In my last post I pleaded that HR for once should stay ahead of the curve and not blindly follow any trends. I am still 100% behind that and would like to support it today with some additional thoughts: The trade-off or conflict between being efficient and effective.
As an HR Consultant there is one slide that is one of the most important when it comes to making the case for change/ making the case for an HR Transformation. It might look different from consultancy to consultancy, but each and every HR consultant has that in the back pocket with the same message. The pyramid or small square in a big square – the message that the true value of an HR Transformation is not really in HR, but in the workforce, realized by easier HR interactions, faster HR transactions. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe in that slide – have used it myself multiple times. But have also seen multiple times that the consequences of this slide were not taken when actually transforming HR. And this is the target conflict, the trade-off between efficiency and effectiveness – not in HR, but in transforming HR.
Why is that so? – when designing a new HR Organization, companies and consultancies tend to design it as lean as possible, as specialized as possible and as rigid as possible – with global standardization, global technology, global processes, etc. – and all of this is necessary for a lean and efficient HR organisation. But what about effectiveness? Yes – the CoEs will be designed with a bit of slack so that they can drive HR effectiveness and all is well. But is that so?
Coming back to the original “slide” that I was referring to: The real deal, the real business case is outside of HR which in turn means that we need to make sure with every HR Transformation that this part of the company, the overall workforce, the business stays effective! This is the effectiveness that we should watch out for, this is the actual conflict and trade-off we need to discuss and align. Because lean HR in 9 out of 10 cases means:
- Standardized processes with one size fits all – no special treatment of any business unit or employee group, regardless if it is needed or not
- Self-service for initiating any people related transaction
- but also self-service for employee or manager education on HR policies and procedures
And of course, this is necessary and completely normal for transformed HR organizations with Shared Services. Some are even more rigid and only allow self-services – no personal case resolution or handling or intake anymore. The people manager or employee has to fit into the pattern of self-service possibilities and policies published. If not, too bad.
The question is: Is that the right approach? – sure, this is the right approach if you want lean HR. But it is not the right approach if you want to achieve the complete business case of an HR transformation. Don’t get me wrong – I am not against self-services or publishing of policies. But what happens in many cases is that this is focused on HR and not on the consumer of the service. Companies are slowly understanding this. In fact, I had a conversation last week about self-services vs. telephony support for employees and managers. A company has changed its approach on how to take requests in – from a focus on self-services, short call turnaround times and mass-handling to an open menu for the employee or people manager: Take the contact method that you feel best fit for you for your specific case today. – result was that significantly more calls were coming in to HR now than before and that call handling times have almost doubled. But employees/ people managers came less often for the same request – could receive a satisfying answer and action earlier. In total, employees and people managers had to spend less time searching for the right answer to a complex case/ question online before starting a self-service request which triggered multiple back and forth between HR and the requestor due to incomplete information, misunderstanding, etc. They now had the chance to call in immediately for complex cases and got help through a conversation (another change) rather than scripted call handling, which was much more effective for the requestor. Now it seems that this would be less efficient for HR – but preliminary results show that the total handling time of a single request was reduced due to less back and forth and having all necessary information. Let’s see how that plays out in the long-run.
At the end it seems that there maybe isn’t even a target conflict, but we will only find out if we not only during the business case, but also when designing and implementing the transformed organization, processes and systems focus on the holistic picture and the company as a whole, not only HR. And in coming back to my plead of the previous post: Don’t go all digital, allow for analog conversations to happen in real-time (sure, it does not need to be phone, can be chat as well – but let’s face it we as humans are much more efficient in telling our case/ issue/ request than writing it) and make these human interactions with a conversation – not scripted – to achieve best outcome.
Chief HR Officer 