Anil Kondla
Last Updated on July 15, 2024 by Team Experts
Every business today is embracing digital technologies to prepare the business for sustainability. Human resources (HR Platform) management is no exception from being digitally ready. The role of HR has expanded today. Apart from onboarding the right candidate for the job; it also needs to adopt innovative ideas to make the entire HR process lean and efficient. However, the traditional HR management process is restricted to employees’ management and does not resonate with the modern ideology of value-driven work culture. This is where many organizations find agile and digital-ready methodology a cultural fit; it makes HR efficient, responsive, quick, and accountable. From the lens of digital evolution, organizations see massive potential in the agile HR approach for building a sustainable business model.
Why should HR adopt an agile approach?
The agile methodology is basically developed for project management and software development, but its benefits have extended to various other sectors, including HR. The agile principle of collaborative approach, continuous iteration, and making changes on the go has facilitated HR to get a competitive advantage for their business organization. By incorporating the agile principle, you can iterate new ideas, overcome the present challenges, improve the standard process and repeat the cycle again.
- Involve stakeholders’ in decision-making process
In the agile approach, stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process. Likewise, you can involve C-suite or line managers in the key decision process and reduce the error rate. By keeping C-suite in the loop, you can have quality hires and enhance the candidate experience that is vital for their retention.
- Continual feedback process and training
In a usual scenario, HR conducts a review and feedback process annually. But the agile HR approach advocates continuous review and feedback cycle. It helps to address the employees’ issues on an immediate basis and improve their performance. This is true for even those organizations that are involved in managing shorter projects but overlook the feedback process. It is not advisable to skip the continual feedback process if your organization aims for an agile HR model. Continuous feedback from employees and improving the HR processes on the go can help to build a strong business enterprise. By implementing continual feedback, you are increasing the scope of team members to identify their skill gaps early and mitigate the issues related to performance. In the end, these all add up in establishing an organization that could perform under any given circumstances.
- Develop a cross-functional team
The focus of management has shifted from the individual to team-based operational models. Business organizations are harnessing the cross-functional team culture that is diverse in terms of skills, experience, age, location, seniority, gender, etc. By placing cross-functional teams you can foster a collaborative work culture and encourage team members to learn from each other and grow as a team. Just as in the agile method, the team discusses the project challenges and proposes solutions; the cross-functional team can discuss various challenges and come up with the best solution.
- Continuous improvement – agile coaching
Modern HR expects project managers to perform a dual role of leader and mentor. The project managers need to coach the employees on how to perform better, and at the same time, they have to lead them throughout the project. A project manager with good coaching skills can justify their role better. You can enroll project managers or team leads to training programs that are focused on enhancing skills. You can break down the entire coaching session into smaller tutorials just as a sprint in agile methodology and scale your manager’s coaching skills with each sprint. You can help your managers improve their efficiency as they progress through the project, similar to an agile methodology that advocates continuous improvement with every product development life-cycle.
How can HR tech help in their agile approach?
- Make hiring process faster: The basic idea behind the agile approach is to release products or deliverables more quickly and efficiently. Similarly, you can also make your HR process faster by embedding the software tools into your agile strategy. For instance, you can use applicant tracking software to collect data about the candidates and filter candidates on parameters such as qualification, experience, skills, etc. With all the information about the candidates on hand, you can make the hiring process faster and accurate.
- Smooth communication: Communication is vital in agile methodology to deliver the product as per customers’ requirements. The team leaders communicate with the client about the project requirements and based on which team members develop the product. They also keep them updated about every release of the product deliverables. To communicate with the customers, they rely on software tools or emails. Similarly, for HR, the job applicants or candidates are your customers, and you can rely on software tools to communicate with them. You can use HR staffing software that supports automated SMS, mass mailing features, and communication templates to inform candidates about the vacancies or even schedule interviews.
- Transparency in process: Transparency is another aspect of agile methodology that is reflected in the modern HR process. Having real-time access to HR data, the team members can have clear visibility on the candidate’s job status and who is working on what. It reduces the error rate and gives the HR team more control over the process.
- Data analytics for decision making: As an HR professional, you can find yourself engaged in making a strategic decision or implementing new ideas in the process.HR software with data analytics can help to make a fact-based decision and improve your current process.
- Custom integration: Data from HR could be valuable for other departments too; for instance, if the accounting department wants to process the employees’ payroll, they would require employees’ time-sheet details. Applicant tracking system (ATS) software that can be customized for third-party tool integration helps users to harness the power of two software in one.
- Manage multi-directional feedback: The agile HR approach supports multi-directional feedback, which can include peers, supervisors, co-workers, etc. It could become difficult to manage the feedback from multiple sources. But if you have access to HR mobile apps or HR software, it can make multi-directional feedback pretty manageable.
- Support for training: Training is an important aspect of agile HR as you aim for continuous improvement in the process. Some advanced HR tools are designed to deliver the training programs efficiently and segment the entire training session into separate modules. With the help of HR software, you can track employees’ progress throughout their training modules.
Conclusion,
HR that once solely functions as an employee’s advocate is now envisaged as the strategic player in the organization’s growth. The efforts are made towards reskilling HR professionals, automating manual processes, establishing higher transparency levels, and continuous improvements so that HR can respond better to evolving business needs. It could look like mammoth tasks, but if you have access to the right HR tools and adopt an innovative approach like agile for your HR, you can create tremendous value for your organization. So, get ready to invest in an agile, digital-ready HR platform.
Read more: Five Ways To Make Your Business Agile Using Data Science
