Agile Vs Traditional HR practices

Author

mirketa

June 3, 2019

Word “Agile” has become a buzzword. Agility as a concept has been talked about from the beginning of this century. This was more in relation to software programming. Agility in management has now become a global phenomenon. This is a global movement entirely transforming the “world of work” that includes HR and transforming it into Agile HR.

Agile HR is the capability of the HR function to respond proactively to changing expectations, workplace disruptions, and business requirements. We could sum up Agile HR as Adaptable, Transparent, Simple, and United.

Adaptable: Adaptability is important in the face of ever-changing business needs and requirements.
Transparent: Transparency is important in gathering the trust of managers and employees, as well as explaining why things must be done in a certain manner.
Simple: Simplicity is when designing HR programs and practices that do not cause any confusion, alienate managers, and employees.
United: Unity applies with respect to HR working together and ensuring it isn’t working in silos or at cross purposes with the business.

How Agile HR differ from traditional HR ways of working?

Traditional HR was primarily responsible for Hire to Exit HR processes. HR here would deal with talent acquisition, talent management, running performance management cycles, identifying people for development & imparting necessary training, taking care of hygiene issues, etc. Helping employees with career development, rewards & recognition. While Agile HR invests in employer brand & cultivates ongoing relationships with talent across multiple channels including social media clearly differentiating from traditional talent acquisition ways. As far as development is concerned employees are given the myriad opportunities to learn and stretch themselves independent of job-related objectives. More holistic but the purpose here is to add value. Talent management is facilitated by Agile HR which empowers employees to take charge of their own career & development, employees understand their roles and actively participates in talent acquisition evaluation and development. Employees in an Agile organization understand how their own job performance supports the mission and values of the organization. Agile HR facilitates this transformation. Agile HR works & supports bringing in cultural mindset shift. It also helps create structured changes in the organization.

Agile HR is about adopting structures, attitudes, processes, and tools to become more flexible, nimbler and faster in your decision making and actions. Being Agile HR brings in numerous benefits within Core HR domains:

Agile Recruitment: Agile HR builds cross-functional hiring teams for each requirement. Managers give real-time feedback about the candidate. There is very little chance to hire badly as a result of saving significant time, money & stress.
Agile Onboarding: The other important benefit of agile HR is the wholistic onboarding of new employees. Here onboarding no longer sits only with HR but colleagues (Names as BUDDY) from cross-functional onboarding team participate in the process. New hires hence are supported and engaged by cross-functional teams and as a result, they settle down quickly and become productive.
Agile PMS: People use continuous feedback mechanisms to give real-time feedback. This continuous data becomes a backbone for regular reviews which replaces inefficient traditional feedback mechanisms. Managers co-set goals. Employees get support to grow.
Agile R&R: Recognizing a performance and offer rewards becomes real-time in agile HR. this helps motivates people and they are more productive. This also encourages that HR keeps track of market rates and adjust the compensation accordingly to stay competitive. This helps in retention.
Agile L&D: Agile HR analyses skill gaps and get the right people into the right training. Your training spend is more efficient because you allocate training accurately. Employees here learn better, faster. Employees can track their progress & request training sessions to suit their needs.

Other numerous benefits being Agile HR to the organization and business.

Real collaboration: Agile teams are tightly united by a common purpose. Agile HR builds in real collaboration.
Continuous feedback: Agile HR is about continuous feedback and improvement. Traditional HR processes take a huge amount of time to get real-time feedback. Agile HR depends on customer feedback and innovate.
Innovation: Agile HR fosters innovation. The structures are so designed in an agile organization where teams attending to a customer problem are innovating all the time by applying solutions to the large complex problem by breaking it down and then applying innovative solutions to each part of such a problem.
Communicate effectively: Agile HR helps an agile mindset on collaboration. There is clear transparency in each team member’s role giving insights to each team to help each other do well. They communicate and collaborate effectively.
Listen and incorporate feedback: Agile mindset fosters effective listening. Whenever there is a problem and that is noticed the teams are fast to react and also incorporate feedback and move on at a rapid pace.

Agile HR benefits business within HR core domains viz :

Agile Recruitment: Agile HR builds cross-functional hiring teams for each requirement. Managers give real-time feedback about the candidate. There is a very little chance to hire badly as a result of saving significant time, money & stress.
Agile Onboarding: The other important benefit of agile HR is the wholistic onboarding of new employees. Here onboarding no longer sits only with HR but colleagues (Names as BUDDY) from cross-functional onboarding team participate in the process. New hires hence are supported and engaged by cross-functional teams and as a result, they settle down quickly and become productive.
Agile PMS: People use continuous feedback mechanisms to give real-time feedback. This continuous data becomes a backbone for regular reviews which replaces inefficient traditional feedback mechanisms. Managers co-set goals. Employees get support to grow.
Agile R&R: Recognizing a performance and offer rewards becomes real-time in agile HR. this helps motivates people and they are more productive. This also encourages that HR keeps track of market rates and adjust the compensation accordingly to stay competitive. This helps in retention.
Agile L&D: Agile HR analyses skill gaps and get the right people into the right training. Your training spend is more efficient because you allocate training accurately. Employees here learn better, faster. Employees can track their progress & request training sessions to suit their needs.

HR has the most important role in creating Agility. Therefore, must follow the following key principles –

Make people aware of cultural changes,
Give the teams mandate to hire “The Best”,
Make sure the hired ones stay.
Important step also is to stop annual performance feedback and institute continuous performance feedback mechanisms.
Reward mechanisms need to be relooked and reward publicly.

HR as above can really become Agile HR & contribute the enterprise to become an Agile organization.

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