A Wakeup Call for HR !!
Deloitte’s annual Global Human Capital Survey 2015

One clear motivation for taking bold action now is the state of HR itself. The Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends 2015 report explains that “capability gaps” (the distance between urgency and readiness) have widened in every area—including leadership, engagement, analytics, learning, and reskilling HR—since 2014.3

Our research shows that today’s HR professionals typically give themselves a C- when it comes to their ability to directly impact talent needs in their company.4 In fact, despite more than 10 years of research and discussion about “talent management,” only 12 percent5 of the companies we recently surveyed have a true talent strategy. Further, less than one-quarter of line managers surveyed think their learning and development (L&D) department is critical to achieving business goals, a statistic that reveals a startling lack of alignment to the business.6 Our research shows that even many CHROs are struggling to keep up—more than a third7 of those surveyed are being replaced by non-HR professionals as they change jobs.

Of course the likely reason for these challenges is that the world is changing rapidly. The leading practices that we read about or learn of at trade shows are often fleeting. Some endure forever, but many are very dependent on today’s technological environment and the particular demographics of a company. Right now, with Millennials becoming the largest cohort in the workforce and also older employees often wanting more meaning and purpose at work, many traditional recruiting, performance management, succession, and corporate learning practices are quickly becoming ineffective.

Added to these challenges is the fact that HR professionals typically don’t spend much time or money developing their own skills. While most HR teams try to focus on internal skills development, our research shows that only 8 percent rate themselves as excellent in this area.8 The reason? It’s dauntingly difficult—the practices keep changing, and, frankly, we are all just too busy.

The Path to Bold HR: Six Steps to Addressing Common Talent and HR Problems

Being bold demands more than confidence and creativity. It also calls for innovative thinking; alignment with business strategy; strong technology and tools; and skills in change management, coaching, and leadership.

Our experience shows HR leaders generally go through a six-phase process to address business challenges:

1. To effectively strategize, HR and learning professionals should begin the process by first learning about the domain itself. If the problem is sales productivity, for example, it’s important for HR to understand the principles of sales training, the models available in the market, and the concepts of sales development before they can begin to address the issue. This not only means learning the “trade” but also getting to know the leadership and processes of the particular area of the business in question.
2. The HR department should figure out where to start and where they are today. We call this “finding your level of maturity,” a process by which companies can figure out what is broken, what is working, and what steps should be taken next. While it might seem easy to simply follow in the footsteps of world-class companies that have already solved the problem at hand, it is important to remember that it may have taken 10 years to evolve that successful strategy. A long-term strategy cannot simply be “copied” in a year.
3. The HR team should carefully design a solution based on the company’s current status and business problems. The design process should focus specifically on the imminent problems. If, for example, the sales team is suffering from turnover, the problem may lie in compensation or management coaching. If the problem is not selling enough high-end products, then the solution design might involve improving sales skills.
4. The HR team should determine the kind of resources it needs to effectively design and implement a solution, which could include upskilling existing talent; sourcing new employees; or selecting technologies, tools, and vendors. There are thousands of software products, consultants, and training programs available in the market. The selection process can be complex. On the one hand, a solution should address the specific problem; but on the other hand, the vendor must be able to scale and grow with the needs of the organization. Often these two factors work against each other (innovation vs. scale and depth).
5. Once a program or solution is designed, including various vendor pieces, it should be rolled out to employees and implemented. This is generally the hardest part of the process. Employees and leaders are busy, and most are already overwhelmed with systems and programs. It’s crucial that HR build a complete “change process”; enlist support from top leadership; and make sure the new program or solution is simple to use, well marketed, and supported with education, information, and inspiration. Ultimately, the solution or program must also be maintained and sustained over its lifecycle.
6. This last step is about determining how to measure what one did (or is doing). How do you know if your programs are being adopted? How do you measure their effectiveness or progress? What can you measure to make sure you know what to improve over time? No HR program is perfect from the moment it rolls out, which is why measurement and analytics are typically critical to long-term success. And, with more HR analytics solutions in the market every day, HR now has the ability to actually measure the results of its processes and programs, thereby determining what is working well and what is not adding value.