What Does Agile Mean to HR?
Agile isn't just for Tech anymore. It's transforming how organisations hire, develop and manage their people. It's also transforming how HR interacts with the workforce from doing things for employees to designing programs and technology with and for employees. In many ways agile is the backbone of efforts to design, understand and improve the employee experience.
Our recent guest on the Digital HR Leaders podcast talking to David Green was Anna Tavis, a Clinical Associate Professor of Human Capital Management at New York University and the editor at People and Strategy a journal for HR Executives. She also wrote a landmark article in HBR with Peter Capelli on Agile in HR. Throughout the podcast they discuss a wide variety of topics from what agile HR means and why it’s becoming important, to examples of how agile is being employed by companies such as IBM and Adobe in HR. You can listen to the full podcast episode here.
This episode is a must listen for everyone in HR, particularly those leading efforts in employee experience, people analytics and other leadership roles.
In this extract taken from their conversation, Anna and David discuss what is required by HR to truly become an agile organisation and what it really means to be agile in today’s world.
What is Agile?
The term ‘Agile’ has predominantly been used in the tech arena, to describe software development and the ability to execute your go-to-market strategy faster by creating a minimum viable product rather than a fully-fledged product that encompasses every user requirement identified. Agile is centred around the idea of iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organising cross-functional teams. The ultimate value in Agile development is that it enables teams to deliver value faster, with greater quality, predictability and greater aptitude to respond to change. Scrum and Kanban are two of the most widely used Agile methodologies, and ones we’re beginning to see more frequently used in HR.
The implementation of agile methodologies is definitely impacting how organisations work and doesn’t just relate to the tech industry anymore. Agile HR is about transforming how organisations hire, develop and maintain talent.
What does Agile mean to HR?
Primarily we've seen agile methodologies widely disrupt areas such as performance management, in a survey run by Deloitte in 2017 79% of global executives commented that agile performance management is considered to be of high organisational priority.
Anna Tavis comments that during her research on performance management she noticed that many organisations were removing their older waterfall style processes and implementing a more frequent, ‘in-the-line-of-work’ approach with regular check-ins, however what she found increasingly interesting was:
“That very few organisations realised that they were just responding to the agile methodology that was already introduced across the organisation. I just felt, if you talk to Donna Morris from Adobe who kind of made a big splash in the newspaper saying we are changing our performance management system and that became the trigger. So, what we realised was that a lot of HR processes were changing to that accelerated sprint style delivery, but there was very little understanding of where it was coming from.”
We’re only now beginning to see agile principles and real change be brought about to other areas of HR. One could argue that this filtration of agile into other areas of HR is as a result of HR embracing digitisation and taking an “agile lite" approach and applying the general principles without adopting all the tools and protocols from the tech world to enable them to learn quickly to be able to drive real change quickly.
“And so, looking at again Performance Management and then some other processes that were beginning to align with the much more incremental iterative way of working, we realised that definitely it has to do with the digitisation of HR.”
Rapid innovation has become a strategic imperative for most companies and as the HR function continues to diversify its workforce and work cross functionally, we've seen growth in the adoption of agile which could be attributed to this diversification. At the Bank of Montreal (BMO), for example, agile has really resonated due to the "the shift in tech employees joining cross-functional product-development teams to make the bank more customer focused."
How are companies adopting agile HR?
Throughout the discussion with David, Anna Tavis identifies three areas that HR has really began to focus its efforts with regards to embracing a more agile approach to HR. The three areas that she outlines are:
Digitisation of HR
Organisational network analysis
Organisational design
She explains: “I think a lot of people use agile metaphorically. They don't really understand that there is a specific methodology that is associated with it and there are some tools that are enabling agility in organisations that need to be introduced before we even start talking about agility. So, agility for organisations and HR means a lot more than just being nimble and responsive”
Digitisation of HR
Digitisation and the adoption of agile methodologies has seen a large amount of traction both inside and outside of HR, with many functions moving towards the creation of scrum teams, leveraging kanban and development sprints to not only get work done but to optimise the effectiveness and efficiency of the HR function. Dave Ulrich describes the four phases of organisational digitisation being: HR efficiency, HR effectiveness, information and experience and one area that has been greatly impacted by organisational digitisation is performance management.
As the business began to adopt a more agile approach to their core operations, they stopped attempting to work to annual cycles and began adopting a more iterative approach to many tasks. This impacted HR as traditionally one of the the first HR practices was the annual performance review, along with employee goals that “cascaded” down from the business objectives each year. Individuals needed more feedback on a regular cadence due to the nature of project work they were involved in, thus pushing HR to take a more agile approach to performance management.
As Anna explains:
“Scrum teams, kanban, sprints etc. all started out not surprisingly in technology companies like Adobe, IBM... Because guess what the business has been 90% working in that agile space and the businesses started to create their own alternative evaluation systems that were outside of a traditional HR process. The second group of companies that jumped on board of agility, especially in Performance Management space were Professional Services and that had to do with billable hours etc and return on investment. Deloitte, Accenture, looked at what it cost their partners to take time off to be completing performance evaluations that no one really cared about so all of that started in that space and I feel that in terms of where different industries are on agility, it's probably still technology companies that are leading and financial services are second or following. So, the first track is agility through digitisation and software.”
In order to meet the changing needs of the business as they move from a cyclical to a project based approach to work, HR has had to respond and adapt traditional processes to meet these needs, and this is where the adoption of agile methodologies has played a huge role in supporting HR to be able to respond quickly - whether that be through new HR software of changing outdated processes.
Organisational Network Analysis
The second area is more up-and-coming and is the implementation of Organisational Network Analysis. Organisational Network Analysis (ONA) provides a fresh lens on relationships and behaviours both within and between teams, and how work really gets done in a business. The fact ONA is one of the fastest growing and most fascinating areas of people analytics is not surprising. It enables social capital to become visible and offers HR a supplementary and powerful data set to really understand productivity and performance within their companies. ONA provides HR with insights that can unlock innovation, drive productivity and improve performance whilst at the same time enhancing employee experience and wellness. These are all areas that are front-of-mind for CEOs and business leaders as they seek to create the climate and culture that drives competitive advantage and business success. As Anna explains to David,
“ONA technology or organisational network analysis provides a systemic view of how organisations really work and understanding where points of accelerations are, who the people are who are really enablers in that, a speedy delivery and it all has to do with change management. How do we accelerate change? So, I think that's the second track where you can take agility.”
Organisational Design
The third area that we’re seeing HR really embracing agile, is through organisational design. Top-down planning models are giving way to nimbler, user-driven methods that are better suited for adapting in the near term, such as rapid prototyping, iterative feedback, team-based decisions, and task-centred “sprints.”
Anna explains “The third area I find, has to do with design, because I think the influence for that would be behavioural economics etc. Where we're looking at organisations by design, understanding that if you put the wrong tracks in the sand, people are not going to be able to deliver to your expectations or to the required speed of change and a lot of that has to do with organisational design.”
With “speed being the new business currency”, as described by Lynn Roger the chief transformation officer at BMO, having the right organisational structure to support the project-based nature of work that organisations are leaning towards in order to get work done is imperative.
As we continue to move toward more complex and ambiguous times, it is critical for HR functions to be able to adapt and embrace the changing needs of the business and the talent market. And as we know, having an agile HR model not only enable the allocation of resources to business priorities but it also increases business focus, efficiency and effectiveness.
Online training on creating a Digital HR strategy in your organisation…
The myHRfuture academy is a learning experience platform for HR professionals looking to invest in their careers. We have several training courses that are targeted at both specialists in HR systems or digital HR as well as client-facing roles such as HR Business Partners. Our content helps HR professionals to become more digital and data-driven and will help you to navigate the complexities of the HR technology landscape and think about how to use HR technology to improve employee experience.
Invest in your career and learn the HR skills of the future. The myHRfuture Academy provides you with an on-demand platform where you can get access to short, bitesized learning content to help you build knowledge in the skills that you need to prepare for the future of HR. Get access to exclusive content on People Analytics, Digital HR & HR Technology, Design Thinking, Workforce Planning, Consulting & Influencing and Stakeholder Management.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Manpreet Randhawa is the Head of Digital Content for myHRfuture.com. In her previous role as the Change Management Lead for People Planning, Design & Analytics at Cisco Systems, she was responsible for defining and executing on the change management strategy to successfully implement and sustain the digital and cultural transformation across the enterprise. Manpreet is very passionate about change management and technology and how to use both to transform the employee experience and prepare companies for the Future of Work.