders comes as organisations also address various challenges across the organisation, with staff retention (34%) topping this list for ANZ respondents, according to the report.
Skene noted that addressing this challenge goes back to the data insights that HR leaders have to identify where the issues are occurring within the business.
"So, who are we losing? Are they high-performing individuals? Are there particular problems that we're losing them from? If I marry that information up against areas like my engagement scores, can I now start to understand where those potential retention risks are so I can do something about it?" she said.
"And then I think if we marry that [data] together with things like our survey information, I'm then looking at ‘What are the reasons why people are leaving?’ to now start to build that into my HR policies, so that some of those pieces will come together."
The impact of the elevated HR function is not unnoticed, according to the report, as organisations believe that they add strategic value (82%) and are driving change in their organisation (79%).
One way that this is observed is through the comeback of having more regular connections with employees through poll surveys.
“We actually do what we call Feedback Friday. So, every Friday we have two or three survey questions that come out, and they will be targeted around different things that we're doing… it might be around how do [employees] feel about their particular value within the company, or we've just gone through this particular change, how were [employees] impacted by that change?"
The other major change where HR leaders can make a major impact is the shift in skills-based economy.
"So, if I think about my business objectives, what are the skills that we need in the organisation today? But also, what are the skills that we need to have in the future and how are we going to get there?" Skene said.
"And that's where HR is going to be leading… in ensuring that we've got the talent in place that we need, that we've got a strategy as to how we're going to get there."
One strategy that HR leaders can apply to this is the "grow-flex-hire" approach, according to Skene.
This begins with first looking at "growing" employees and helping them develop the skills that the organisation needs. The second is about flexing, which Skene said is tied to internal mobility.
"A lot of the focus seems to be on the talent acquisition, but what organisations need to remember is they've got amazing talent internally, and it's a lot more cost-effective to bring through that internal talent than it actually is to go through an external talent acquisition process," she said.
The final part is the hiring step: "So, if we still can't get the people internally, now how am I going to think about that external talent acquisition and that could be long-term?"
With the bigger role of HR leaders at work, Skene pointed out a "shift in the organisational dynamics."
"HR has been seen as more of a transactional function. They were more reactive, and I think now they are becoming more proactive and becoming a true strategic partner," she said.
This means organisations are now in a position to leverage the data HR has and bring human capital considerations into business planning.
"I think what it comes down to is that critical role of human capital in business success," Skene said. "So, the future of work is to become actually more human, not less."
